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

[Menor the Destroyer]

1 minute ago, Pinacolada said:

THIS 100000% 

 

Super weird they didn't play up any of this in the marketing

From the reviews it's pretty clear that the Guardians don't have much screentime, so underplaying them makes sense, especially after people were disappointed by MoM due to mismatched expectations.  

[exomassey]

6 minutes ago, Gopher said:

The same way that the MCU was instigated by perfect timing-- imagine if they started all this with a movie that wasn't Iron Man, or if The Incredible Hulk came out at any time that wasn't six weeks after Iron Man, and a lot of what ended up happening could've been derailed-- I think their current predicament is a victim of very bad timing. Everyone at Marvel is exceptionally smart. They know if they're gonna keep all of this going after Endgame, it does make sense to try out a bunch of other things before you focus on a Galactus or whatever posing the same cosmic threat Thanos did, and risk making everything you just attempted to conclude feel more arbitrary. So try making TV, try finding more Taikas and Gunns to give your movies a unique stamp, try flirting with where things are ostensibly going to group up (Young Avengers/Thunderbolts on a micro scale, incursions/Secret Wars on a macro scale). But if you're gonna do something different than what people expect you have to do it very very carefully. If you're gonna up the quantity, the order in which all these movies came out and how they intersect or don't intersect with TV shows is very important.

 

Covid messed all that up. It messed it up in a macro storytelling way: Strange 2 was supposed to be the film that introduced the multiverse. It was supposed to come out before Loki, and was conceived before No Way Home was even a real idea. It's hard to imagine the expectations of that film would be focused on "what are the cameos gonna be" if No Way Home (an example of Sony crashing Marvel Studios' party, insisting on a new Spider-Man every two years regardless of what's happening in the broader MCU) hadn't just set the template for what an audience would expect from a multiverse. And it messed it up in a micro storytelling way: all these projects were made under insane duress, with new creative and logistical challenges, and I think that led to their process of quality control falling off at the same time that the creative ideas were growing more ambitious. So you end up with more isolated circumstances of creative success (Wandavision, Shang-Chi, No Way Home) and lot more clunkers than we are used to (most of the TV shows, in my view, have chosen to function more like lower-budget four-hour movies than actual episodes of television, and that's been brutal for their outcomes). 

 

Thor's case it's a rare occasion in the MCU where a director gets a chance to do the same singular thing they were universally praised for doing the first time, but more because it's a sequel, and that rarely works out in or out of the MCU... I love Guardians 2, but most people preferred 1, and Iron Man 2 and Age of Ultron became templates at Marvel for what to avoid with their sequels. If this was in the Infinity Saga, a tossed-off sequel that's largely irrelevant to the broader story wouldn't bump with audiences if it's still doing something new-- that's effectively what Ragnarok was. It's the timing of Love and Thunder being potentially underwhelming at a broader moment of insecurity with the direction and quality of the MCU that is making folks feel a little more existential.

Omg this post is amazing. 
 

The last line is exactly what it is. The lack of quality in Phase 4 is surprising.

[exomassey]

7 minutes ago, Pinacolada said:

3rd act of that movie sucked so hard

Yes. All this.

 

‘Oh look at our little grounded martial arts movie! This is actually great!’ ‘Now we want a SOUL SUCKING DRAGON! BAD GREEN SCREEN! ANOTHER DRAGON! BAD CG! BIG LIONS! A MASSIVE TSUNAMI! More more MORE!’

[Menor the Destroyer]

Shang-Chi's third act was a lot of fun and most of the bashing of it is nonsensical. 

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

Just now, Menor Reborn said:

Shang-Chi's third act was a lot of fun and most of the bashing of it is nonsensical. 

It looks awful and is overlong, not nonsensical having a different opinion 

[CoolioD1]

i liked it. the dragons were cool.

[lorddemaxus]

2 minutes ago, Menor Reborn said:

Shang-Chi's third act was a lot of fun and most of the bashing of it is nonsensical. 

It's like a Chinese fantasy film but with worse CGI and less creativity.

