Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi, 2022)

 Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Jaimie Alexander, Idris Elba, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper. Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Cinematography: Barry Baz Idoine. Production design: Nigel Phelps. Film editing: Peter S. Elliott Tim Roche, Matthew Schmidt, Jennifer Vecchiarello. Music: Michael Giacchino, Nami Melumad. 

Critics were kind of meh about Thor: Love and Thunder, but I found it one of the less wearying of the entries in the superhero comic book sweepstakes. Aside from the unnecessary episode with the Guardians of the Galaxy, it zips along through the narrative challenges and nicely balances the love with the thunder. Chris Hemsworth is one of the most engaging actors stuck in the action genre, especially when Taika Waititi is giving him opportunities to play the goof. Christian Bale turns Gorr into one of the more complex Marvel villains, and it’s good to see Russell Crowe loosen up and have a ball playing Zeus. I have mixed feelings about Natalie Portman’s performance as Jane: She does a good job playing the diminutive foil to Thor, but I never felt the necessary chemistry in their love affair. Thor seems more enamored of Mjolnir than he does of Jane. I don’t know why Waititi needed to reprise the gag of the actors – Luke Hemsworth, Matt Damon, and Sam Neill – playing Thor, Loki, and Odin, this time adding Melissa McCarthy as Hela; it only overloads an already bloated excursion into Thor World. 

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018)

Chris Hemsworth in Bad Times at the El Royale

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman. Screenplay: Drew Goddard. Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey. Production design: Martin Whist. Film editing: Lisa Lassek. Music: Michael Giacchino.

Giddy, bloody thriller that has been called "Tarantinoesque" for its blend of violence and humor, Bad Times at the El Royale runs too long at 141 minutes, but it has good performances, particularly from Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo, and Chris Hemsworth (shirtless of course) as a sadistic villain. It feels like a cult film that hasn't yet found its cult the way, say, writer-director Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods (2011) did. 

Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi, 2017)

Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo in Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Chris Hemsworth
Loki: Tom Hiddleston
Hela: Cate Blanchett
Heimdall: Idris Elba
Grandmaster: Jeff Goldblum
Valkyrie: Tessa Thompson
Skurge: Karl Urban
Bruce Banner / Hulk: Mark Ruffalo
Odin: Anthony Hopkins
Doctor Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch
Korg (voice): Taika Waititi
Topaz: Rachel House
Actor Thor: Luke Hemsworth
Actor Odin: Sam Neill
Actor Loki: Matt Damon

Director: Taika Waititi
Screenplay: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost
Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe
Production design: Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent
Film editing: Zene Baker, Joel Negron
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh

Much fun, thanks to director Taika Waititi's irreverence toward the material he was given to bring to the screen: yet another superhero comic book adventure. But the Marvel people have learned a lot about their audience, something it seems the DC people haven't fully apprised, given the failure of some of their Superman and Batman movies to capture audiences. (The blissful exception, of course, is Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman, which vies with Thor: Ragnarok as 2017's best comic book movie.) The trick is to take nothing too seriously and to load your films with the best performers you can find. From the start, Chris Hemsworth was an ideal Thor: a gorgeous god, to be sure, but also a bit of a goof, easily outwitted by his clever brother Loki but able to survive in the end through sheer affability. If there's a flaw to Thor: Ragnarok it's that the stakes don't really seem that high: Asgard is a nice place, but none of us is ever going to visit there, so its destruction doesn't feel so much like a threat as the ones to Earth in the other Marvel adventures. The compensation is that unlike a lot of films with prestigious actors of the caliber of Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Hiddleston -- people who could be off doing Shakespeare somewhere -- nobody involved seems to be going through the paces just for the paycheck. Everyone seems to be having fun, thanks to Waititi and other cutups like Hemsworth and Jeff Goldblum. It's not Hamlet, to be sure, although there's a play within a play with Chris's brother Luke, Sam Neill, and Matt Damon spoofing the "real" Thor, Odin, and Loki. Marvel has gone the jokey road before with the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies (James Gunn, 2014 and 2017), but those were exposition-heavy and overburdened with effects in comparison to Waititi's lighter, larkier approach.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)

There are two distinct audiences for superhero comic book movies like The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) and this one, its sequel. One audience is just the casual fan of action movies. The other is the hardcore devotees of the comic books on which the movies are based. Pleasing one audience without losing the other is a hard trick to pull off. The hardcore audience knows the backstories of all the characters and is likely to be turned off by any inconsistencies with the source material. But the audience ignorant of the backstories needs some exposition to get them clued in to who these people are and what they're up to. Whedon is probably the person best qualified to deal with the problem, for one thing because he brings his own hardcore devotees along with him: the fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who trust Whedon to keep them entertained no matter how complicated and absurd the storyline becomes. I don't happen to be steeped in Marvel Comics lore myself, but I've watched every episode of Buffy at least once, so I appreciate Whedon's ability to take me along for an amusing ride. He does this by not taking anything in the Avengers movies terribly seriously. As in Buffy, what you have is a bunch of characters wisecracking through the apocalypse. And fortunately, the producers have enough money to spend not only on special effects but also on a huge cast of likable actors who relish the gags Whedon gives them and have the skill to play it all with the right blend of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek. In the end, the movie seems a little overloaded with stars -- in addition to Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeremy Renner, there are cameos by Idris Elba, Samuel L. Jackson, and Don Cheadle, as well as the luxury casting of James Spader as the voice of Ultron. Keeping all of them busy squeezes the action sequences into incoherence. That may be why Whedon confessed to feeling exhausted afterward and declined to write and direct the third film scheduled in the series.