The reviews for Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder are here, and the latest Taika Waititi film is a wild ride. Our Kaila Hale-Stern gave it 4 out of 5 screaming goats. So, it does shock me to see that the movie is currently pulling in less than 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. And yes, I am aware that Rotten Tomatoes is not the end-all-be-all verdict on a movie, but it still is shocking given how much I know that I enjoyed this movie. But in true and hilarious fashion, the film is hanging around a very … apt score.
At the 100-review mark, the rating was at a 69%. It’s changed a bit since then but keeps bouncing back and forth. So, we’re going with 69% for the sake of it being 69. Noice. If you know anything about Taika Waititi, the fact that one of his movies has a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes just makes you think that, within moments, he’s going to tweet “noice” or an eggplant emoji out into the world.
The rating will continue to probably change as reviews come in and will hopefully go up, but even with the fact that 69% is hilarious, there is a question as to why this movie in particular is getting a “noice” score instead of a “nice” one. The first Thor movie ended up with a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even Thor: The Dark World, generally regarded as one of the MCU’s biggest missteps, landed at 66%. And then, of course, there’s Waititi’s own Thor: Ragnarok at 93%—one of the highest rated movies in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, with good reason.
Thor: Love and Thunder rules though
I couldn’t tell you why this one has audiences divided. Maybe because it’s less of a straight-up comedy in the way that Thor: Ragnarok and Waititi’s other work like What We Do in the Shadows can be, but Love and Thunder has an emotional punch more in line with his work like Jojo Rabbit and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s emotional, a lot to unpack, and still manages to be a lot of fun when it needs to and sets up quite the future for Thor in the long run of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s different, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That’s what makes the MCU so unique. It being so vast in how it tells stories helps for each of our favorite characters to have a specific sort of brand for their films. Thor finally found his footing with Ragnarok, and I think that Love and Thunder continues it beautifully.
It has ushered in a bit of the “comic book movies are coming to an end” convo online, which feels … premature and also completely unfounded because the MCU has continued to have hits after Avengers: Endgame, and less than 200 people not giving Thor: Love and Thunder a unequivocal A+ doesn’t mean the end of the idea of comic book movies.
What this means, though, is that it might be yet another instance where the audience score isn’t in line with the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas they largely agreed on Ragnarok, because I don’t personally see this movie getting a bad audience score. It’s fun and a great time at the movies, and that’s a whole different issue with a place like Rotten Tomatoes and how it is used as a metric.
(featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
