Masters of a Comic Universe

Because “Thor: Love and Thunder” has been out for about 10 days now, I don’t feel guilty about disclosing any spoilers — especially because the main thing everybody wants to know is whether “Thor 4,” as we’ll call it because it’s the fourth entry in the series, is as good as “Thor 3.” That’s a major issue because no. 3, properly titled “Thor: Ragnarok,” was not only the best in the series so far, but a landmark in the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Credit goes to two men: the majordomo who watches over this whole shebang of a mega-franchise, Kevin Feige, and a maverick director from New Zealand, Taika Waititi. Mr. Feige had the intelligence to hand over the keys to the kingdom of Aasgard to the modern day auteur and let him do what he wanted with it. The result was both exciting and funny, giving the God of Thunder more of a sense of humor and positioning him as a source of humor without making him a buffoon. The other big question is exactly how humongous a success the new “Thor” will be. It will almost certainly achieve the average level of success as most entries in the franchise, with a box-office take measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. It may even fly all the way to the top of the box office lists, with a gross measured in billion-dollar increments. Thor is officially the most durable of all the MCU entities and original Avengers, now that Iron Man and Captain America are no longer around. This latest episode makes Thor the most storied, bringing the total of movies with the God of Thunder at the center to eight, four starring pictures and all four Avengers epics. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who co-created the comic book incarnation of Thor 60 years ago, made him interesting by means of context rather than specifically via character. The whole idea of combining mythology with science fiction was their mutual brainstorm, mashing up the ancient past and the far-flung future possible. They gave us gods, monsters, and vikings in outer space. For a time, the departures of Kirby and Lee robbed the comic book series of much of its essential mojo, but there have been great “Thor” sagas over the years. Both of the central plot pegs of the current episode, i.e., the return of love interest Jane Foster as a female Thor (but don’t you call her that to her pretty face) and the truly horrifying antagonist, Gorr the God Butcher, come from the most recent decade of the comics. Still, even having read a few hundred “Thor” comics over the last 50 years, I’d be hard pressed to describe what the mighty hero’s personality is actually like. On the page, he’s essentially another well-meaning, muscle-bound flyboy, of the same stripe as the original 1940s Captain Marvel, who also derived his super powers from magical means rather than a so-called scientific explanation. The four-color Thor clearly possessed less worldly wisdom than Clark Kent or Superman; perhaps having a secret human identity gave the Man of Steel a little more nuance and profundity than your average Norse mythology deity. (Thor’s onetime alter-ego, “Dr. Don Blake,” present in the early issues, was gradually abandoned over the decades.) The Australian actor at the heart of the series, Chris Hemsworth, deserves considerable credit for making the Thunder God so believable and even relatable. He’s had considerable help from his directors: In the first episode (2011), Keneth Branagh gave us an Aasgard that was effectively Shakespearian in tone, with Anthony Hopkins playing the God King Odin as Lear, Tom Hiddleston as the troublemaker Loki as Richard III, and Thor himself as Henry V motivating his forces to victory via sheer charisma. If the second film, Alan Taylor’s “Dark World” (2013), was the darkest and least interesting, it was still hardly a turkey or a box office flop. The best episode of Marvel’s animated series “What If…?” fleshed out the persona even further, presenting Thor as Earth’s mightiest frat boy, keen both to save the galaxy and to party down, though not necessarily in that order.When Taika Waititi took the reins with no. 3, he achieved what all had hoped for, injecting vast amounts of humor into the property, but keeping the character still credible and sympathetic despite all the rampant silliness around him. “Thor 3” was a winner not least because it gave us a perfect incarnation of the Incredible Hulk as the God of Thunder’s sparring partner and guest star. Another plus was Mr. Hiddleston returning as Loki, constantly waffling and switching sides between helping his brother and hindering him. Best of all was the unforgettable Jeff Goldblum, playing an interplanetary dictator and battle master as kind of a blase TV quiz show host. So far, most of the consensus maintains that “Thor 4” is slightly less enjoyable overall than no. 3. Still, the pleasures of the latest film are considerable, including opulent black-and-white outer space vistas; Russell Crowe as an overweight and cranky uber deity Zeus with the accent of a Greek coffee shop waiter on “Saturday Night Live”; and, most of all, the considerable sight of Natalie Portman in full-on Thor drag.Thus, Mr. Feige’s gambit to revitalize the MCU by bringing in an out-of-the-box thinker like Mr. Waititi has paid off handsomely. In fact, you would need the strength of a god just to be able to lift the $1.5 billion or so dollars that the two most recent episodes have generated, and no. 4 has only crossed its second week. So, what’s next? My request would be for a new solo Hulk vehicle, this time with Thor as a guest star. If Mr. Waititi is too busy making “Thor 5” (in which, as was alluded to in a post-credit scene, Thor will be going up against two pissed-off Greeks, Zeus and Hercules), then let’s get the great Guillermo del Toro, who also knows a thing or two about making literate and humorous heroic fiction movies, to write and direct it.

Masters of a Comic Universe

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