Marvel Studios

I really enjoyed Ragnarok, and thought it was a great way to lampshade the inherent silliness of an ancient Norse god banging around Earth. That's something the Dark World struggled with, taking itself too seriously. Plus it was as close to a Planet Hulk movie as we're likely to get, what with the complicated distribution rights of the Hulk property. It made Thor simultaneously more badass and more mortal. And Jeff Goldblum is always a treat.

I know about the Shuri actor, and I try not to let their personal politics influence how I feel about their work. Obviously, the situation with Jonathan Majors is extremely different, but I try to compartmentalize what the movie did with him, and recognize that he wasn't the reason Quantumania struggled. Shuri, on the other hand, was not good in Wakanda Forever. She never felt like more than an actress reciting lines. It didn't help that her story was predictable and her character 1-dimensional. There were simply too many better actresses standing next to her in each scene. Her mother the defiant queen projecting power, Okoye the dauntless warrior stripped of rank, Nakia the isolated widow who still has the skills, Riri taking over as the enthusiastic teen nerdy girl, each of them more badass, it all just crowded out Shuri as a character.

Imagine Shuri wasn't in the movie. What's different? Okoye finds Riri, Nakia finds Atlantis, and one of those three could have fought Namor. It would have been a different movie, but not by much.

I don't think the wacky was the probable, nor was the juxtaposition of the incredible darkness of the plot against that wackiness. Any of those elements could work and well -- it's honestly Waititi's specialty (that's exactly what made Jojo Rabbit and Hunt for the Wilderpeople so great -- that they were attacking deeply, deeply dark themes under a safe and protective umbrella of silliness).

What made Love and Thunder fail is just that it wasn't made very well. The writing was kind of poor and it didn't tie into much of a greater story. You can never save a movie from bad writing and it just had vaguely bad writing. Always feels like the writing is the first cost these projects try and trim when it should be the only one they never do.

And worse, 2 of the great actors of my lifetime were totally squandered.

In my opinion, the audience was never convinced that Portman's character was actually suffering and addicted to the hammer, which made the sacrifice of what she was doing totally uncompelling. She's capable of playing that role, but instead they turned who should've been the hero into a total sidekick.

I was also entirely unconvinced that Bale's character was... wrong. They literally had to make the plot about him gathering a bunch of children to murder in order to convince us to dislike him. His backstory was so convincing that his revenge felt like a quest to root for. He performed the character well enough to make you sympathize with him, yet they just had him kick a puppy to make his heel turn. Weak.