Why Thor Love and Thunder is Horribly Written - A Scene Comparison

So it’s no secret that I consider Thor Love and Thunder to be a fucking disastrous addition to an already struggling MCU, and a pretty severe blight on what was otherwise a solid filmography for Taika Waititi. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it actually offers a pretty interesting opportunity to compare two very similar scenes from the same director, so we can better understand why one movie worked and the other failed miserably.

To do this, we’re first going to look at the Theatre scene from Thor Ragnarok. Now, I definitely have my issues with this movie, but one thing I'll give it credit for is that its generally well written from a mechanical point of view, and this scene is a great example. To give it some context, Thor returns to Asgard in the middle of a crisis to find what appears to be his father Odin relaxing and watching a cheesy play about his two sons. Strange indeed, and very out of character for a man like Odin.

Now, on the face of it, this scene may appear to be just another goofy comedy skit in a film that’s practically bursting at the seams with them, but look a little closer and you begin to realise that its actually a pretty smart piece of writing that’s neatly integrated into the larger story, helps to drive the plot forward and even provide some valuable insight into some of the characters involved. Oh yeah, and it also manages to be pretty funny without outstaying its welcome.

Now, that last part is also the most obvious, so let’s get it out of the way first. On the surface level of just making the audience laugh, it works because its funny to see actors like Matt Damon playing Loki, and Chris Hemsworth’s own brother Luke playing Thor, and both of them hamming it up to the max as comically bad theatre actors.

They’re recreating a scene that’ll be instantly familiar to anyone who watched Thor 2, where Loki apparently sacrifices his life to save Thor, but the more it goes on, the more it becomes clear that this is definitely not an accurate retelling of what happened. Its very clearly slanted in a specific direction, doing everything possible to portray Loki as the unsung hero and Thor as the dumb, ungrateful brother who realizes too late what he’s about to lose. Its over the top, self-serving and melodramatic, so why would Odin of all people indulge something like this? Well, it doesn’t take long for the truth to be revealed when Odin is unmasked as Loki himself in disguise.

Suddenly it all makes sense, and it perfectly lines up with Loki’s self-absorbed, narcissistic personality. Like any good narcissist, he seems himself as the flawless, tragically misunderstood hero of his own story, and naturally he wants everyone else to see him the same way. He craves praise and adoration. Commissioning a grandiose, ego-stoking play to basically rewrite history for his own benefit, is absolutely in line with his character. He’s not interested in making tough decisions, balancing the conflicting needs of his subjects, or the difficult and often mundane task of being a leader – he’s all about glorifying himself and massaging his own ego.

It tells us a lot about Loki as a character, not just in how he sees himself, but also how he views previous events and the world around him. This also serves as setup for the eventual payoff at the end when Loki chooses to set aside his own personal ambition in order to do the right thing and help his brother. And even better, when he gets unmasked for his true identity, it also serves to move the plot forward by reuniting both brothers with their father Odin, who’s been abandoned on earth. It accomplishes four different things all at the same time:

1. Providing an entertaining scene that makes the audience laugh.

2. Giving an important insight into a major character.

3. Setting up a character arc that will eventually be paid off at the climax of the story.

4. Advancing the story towards the next major plot event.

And it manages to do all four of these things without ever feeling forced, contrived or clunky. Each component of the scene fits logically into the others, complementing them rather than conflicting with them, so that most people aren’t even aware of what’s actually happening. That’s pretty fucking impressive from a writing point of view, and it underscores how much thought and careful planning actually went into Ragnarok.

So far, so good.

Now let’s take a look at the same scene from Love and Thunder. Again, it’s a play being put on by the same actors, this time in New Asgard on Earth, playing mostly to an audience of human tourists this time. In this scene, it covers one of the key moments in Ragnarok when Odin has one final conversation with his sons before peacefully passing on, and in turn releasing Hella back into the real world.

On the surface it's the same hammy acting and cheesy, low budget special effects, but the difference here is in what the scene actually accomplishes. All that clever mechanical stuff going on behind the scenes. Whereas the previous play was an insight into the mind and motivations of the man behind it, this time it serves… no purpose at all. This play wasn’t commissioned by anyone, it’s just the actors putting on a show for the tourists on their own initiative, so straight away it loses one major writing objective. But what about the others?