[Menor the Destroyer]

1 minute ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

It looks awful and is overlong, not nonsensical having a different opinion 

I think it looks pretty good and if anything is a bit short. But sure, I could phrase it better: in my opinion, a lot of the criticisms of Shang-Chi's third act are baffling. 

[Eric is Quiet]

Yeah I never got why people dogged on Shang-Chi's third act all the time. It's not any major departure from what came before, it has some fun dragons and battles. It's got dodgy CGI yeah, but the whole movie's got dodgy CGI, and I didn't think it was any worse than what came before (not an excuse of course, though I'm admittedly used to movies these days having terrible CGI and I know the people who work in those departments are being treated like slaves). Just feels like people wanted to find something to complain about.

[MrPink]

I didn't want to see Shang Chi duke it out with a dragon, and the CGI gets ragged on because a dragon inherently sticks out more than most of what's going on in Shang Chi comparatively, not to mention it turns into a grey CGI backdrop reminiscent of Endgame.

 

I was enjoying seeing hand to hand fights and martial arts and a son coming to terms with his father and then it decided to go in a direction I felt was not needed to up the scale I guess. Also it was painful how one-note Wenwu is in the 3rd act.

 

I like the film well enough but it was a steep drop in enjoyment for me once Ben Kingsley entered the film, a retcon that overstayed its welcome.

Edited July 6, 2022 by MrPink

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

4 minutes ago, MrPink said:

I didn't want to see Shang Chi duke it out with a dragon, and the CGI gets ragged on because a dragon inherently sticks out more than most of what's going on in Shang Chi comparatively.

 

I was enjoying seeing hand to hand fights and martial arts and a son coming to terms with his father and then it decided to go in a direction I felt was not needed to up the scale I guess. Also it was painful how one-note Wenwu is in the 3rd act.

 

I like the film well enough but it was a steep drop in enjoyment for me once Ben Kingsley entered the film, a retcon that overstayed its welcome.

The Kingsley scenes were so embarrassing. I’ve rarely felt so lost in a theater when staring at screen in dead silence while everyone else was cracking up at Kingsley 

[John Marston]

 

[eddyxx]

9 hours ago, BruiseCruise said:

How the hell did Thor of all characters get more solo movies than any other phase 1 heroes with potentially more still to come?

 

 

The actor wanted to do more movies. Lol why do people act like they wouldn’t make a IM4 tomorrow if RDJ wanted to do it.

[ThomasNicole]

29 minutes ago, John Marston said:

 

People now worry enough about why someone like a movie to post it on social media questioning it lol 

 

Dude is literally having a meltdown and talking about this for 10 hours straight (and i'm not even being hyperbolic) 

 

This one was funny tho

 

 

 

 

[XXR & Friends]

14 minutes ago, eddyxx said:

The actor wanted to do more movies. Lol why do people act like they wouldn’t make a IM4 tomorrow if RDJ wanted to do it.

 

Right? RDJ and Evans could have easily had IM4 and Cap 4 if they wanted it. They didn't. Hemsworth did. 

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

It's down to 61 on Metacritic now. At 6.80 and 71% on RT, so I guess it'll remain hovered at that range

[Rebeccas]

I really thought based on early tweets this would be yellow on MC but like 80 on RT.. somehow instead it’s looking like RT and MC might converge lol 

[Liiviig 1998]

Regarding shangchi third act liked it enough but the problem I have with it on rewatches is that it feels more ridiculous than the rest of the movie.

Most of the fights in the movie where so well cheroegraphed and kinda grounded and even the use of the rings felt more measured.

The first fight with wenwu and his to be wife had great movement and forms.

 

The fights with the dragon just turned into cgi overload and were not needed. Third act overstayed it's welcome tbh.

 

The most interesting part of this the father son relationship  and after wenwu dies it should be winding down then we get this whole dragon fight I gave no fucks about and oh boy was the cgi in this sequence awful.

 

 

[belblazer]

58% on Top Critics, under MoM's 59%.

[jedijake]

This thing gonna bust past $400 million domestic or no?