Thor: Love and Thunder sells out its characters for jokes
There are two very funny things about Taika Waititi’s Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Thor: Love and Thunder. The first is intentional, the second less so.
First are the goats. Early in the film, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets a pair of giant mythical goats, Toothgrinder and Toothgnasher. The goats are horrible: aggressive, messy, and feral. Like real goats, they can scream an awful lot like humans. They do this all the time throughout the movie, and it’s meant to be hilarious. If you’re like me, you will laugh every time they shriek. If you are not like me, then I am sorry.
The unintentionally funny thing is the villain, Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). As the movie’s antagonist, Gorr is introduced in the movie’s opening sequence and given a clear motivation: He wants to kill all gods. That desire attracts the attention of the Necrosword (lol), a magical black blade that gives him all sorts of powers, including letting him manipulate shadows and turn them into monsters. Gorr — loosely inspired by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic’s Thor comics — isn’t meant to be funny. In fact, he’s fairly frightening, often drenched in shadow and made to appear like the Grim Reaper. Up close, Bale relishes the opportunity to play a boogeyman, grinning and terrorizing children with ease and glee. It feels like the notoriously committed actor may have approached the role without his signature intensity, and it’s all the better for it.
The funniest thing about him, however, is that Thor: Love and Thunder seems quite committed to the idea that Gorr’s “kill the gods” quest is somehow misguided. The script takes it for granted that Gorr’s goals are evil, so much so that it never pauses to consider the ways that just about every character in
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