There are a few good things worth singling out in the otherwise not-very-good thing that is "Thor: Love and Thunder." First up are two large screaming goats, whose digitally amplified screeches are a comic gift that rarely stops giving. Christian Bale delivers a genuinely skin-crawling turn as a zombified villain named Gorr the God Butcher, who so closely resembles both Voldemort and "The Nun" that Warner Bros. might want to sue. And then there's the lovely, loony sight of Russell Crowe, gamely chasseing in a golden breastplate and white tutu as the Greek god Zeus. Are you not entertained?
Still, the best thing about the movie, as far as I can tell, is its running time. To the 60-plus-hours of theatrical content that have so far rolled off the Disney/Marvel assembly line, this fourth Thor-centric caper adds a mostly painless if largely pointless 120 minutes. And that happily includes the closing credits, which fans will of course sit through in their entirety, dutifully enduring the names of visual-effects artists and crane operators in exchange for a glimpse of future Marvel superheroics. Minding the usual anti-spoiler entreaties, I can disclose that at the very end — right after [redacted] arrives at [redacted] and speaks to [redacted] — a title card pops up with some reassuring if not exactly surprising news: "THOR WILL RETURN."
Thank God (or gods). But here arises some confusion. By "Thor," I'm pretty sure the movie means the majestically mulleted Norse deity Thor Odinson, played as ever by Chris Hemsworth with such genial charm that even his biceps seem to be smiling at you. But as you've doubtless heard, "Love and Thunder" features another aspirant to the Thor mantle. That would be Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), leading American astrophysicist and Thor's mortal soulmate from "Thor" (2011) and "Thor: The Dark World" (2013). In this movie, as in the Jason Aaron-penned comic-book volumes from which it draws inspiration, Jane has stage IV cancer — a near-certain death sentence that also brings about her unexpected transformation into her own blond-tipped, red-caped superhero, known as the Mighty Thor.
