Why is Thor: Ragnarok Much Better than Thor: Love and Thunder?
Thor: Ragnarok was a massive critical and financial success when it was released in November 2017. Five years later in July 2022, Thor: Love and Thunder released and while it made a lot of money, the hype surrounding the film wasn’t as strong. Why is that? What happened in between Ragnarok and Love and Thunder that made audiences love one but be disappointed by the other one?
REASON #1: Ragnarok released in the MCU’s high point: I think this is just a very simple reason as to why there was such a big difference. When Ragnarok came out it was when the MCU was on a critical high point. Every movie they put was successful with critics, audiences, and at the box office. In 2017, Marvel released three films, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and of course Ragnarok, all of the films grossed over $800 million at the box office. People were just excited about the MCU and wanted to see every new adventure and hint that it would lead to Infinity War the following year. The MCU was just red hot when Ragnarok came out. You compare that to the MCU in 2022 when Love and Thunder hit theaters and the MCU wasn’t at a high point. I think it was before the MCU lost a lot of the steam and momentum, but I think 2022 was the start of it. Where you had multiple disappointing movies and tv shows released in 2022. The MCU film that was released previously was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I don’t hate the film but it’s widely viewed as a gigantic disappointment. Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel also released Close to the Love and Thunder’s release. So the excitement for the MCu wasn’t there, there wasn’t an urge to go back and see the movie again because at that point in time, we didn’t know when the next Avengers movie was coming out.
REASON #2: Taika Waititi wrote Love and Thunder, not Ragnarok: This might be the ultimate reason in my mind as to why Love and Thunder didn’t work. Taika Waititi was basically a director for hire for Ragnarok. He had a fun creative vision for Thor and brought a bunch of fun energy to that film. The writers of Thor: The Dark World and many other MCU films wrote the script. What happened in between Ragnarok and Love and Thunder? Taika wins an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, a film he also directed and was a best picture nominee for the 2020 Oscars. Marvel probably goes “ok Taika, you’ve proven you’re a top level screenwriter now go and write Love and Thunder.” And I think that’s the problem, they let Taika do whatever he wanted with that film and didn’t constrain him. I get the temptation to let an Oscar winning screenwriter do whatever he wants, but when you see the film and see all of the wild things he’s doing, Marvel should’ve been like “ok Taika reel some of this in”. We don’t need to see screaming goats screaming every 5 seconds, a love triangle between Thor and his weapons, or Thor doing Jean Claude Van-Damme split kicks. But because Taika is a weird and crazy guy, he put all of these wacky ideas into making Love and Thunder, and NOBODY told him no.
REASON #3: Taika’s style was cranked up to 11: This sort of goes back to what I just said, but Taika went 110% his style for this movie. While Ragnarok is largely praised and well regarded there are a handful of people that don’t like the film and it’s too much for them. While I disagree with that statement, I can understand the criticism. It’s a film that’s very vibrant and in your face and that can be too much for some people. If you thought that Ragnarok was too much and too annoying then you’re not going to like Love and Thunder at all. The reason for that is Taika took everything that worked about Ragnarok and delivered more of it. But just because there’s more of it doesn’t make it better. I think that for so many people, Love and Thunder was too much. It diminishes what made Ragnarok work so well and be the fresh air for the MCU and Thor franchise. Like I said earlier, somebody from Marvel needed to tell Taika no and scale back on some of his ideas.
REASON #4: Disappointing Main Villain: This was something very exciting for the Thor franchise and for Love and Thunder in general, Oscar winning actor Christian Bale signed on to do this film. Christian Bale had spent the last several years basically since The Dark Knight Rises doing prestige dramas trying to get another Oscar. He signed on to do Love and Thunder and a lot of great, very exciting. His name carries an enormous amount of weight to comic book fans. He’s the star of what is regarded as one of the best comic book movies of all time, The Dark Knight. When he signed on us comic book movie fans got very excited because Batman was joining the MCU. When you watch the film, they completely wasted all of his talents. Bale is a world class actor, he did nothing wrong in the film. The problem is they took this serious villain that’s meant to be scary and intimidating and put him in the goofiest film in the MCU. If they put Gorr in a film that’s similar in tone to the first two Thor films, it would’ve worked much better. Beyond that, his name is Gorr the God Butcher and we don’t see him butcher any gods. There’s a whole subplot in the film where they’re on a planet filled with gods and he’s not there at all. So leaving the film, you feel this tremendous amount of disappointment because Taika Waititi totally wasted Batman, arguably the best Batman in his very goofy and cartoonish comic book movie. You contrast this with Ragnarok, where he recruited another Oscar winning talent with Cate Blanchett and the performance works so much better. She’s a powerful threat but she has a comedic vibe to her that fits the film she’s in. Hela is a much better villain then Gorr is and it’s not even close.
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