Thor: Love and Thunder co-written and directed by Taika Waititi
Thor (Christ Hemsworth) realizes there's a certain emptiness in his life...he has no one to love. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) gives Thor some advise as Thor leaves the Guardians of the Galaxy to set out on his own. A new threat arises, Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), a disgruntled believer whose personal god failed to have any sympathy for Gorr or his daughter who died on the way to get help from that god. Gorr winds up with the Necrosword which he uses to kill his god. Then he travels through the Shadow Realm from world to world, killing their local gods. When he comes to Earth, he kidnaps the children of New Asgard, hoping to draw Thor into the Shadow Realm for a death match. Thor enlists Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (voiced by Taika Waititi), and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who is now wielding a restored Mjolnir and going by the moniker "The Mighty Thor." Jane has stage 4 cancer. Being in the Thor-state keeps her healthy and active. In the long term, it's letting the cancer get worse. Thor is concerned for her even though they broke up a while back. They team up for the children, with a stop to recruit other gods like Zeus (Russell Crowe).
The story is okay and the visuals are amazing but the overall film has a lot of flaws. Half the time Korg is funny, half the time I find him annoying, which is too high a percentage for a main character. Korg does a lot of narrating during the film, violating the "show don't tell" rule by telling as the filmmakers are showing. More annoying (but happily minor characters) are the shrieking goats Thor is given when he haphazardly saves a planet. The shrieks are clearly meant to be funny but the joke wears quickly. Also annoying (but a minor point) is Russell Crowe's accent--is he trying for a Greek accent? Is he drawing on the skills he used in Robin Hood? Crowe seems to be just taking the paycheck. Hemsworth and Portman still only have minimal chemistry together. It's a lot easier to see why they broke up than why they would get back together. Portman gives the best performance in the film, vacillating between the cancer-striken Jane and the fun-loving Mighty Thor. Bale also does a good job but his character is underwritten. And there's the dopey pseudo-feminism of calling Valkyrie "King" of New Asgard and Jane turning into Thor just by wielding the hammer (why didn't that happen when Captain America held the hammer? Or Hela?).
Not recommended--we're back in Thor: The Dark World territory.
I Am Groot co-written and directed by Kristen Lepore
Channeling the magic of Pixar shorts, this series of five short animated episodes shows various adventures had by Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Deisel). They are charming little vignettes, like Groot learning to walk or Groot discover a tiny civilization in a footprint. He also fights a gelatinous clone of himself, mostly through a dance-off. These episodes pack a lot of fun in two minutes (the end credits for each one is longer than the content) and the whole series can be "binged" in less than fifteen minutes.
Highly recommended for some fun.
She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law created for television by Jessica Gao
Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) is out for a ride with her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) when they are run off the road by a space ship. In the accident, they both receive injuries and she gets some of his blood in her wound. She then gets the Hulk powers. Bruce takes her to a secluded tropical location where he works with her to control the powers and see their extent. She returns to her regular life as a lawyer in Los Angeles, though her life is no longer regular at all. She's hired by a top-level law firm that wants to open a super-human law division with She-Hulk as the main attorney. Jennifer would rather just be Jennifer, but the pay and prestige are too tempting. She also tries to maintain a regular life, working on her dating/social life and dealing with her family who are a lot more blue collar than she is.
The show is mis-titled. It should be called "The Comic Mis-Adventures of She-Hulk." Jennifer has a hard time dealing with how other people (her family, her colleagues, random people on the street and on the internet) deal with her. Some people are only interested in her She-Hulk persona but Jennifer still has full control of her intellect and actions. She's the same person, just in a large, muscled, green body. The show runs through a few legal situations (e.g., she represents Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) who is being paroled from his crimes as The Abomination) but a lot of the episodes are more like standard sitcom fodder. She goes to a wedding; she sets up a dating profile and has to go through a string of losers; she needs to find a tailor who can make clothes for both of her body types. The episodes are also mostly inconsequential and played for laughs. She breaks the fourth wall regularly (which the character did in the comic), again for comic effect. She gets into silly situations but by the end of every episode, her situation resets. The show is also stuffed with cameos of other characters, like Hulk, Abomination, Wong (Benedict Wong), and Daredevil (Charlie Cox). Her main villain, Titania (Jameela Jamil), has super-strength but mostly causes annoyance as an "influencer," using public opinion, the internet, and cheap marketing to cause Jennifer problems.
Mildly recommended--the show is very entertaining but also very slight.
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