I actually disagree. I thought L&T was the superior film.
Taika Waititi managed to tell a decent story, grow his characters, and also took a few hundred million dollars of Disney’s money to make a movie telling the executive suite at Mouse House that they’re assholes and to fuck off.
Not convinced? Let’s take a look at what happened in the movie.
Thor has until this point been an overgrown adolescent. It’s easy to believe in fate and destiny when you’re born a super powerful being even among gods, live in privilege your entire life, and spend much of your thousands of early years assuming you’ll become king.
In the space of like 10 minutes in a multi thousand year lifespan, Thor lost everything.
Of course he’s going to have trouble processing it and of course that’s going to look awkward.
He started off the movie “listening” for the universe to tell him something because he hasn’t figured out that things don’t work that way. He also surrounded himself with people who weren’t his peers and couldn’t compete with him on any level and made them beg for his help.
His first milestone in the film was realizing that approach wasn’t working after making a mistake, and then literally looking for something to do as he tried to take control of his life.
He finds out there’s a villain killing Gods. He’s not afraid for his own sake, but he sees the pain and destruction Gorr is causing and wants to stop it.
Then he finds Jane. Jane has his powers and is also basically acting like an adolescent. She’s using the power to escape from a reality in which she’s not in control and there’s a problem she can’t solve. She’s isolated herself and refuses to ask for help.
She’s also not that great at using the power. She’s inexperienced in galactic events and obviously out of her depth which is unusual for someone like her. She is formidable but far less effective than “real” Thor, Mjolnir powered Captain America, or even Valkyrie.
Then Thor does something we’ve never seen him or most of the other heroes do even once in the MCU. He decides he needs to ask for help from other Gods. He’s not looking for a mcguffin or a quick fix, he wants help doing the work to solve a problem.
We then get a scene showing that despite having all the power in the universe and being so wealthy they literally bleed gold, the Gods are all basically selfish and scared overgrown teenagers who can’t think past themselves. They don’t even help each other and focus on short term pleasure only.
This is a) a pretty subversive message to put in a Disney movie of all things at a time when wealth and power inequality in the real world are the highest they’ve been in 100 years, and b) A look at what Thor would have likely been if Odin hadn’t decided to teach him a lesson in the first Thor film. I was looking to find Atlas in that scene to see if he’d literally shrug.
Thor rejects the selfish ways of his former idol and decides he’s going to do it himself despite being not at all sure that he can. Why? The kids, the future of his people are more than enough reason.
The three of them get their asses kicked. Thor is the only one not incapacitated by the fight but he’s intellectually outmaneuvered. Gorr also points out in conversation that they can all agree that the Gods are selfish useless assholes, but he doesn’t see or care that simply killing Gods causes a whole new set of problems and even more violence and death. The necro sword focuses his anger and resentment so he can’t see past his own pain. It’s like an anti-Mjolnir which masks Jane’s pain.
Then we have a final showdown. He’s finally acting like Odin with an enchantment, and showing growth in his thought process and the difference between him and the other Gods. Not only is he again seeking help, it never occurred to him before that he could share his power with others.
Jane shows up. He reluctantly accepts her help despite them both knowing the stakes. In the process she decides to face her problems and finds/remembers the person she is, resulting in her having greater conviction and focus than at any point previously and finally being effective enough to really help Thor and destroy the sword with him.
The villain’s plan worked, but without the sword’s corrupting influence they appeal to his empathy and humanity. Thor agrees to help his daughter after he revived her and is now set up to grow yet again as a father in a subsequent film.
Thor overcame a real problem and grew a lot as a character. Jane accepted her problem and grew as well. They both learned to open up emotionally despite the risk of hurt and disappointment.
The message of this film is not that power is inherently evil and should be feared, but that it is necessary and should be used responsibly for the good of all, and that selfishness and abdication of responsibility leads to misery and disaster no matter how rich and powerful you are. That sets it apart from most superhero movies, and most Western storytelling in general which typically paints the powerful as evil that can only be defeated by unwilling, unlikely, underdog heroes who often win via luck or accident vs a plan or their own skill.
The villain and heroes had the same problem with the Gods’ selfishness, but the Heroes thought beyond themselves where the villain couldn’t see past his own pain and anger. Again, heady stuff for a Disney film.
We’re left with the kids being trained to take care of themselves. I feel like there might have been an arc for Valkyrie that got cut where she started a dissatisfied bureaucrat who was becoming jaded and uncaring like other gods but ended remembering that her job was to be the steward of Asgardian culture and prepare the next generation to carry on their society. There’s just enough of if left in the final cut along with some trailer footage to imply that, but as it was she didn’t have much to do.
In terms of visuals, I thought the black and white sequence was pretty amazing to watch, and the God world was also interesting and I wish we could have seen more of it.
This film directly criticizes that fact both in terms of portraying New Asgard as a literal Disneyland and the aforementioned God sequence. If the Valkyrie scenes I speculated about were indeed cut I wonder if they might have been even more directly critical of consumerism, the “feed the beast” nature of Wall Street demanded balance sheet growth, and Disney specifically.
I think Taika Waititi aimed for the moon on this and while he didn’t make a perfect film he made a good one, and got some licks in on the real problem here which is in the C suite, not the creative side.
Just my two cents.
