Thor: Love and Thunder | July 8, 2022 | Directed by Oscar Winner Taika Waititi | Ninth most profitable movie of 2022

[SpiderByte]

3 hours ago, John Marston said:

Also don’t understand why people are melting down when people rightfully point  out that many recent Marvel films I’ve gotten an average at best reception 

Are you only counting from Eternals onward because even from that it's 50/50. Shang-Chi and Black Widow were very well received.

[Firepower]

3 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

Idk what I'm allowed to say at this point but people wanted Marvel to give directors more freedom and guess what, they clearly did here.

Marvel gives freedom to certain extent only if director wants to make a colorful comedy.

[THUNDER BIRD]

5 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

Idk what I'm allowed to say at this point but people wanted Marvel to give directors more freedom and guess what, they clearly did here.

No, Kevin Feige shouldn't give directors full freedom. 

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by THUNDER BIRD

[Driver]

Just rewatched Multiverse of Madness for the first time. I still like it, but that script is what holds it back. That being said, Raimi's fingerprints are all over the movie, in a good way. Any time his style ramps up, the movie gets better. Same goes for Eternals, Zhao's directing, her relative lack of use of green screen, and the cast (sans Chan, she's a terrible lead) really elevate it above her writing. So there's been an interesting creative tension through some of phase 4, and I think that tension is rubbing people the wrong way. 

 

The thing is, it seems Love & Thunder suffers in both areas. 

Edited July 8, 2022 by Driver

[TheDude391]

Feige giving too much control? The problem is that he isn’t doing that. Eternals and Strange 2 shine when the director is doing their thing and totally slumps when it’s doing the typical marvel stuff. That inconsistency is just getting more apparent now.

[Rebeccas]

1 hour ago, TheDude391 said:

Feige giving too much control? The problem is that he isn’t doing that. Eternals and Strange 2 shine when the director is doing their thing and totally slumps when it’s doing the typical marvel stuff. That inconsistency is just getting more apparent now.

Eternals and Thor are both writer/director projects from Zhao and Waititi so I think what they struggled with was mixing their personal style with the plot obligations of a big ass superhero movie. Eternals just got extremely boring when it had to deal with the plot and Thor straight up doesn’t care about the plot/just goes through the absolute bare bones of a structure in favor of improv. 
 

DS2 had a committee script which I think makes it a bit more watchable and coherent, it’s just the horror elements were probably too campy for audiences. 
 

Anyways maybe this is a sign Marvel should step away from Searchlight’s Oscar winning darlings. Lol 

[WittyUsername]

The parts of Multiverse of Madness where Raimi’s influences shine through are the best parts of the film. If anything, the movie likely would’ve been pretty dull if Raimi wasn’t allowed to go weird.

[Mulder]

The issue isn't creative freedom, it's either only giving it for the visuals alone (MoM's script was a studio rush job that used Michael Waldron as a conduit and it shows) or giving it to the wrong people.

[Gopher]

If I'm at Marvel I'm paying Marcus & McFeely whatever they want to be the official or unofficial script doctors for Phases 4 and 5, the same way almost every script from Thor 1 through to Winter Soldier had Joss Whedon's fingerprints all over it.

 

Production issues and how hands-on producers are or aren't with a movie is gonna be subject to 100 different things. Yet collectively the scripts themselves are suffering the most right now. And without speaking with any specificity, I believe this has become a broad concern at Marvel Studios...

Edited July 8, 2022 by Gopher

[belblazer]

Down to 58 on Metacritic and 6.1 user score.

 

68% on RT (down to 55% on Top Critics). And down on both verified audience with 84% and all audience with 76%.

[Valonqar]

1 hour ago, Rebeccas said:

Eternals and Thor are both writer/director projects from Zhao and Waititi so I think what they struggled with was mixing their personal style with the plot obligations of a big ass superhero movie. Eternals just got extremely boring when it had to deal with the plot and Thor straight up doesn’t care about the plot/just goes through the absolute bare bones of a structure in favor of improv. 
 

DS2 had a committee script which I think makes it a bit more watchable and coherent, it’s just the horror elements were probably too campy for audiences. 
 

Anyways maybe this is a sign Marvel should step away from Searchlight’s Oscar winning darlings. Lol 

 

I'd say that Zhao and Waititi are different situations, though. Zhao's movie was super disconnected from MCU so much so they had to explain in previews why they didn't intefere with Thanos. And no one bought it. It simply felt stupid and superflous like "do we really need these useless characters?". So that worked against her movie - no investment of any kind - and critics and audience rejected it. L&T is not rejected. It divided critics but it opened big so even if it ends up with shaky legs it won't be anywhere near rejected. 

