Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

$250 million reported budget, and the biggest laugh in Thor: Love and Thunder still belongs to two screaming goats. That’s the whole problem in one sentence. Taika Waititi took everything people loved about Ragnarok and cranked the volume until the speakers rattle. Every serious moment gets a joke stapled to it. Christian Bale shows up as Gorr the God Butcher and is legit unsettling, pale and quiet and grieving, like he wandered in from a much better movie. Then the next scene cuts to Thor’s jealous axe. Natalie Portman’s return as Mighty Thor should hit like a thunderclap, but her story gets about as much room as a cameo. Russell Crowe’s Zeus is doing an accent from a country nobody has found on a map. It still made $760.9 million worldwide. A 3.9 because Bale and Portman deserved a real movie and got a two-hour sketch show instead. $54.07 says you mute the goats on a rewatch and miss them within a minute.

What works: Christian Bale’s Gorr is genuinely eerie, and his black-and-white shadow realm fight is the one sequence with real style.

What doesn’t: Nonstop jokes flatten every emotional beat, and Jane’s comeback story gets rushed when it should carry the whole movie.

Who it’s for: Fans who’d watch Hemsworth do bits for two hours straight and don’t need the story to hold together.