Well, it doesn’t move the plot forward, that’s for sure. Nor does it set up any kind of meaningful payoff later, apart from a very weak appearance from the two actors after the attack on New Asgard, asking permission to turn the event into a new play. Literally minutes after the town has been attacked and all of the Asgardian children abducted, because that’s totally what a sensible functioning adult would think to do.

Anyway, getting back on track. The theatre scene in Ragnarok led directly to Loki being unmasked as a fake Odin, and Thor forcing him into taking him to the real Odin. In his case however, there are no direct consequences to the play. It’s just one of those “setting the scene” kind of moments designed to give us a sense of what New Asgard is like.

But Drinker, isn’t that a worthy goal by itself, I hear you say? Well, not when it takes this fucking long to accomplish. Giving the audience a flavour of a new location is a perfectly good thing to do, but it’s the kind of thing that’s usually achieved with a quick montage of different events. Little snapshots that give a general idea of the kind of shit that happens in a certain place, without eating up too much screen time.

Unfortunately, this scene goes on for quite some time. Four minutes and twenty seconds to be exact, and fuck me do you feel every single moment of that. Why? Because its not fucking funny this time around. Its not a subtle retelling of previous events with an obvious agenda at work, its literally just a direct retelling of Ragnarok. In fact, I could argue that making a cheesy joke out of one of the few genuinely poignant and emotional scenes in Ragnarok was probably a bad idea anyway, but that’s a discussion for another day.

After barely 30 seconds, I found myself getting bored and just wishing the scene would end so we could move onto something more interesting. And Jesus, the final nail in the coffin came when Melissa McCarthy waddled into the scene as Hella, and immediately launched into loud, obnoxious, screechy voice mode, which is basically the only thing she’s capable of doing as an actor. Seriously, ever since Ghostbusters I’ve been on the lookout for any evidence that this fucking idiot was ever actually funny, and I’ve yet to find anything.

I mean, I guess its supposed to funny that Kate Blanchett, one of the most famously beautiful actresses in the world, is now being portrayed by Melissa McCarthy, who isn’t exactly known for her looks. But if so, that’s pretty fucking thin.

Then when the scene finally ends, the actors take a bow and leave the stage. And that’s it – it’s like the whole thing never even happened.

So not only does this scene fail to give us any insight into any of the characters involved, set up any payoffs for later in the story, or move the plot forward in any way, but it even fails in its most basic task of making the audience laugh. It’s an absolutely pointless waste of four minutes that could easily be cut from the movie, while sacrificing nothing at all.

And it got me to wondering, how could one film be so smart and the other so fucking dumb, so I did a little background research into how Love and Thunder actually got put together, and the results were interesting to say the least. As best I can understand it, Taika Waititi’s approach with this film was to shoot basically every idea that popped into his head, no matter how good or bad, and then try to craft it all into a half decent movie at the end. That’s why the original cut of this film was apparently 4.5 hours long, and was described by Chris Hemsworth as basically unwatchable, sacrificing plot, character, logic and everything else for the sake of humour.

Now, we all know that every film goes through an editing process to distill the raw footage down into a finished product, and that’s just fine. Some ideas sound great on the script page but just don’t quite come together on screen. Sometimes scenes have to be trimmed down for pacing reasons, or cut entirely because of runtime pressure. Most movies can expect to lose a good 20 or 30 minutes from the rough cut to the finished version, but over two hours of extra footage? Jesus, imagine how many tens of millions of dollars must have been wasted, filming literally hours of scenes that’ll never see the light of day.

Now don’t get me wrong, Waititi’s got a reputation as an “actor’s director” that people enjoy working with. Apparently the atmosphere on set was very positive, everyone had a great time making this film, and why wouldn’t they? They were basically getting paid millions of dollars to dick around for several months, filming whatever random crap they felt like making.

The impression I get is basically a guy out to have a bit of fun, confident in his own abilities, confident that the audience would love whatever he produced, and with very few people looking over his shoulder after the success of Ragnarok. And I think that’s the real problem here – once you start getting complacent and stop pushing yourself to be better, you lose the very thing that got you on top in the first place.

Love and Thunder, and specifically the scenes we’ve compared here, are a perfect example of what happens when you fall victim to arrogance and complacency, lazily recycling the same ideas that worked previously but without the same intelligence and creative drive behind them. And it should really serve as a lesson to most aspiring filmmakers about how NOT to put a movie together.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today. Go away now.