THERE! I FIXED THE MOVIE! - Thor: Love and Thunder
I'm gonna be real and say much like Ralph Breaks the Internet, I didn't really hate Thor: Love and Thunder. Is it a perfect movie? No, definitely not. But I found it to be a decent movie that reinvents characters I didn’t care about before into actually interesting people. But with that said, it still has its fair share of issues, which make the film especially disappointing considering this was my most anticipated Marvel film of 2022 considering how much I loved Ragnarok. Some of these issues are minor, and some that almost take me outta the whole film. Even if I don’t hate it like tons of others (seriously, some people act like this movie killed their firstborn or something), the problems here are kinda biggies. But it’s like I often say, no film is without fixing, and I think if they put in more of the great qualities, this would’ve been basically on par with Ragnarok. So, how does one fix Thor: Love and Thunder? Let’s begin.
Before we begin, there is one thing I wanna clarify: this blog’s purpose is mainly fixing the writing and occasionally the casting of these movies, meaning there’s nothing I can do about the visuals. I’ll agree that the visual effects of the movie look like donkey dick to the point where not even the backgrounds or the CGI characters look good (seriously, Groot looks more like a skinned bar of chocolate than a tree), but I should acknowledge that this is in no way the VFX artists’ faults. Apparently while working on this and several other MCU films, Marvel wasn’t treating them well, working them to the bone in borderline sweatshop conditions and not even giving them a fair pay. So if anything, blame them for the bad effects rather than the artists. But if I had to change something, I’d probably bring back Thor’s heterochromia from Infinity War, because it does kinda look a little weird - how did the synthetic eye go to blue? But aside from that, let’s get started.
One thing I really need to fix up is the comedy. I’ve gone on record to say that the humor here is pretty hit and miss. For example, Thor riding on Stormbreaker like it’s a witch’s broom? Pretty funny. Stormbreaker slowly swooping in like a jealous girlfriend? That’s goddamn hilarious. In fact, pretty much any time Zeus gets a joke, it’s pretty funny. But other times, it kinda leans into the annoying category, and nowhere is that more apparent than with the quantity. While MCU films are normally pretty quip-heavy, but they usually balance it with the serious stuff pretty well. But here, they do very little of the serious stuff because everyone is constantly cracking jokes and getting into various slapsticky shenanigans, and often times they tend to grind the story to a halt just to show the random XD 2005 screaming goats or Korg spouting unfunny quips that wouldn’t feel out of place in a bad Ice Age sequel. The funny thing is all this wasn’t a problem in Ragnarok, they balanced the light and heavy stuff perfectly fine. So my fix is basically doing what Ragnarok did with how they balanced it, and this can be done by cutting it down severely. For example, do we need the joke about a portable speaker? Bye-bye. I’m not saying they need to cut every joke, since humor is a good way to identify with a character, but I am saying that it can be trimmed down a ton and nothing would be missed. As for the remaining jokes, we may need to do a bit of an overhaul. For example, there’s this pretty obnoxious joke about a kid’s name. As it is, it just comes off as annoying and might not be beating the “Thor purposely deadnaming the kid” allegations. What if we change it so Thor accidentally calls him by his former name once? Not only is it not as annoying, but seeing as name changes can take time to get used to, it could work. But this does raise the question; what do we replace it with? Well, join me in the next section.
Another fix I’d make is by raising the stakes of the story. Surprisingly, this is a pretty low-stakes movie, even compared to the other three Thor movies. Even Dark World had the threat of Malekith destroying the Nine Realms. The sad thing is that this should be a more high-stakes story with the inclusion of Gorr the God Butcher, who might I add only butchers one god onscreen. For the rest of the film, he’s just holding kids hostage…oh no. He doesn’t pose as a legitimate threat at all. If anything, the only stakes in the film are in Jane’s plot (which I’ll get to). So here’s a fix I propose, and I’m actually a little confused as to why they didn’t go with this: what if Gorr knew about Omnipotence City? Maybe one of the kids he holds hostage accidentally blurts it out and Gorr heads on over while Thor is being interrogated by Zeus. He rolls up to the temple, literally a cornucopia of gods for him to kill, and gets down to business. Thor and his friends try to stop him in spite of him skewering gods like holy kebabs, Gorr tries to get the axe but they get away. And one other change I’d make to this scene that I’d suggest, even without Gorr in the scene: I think Korg should’ve died here. Granted, I like Korg, he’s a fairly entertaining character in spite of some annoyance in this movie, but after this scene, what does he even add? He doesn’t help out, he doesn’t do anything important, he just sits there being a mask, and the explanation as to how he survived is really stupid. As for Jane’s plot, I like the ticking-clock element with her plot with how much time she takes away from her life before her cancer takes it away. So my only change is maybe at one point, Gorr goes all Hela on Mjolnir and smashes it during the final battle, leaving her with no way to fight, but still she gets up and fights anyway, fighting through the pain. That could be a strong moment and give a great message of not letting pain bring anyone down.
