PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, sociological*
How did LOVE AND THUNDER manage to go from the general dumbness of THOR RAGNAROK to the level of "out-dumbering" itself several times over? Let me count the ways.
For Dumb Thing #1, I'll start out with the sort of continuity error only comics nerds care about. From everything the MCU said about Asgardians, they seemed to be following the science-fiction interpretation of Warren Ellis from the nineties:
Ellis' worked seemed to be an attempt at reconciling the divinity of the Asgardians with the science-fiction tradition of the Marvel Universe. He suggested that the Asgardians were simply advanced parasitic aliens who had a millenia-long relationship with the human race.-- COMICS ALLIANCE, 2009.
I don't think any script said it outright, but I always assumed that the Ellis explanation was why the MCU could rationalize a Heimdall played by Idris Elba; he was just some alien who decides to be Black rather than Nordic, and so totally was not a token at all. For all earlier phases, the Asgardians seemed to be the only "gods" in the MCU, not counting the Eternals, who existed in their own bailiwick. But with DUMBERER, suddenly all the gods of human history have a real existence, explicitly tied to human belief, just so that Taika Waititi could adapt Marvel's "Gorr the God Butcher" sequence from 2013. I haven't read the "Gorr" sequence, but to judge from DUMBERER, it must be just as bad as Watiti's version, because it couldn't possibly be worse.
Dumb Thing #2: So Gorr (Christian Bale) is this alien guy, and almost all of his people have died of starvation, except his daughter Love, and she too is on her last legs. He cries out to his god Rapu, exhorting the deity to bestow on his faithful worshippers their ultimate reward. Rapu appears, though he has no intention of doing anything at all for Gorr or his dead people. But Rapu just happens to have a god-killing weapon, the Necrosword, lying around, and Gorr uses the blade to kill Rapu. Then Gorr decides that all other gods in the universe are as bad as Rapu and that he's justified in destroying them all. I can't claim that this is the first time the MCU presented a "sympathetic villain" whose early trauma justifies treating him with moral kid gloves. But at least the other villains existed in "serious" films.
Dumb Thing #3: Okay, I get that Watiti made money turning the THOR franchise into a comedy. But does he have to start out DUMBERER with a smarmy voice-over that mocks every dramatic event in the hero's life?
Dumb Thing #4: Thor (Chris Hemsworth) goes adventuring with the Galaxy Guardians, but for some reason, heroic activity fills him with anomie, except when he gets a gift of a chariot drawn by screaming goats. Thor dumps the Guardians when he gets a distress signal from Sif, injured from a run-in with Gorr. Thor helpfully tells Sif she won't get into Valhalla because she didn't die in battle, and then heads for Gorr's next target, New Asgard, where Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) reigns as "king."
Dumb Thing #5: Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), suffering from terminal cancer, journeys to New Asgard because she has some mysterious intuition that the fragments of Mjolnir, destroyed by Hela in RAGNAROK, can help her out. Sure enough, Mjolnir reassembles itself in her presence, and endows Jane with the power of Thor, which was never before specified to have anything to do with Mjolnir's magical powers. Oh, and eventually we learn that for no express reason, using the Thor-power drains Jane's already limited energies. Not exactly a god-blessing, hmm?
Dumb Thing #6: Though DUMBERER was sold as something of a "girl boss" movie, neither Lady Thor nor Valkyrie is as overbearing on that trope this time out. However, even CGI fights don't make either one of them look particularly good choreography-wise, while Hemsworth's Thor still acts the badass. Carol Marvel could kick both women's asses handily.
Dumb Thing #7: Thor wants his hammer back, but he can't very well take it from cancerous Jane, and besides-- his axe Stormbreaker is--
No, I can't even say that one. It's too dumb to speak aloud.
Dumb Thing #8: The heroes defeat many of Gorr's minions but can't stop him from abducting dozens of New Asgard's children. Thor and his femme allies seek out Omnipotence City, the hangout for all the gods of all time, where Thor gets to meet that other thunder-god Zeus. Thor wants to raise a god-army to defeat Gorr and rescue the children. But though Zeus is aware of Rapu's demise, and of the God Butcher's ravages, he doesn't think the Necrosword is a threat to him, and all the other gods agree, for Reasons. Zeus embarrasses Thor (but not Lady Thor or Valkyrie), but the trio manage to steal Zeus's lightning and escape.
Dumb Thing #9: Viewers belatedly learn that Gorr wants to obtain Thor's axe, because it's belatedly revealed that the weapon can open a dimensional doorway to Shen-Long, the Eternal Dragon, who will grant Gorr's wish to snap his fingers and kill all the gods.
Dumb Thing #10: When Thor learns Mjolnir's influence is making Jane's cancer worse, he tries to bench her, but you can guess how well that works out. Valkyrie does remain benched; maybe Watiti knew her furious non-acting might undermine even his clumsy dramatic conclusion. Said conclusion takes place in the Shen-Long dimension, and Jane falls victim to her illness, though this will later be counted as "dying in battle." Thor has the opportunity to attack Gorr before he makes his wish, but he simply appeals to the mass murderer's better nature instead. And it works, so that Gorr perishes and his dead daughter lives. All the other people who died due to his self righteous crusade? Ah, collateral damage by a villain isn't worth dwelling on; only collateral damage by HEROES.
There are probably some other dumb things in DUMBERER, but those are all that I can bear to remember just now.
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