 

It happened that projects headlined by famous directors - Zhao, Waititi, Raimi - didn't pan out as hoped critically, while projects by not so known - Creton, Watts (who?) - exceeded expectations. Whether it's down to "studio can't reign in name directors" or pure coincidence is something we cna only speculate about but not know for sure.

[dudalb]

If we are into rumors de jour about the MCU, a old one is resurfacing; Feige is very high on giving J. Michael Straczynski

the X Men franchise and is willing to wait.

This has surfaced before; anybody who has seen Babylon 5 will understand why Feige thinks JMS is such a great fir for the X Men...the whole Telepath storyline......but JMS seems totally commited to the reboot of B5 and unless Warners pulls the plug on that I think it might just too long a wait.

[Rebeccas]

59 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

 

I'd say that Zhao and Waititi are different situations, though. Zhao's movie was super disconnected from MCU so much so they had to explain in previews why they didn't intefere with Thanos. And no one bought it. It simply felt stupid and superflous like "do we really need these useless characters?". So that worked against her movie - no investment of any kind - and critics and audience rejected it. L&T is not rejected. It divided critics but it opened big so even if it ends up with shaky legs it won't be anywhere near rejected. 

 

It happened that projects headlined by famous directors - Zhao, Waititi, Raimi - didn't pan out as hoped critically, while projects by not so known - Creton, Watts (who?) - exceeded expectations. Whether it's down to "studio can't reign in name directors" or pure coincidence is something we cna only speculate about but not know for sure.

Shang Chi and NWH stick the closest to Marvel formula. Possibly the directors's styles are just more compatible with that formula or they were just mostly Feige's ideas, who knows. But it does looks bad for Phase 4 that what seemed to work so well for them in Phase 3 (going with more "out there" director choices) has suddenly fallen flat. 

[jedijake]

Seems nothing is really stifling OW's of MCU films. Legs? Maybe, depending on reception overall. Those who are not in immediate need to see it in the first couple of weekends are just as well happy to wait for streaming. Even high RT scores wouldn't stop that. NWH was obviously Sony so it played by a different tune.

[ThomasNicole]

So, that's a weird one. 

 

I thought the first half (even a bit more actually) was very meh, i literally didn't felt a thing, good or bad. Then suddenly the final 30-40 minutes is kinda great. 

 

The bad parts lacks plot. Ragnarok have a weird humor but that's it, it never interfere on the plot or try to be more than just jokes, here i think the humor is straight up coming as a satire, way closer to Jojo Rabbit humor.

 

On Jojo Rabbit it made sense, being a satire is a pivotal part of the plot and meaning of the movie which is: nazi ideology is straight up ridiculous and must be treated this way. Here it doesn't make sense, the movie never fully can be a satire so what's the point if it won't build anything from it?

 

While watching it's obviously going to take itself seriously at some point and all of the humor is leading to nothing narratively, so it feels like a collection of shorts, funny, but with nothing to say. 

 

When the movie finally does have a script to develop, is very simple but done very well, and the climax turns out great. Good motivations, good acting, pushing the story forward, the way he match plot points from the characters is beautiful, and the movie gain focus and a steady tone. 

 

It's a shame it takes so long to get there. 

First half or so 5/10, second half 9/10 to an 7/10 average, decent movie.

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

47 minutes ago, jedijake said:

Seems nothing is really stifling OW's of MCU films. Legs? Maybe, depending on reception overall. Those who are not in immediate need to see it in the first couple of weekends are just as well happy to wait for streaming. Even high RT scores wouldn't stop that. NWH was obviously Sony so it played by a different tune.

Nothing has really impacted the MCU films except reception. WOM plays the biggest role in any films success. Believe me, if MOM or L&T had TGM’s WOM they’d both be looking at $600M+ domestically and all of this “MCU is flailing” verbiage would be moot. 

Edited July 8, 2022 by StormbreakerXXR

[YM!]

20 minutes ago, StormbreakerXXR said:

Nothing has really impacted the MCU films except reception. WOM plays the biggest role in any films success. Believe me, if MOM or L&T had TGM’s WOM they’d both be looking at $600M+ domestically and all of this “MCU is flailing” verbiage would be moot. 

Eh. Even with that strong WOM, I think MoM tops out at 500m-ish, as does Thor, maybe a bit lower.

[BruiseCruise]

[AnDr3s]

gonna watch it in a few hours

the only thing that i like about taika is that he made my grandpa laugh before the alzheimer got worse

[XXRDJisDoctorDoom]

39 minutes ago, YourMother said:

Eh. Even with that strong WOM, I think MoM tops out at 500m-ish, as does Thor, maybe a bit lower.

 

Giving it more thought and assuming both were A+ Cinemascores, 99 RT kinda films (like TGM) I think it would be something like....

 

MOM = $220M OW / $560M DOM
L&T = $180M OW / $525M DOM