I agree with him that it was too “wacky”. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy that type of movie, GOTG is my favorite Marvel movie. But in Love and Thunder it felt REALLY forced. Many of them were just poorly timed, cringe or unnecessary.
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.
I agree with him that it was too “wacky”. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy that type of movie, GOTG is my favorite Marvel movie. But in Love and Thunder it felt REALLY forced. Many of them were just poorly timed, cringe or unnecessary.
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.