My last fix here is incorporating some of the characters into the plot more. Now, I say some because there are certain cameo roles I get why they had to be cameos, like Selvig, Darcy, even Sif. So if that’s the case, who do I mean? The Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, I know, it’d be a bit crazy having them accompany Thor, since it would overcrowd the film and arguably take time away from him - plus it’d be a little pointless regarding they have their own film series coming up. So here’s my compromise: what about just one of the Guardians joins him? I thought on who the right guy would be for a while, I mean I juggled between Nebula, Drax, even Star-Lord himself. But I think I have the perfect companion here: Rocket. Think about it: he has the past friendship with Thor in check, paving a nice narrative bridge between this and Endgame, but he could also serve as a good help on the mission based on his past treks with the Guardians. He could try talking some sense into Zeus considering his best friend is half-god, he could commander the ship that takes them from place to place, he could even take down Gorr’s forces in that shadow moon they go to in a similar way he helped battle Ego. Not to mention, he could play off the team really well. He could be on board with Valkyrie’s idea to just take on Zeus right then and there, tying into his “shoot now, ask questions later” personality, but he could also show sympathy to Jane, taking Star-Lord’s mother’s death into consideration, encouraging Jane to join the final fight. It might be a little weird to see him there, especially with him being the bona-fide protagonist of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but it’d still be something for these characters to do…which reminds me, what about everyone else? If Rocket’s out dicking around with the gods, what about the other guys? For starters, I’d replace the scene of Thor giving Star-Lord…well, Star-Lord’s ship, with him giving him the ship they use in the third movie as maybe “a favor from some guys on Sakaar”, again paving a narrative bridge between this and Vol. 3. As for the rest, we could replace the final post-credits stinger with one featuring the Guardians, with Rocket bragging about how he helped save a ton of gods. So that way, they don’t just feel like a throwaway cameo.
So, that’s everything covered! How does the film look now? Well…
We open on Gorr being deceived by his god Rapu, his renouncing drawing the Necrosword closer to him, labelling him the God Butcher. Meanwhile, Thor is alerted by Sif about his presence and he disbands from the Guardians to take him on, taking Korg and Rocket with him and giving the Guardians a new ship. They get to New Asgard and meet up with Valkyrie and Jane, now Mighty Thor, and lose the children to Gorr. After discussing a plan on how to defeat Gorr, they decide to head to Omnipotence City before Axl contacts Thor. Thor tells him the plan and it’s off to the city of the gods! While scaring the kids, one of them blurts out to Gorr that Thor’s meeting the other gods, inspiring Gorr to head on down there to deal with him himself. After Thor and Rocket try and fail to convince Zeus, Gorr bursts in and slaughters a ton of gods (including Korg) and Thor and the gang narrowly escape. They reach the Shadow Realm and after a quick battle, Gorr takes Stormbreaker and leaves everyone on Earth to die, particularly Jane, whose cancer is deteriorating her health at a rapid pace. Thor tells Rocket to keep her company, and Rocket convinces her to join the battle, which proves a little fruitless when Gorr destroys Jonathan…wait, I mean Mjolnir. But she still has the strength to fight and they take him down, with Jane dying in Thor’s arms. The ending plays out the same way, with Thor looking after Gorr’s daughter, the kids of New Asgard being trained by Sif and Hercules being sent after Thor, only now we have a new stinger with Rocket bragging to the other Guardians that he saved the gods and they didn’t. And with that, I do declare I think I fixed this here movie.
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