The past few years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been a time of great invention, with the franchise’s “Phase Four” of movies and Disney+ shows finding new ways to reinvent the wheel of how to adapt Marvel Comics. In and amongst the emotional character studies and the canon-shattering multiversal adventures, the franchise has been at its best when it’s gotten weirder, more character-driven, and more comic-accurate — all things that Thor: Love and Thunder proves to be in spades. While decidedly smaller-scale compared to some of the MCU’s more recent cinematic entries, Love and Thunder has had a unique set of expectations surrounding it, both as the first “fourquel” within the overall franchise, and the long-awaited follow-up to Taika Waititi’s inventive and surprising work on 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. Love and Thunder wholeheartedly works to subvert those expectations at essentially every single turn, and it becomes a more compelling, if slightly more disheveled, film because of it. At its best, Thor: Love and Thunder is unabashedly big-hearted and gleefully outrageous – even if it occasionally gets crushed by the execution of its own ambitions.
