Thor, Love and Thunder, the new Marvel Comedy Masterpiece


Thor, Love and Thunder, the new Marvel Comedy Masterpiece

Danger Will Robinson and Move Over Grouch Marx. Here comes Thor, Love and Thunder, the new Marvel Comedy Masterpiece!

At long last! Marvel Wave 4 delivers us a big-hitter box office smash! Step aside Steven Strange and flush Wanda straight back to the sixties, Thor has returned! This film dominated my watchlist for a couple of weeks, being saved for that special Saturday night when the wife and kids were all out. Several expensive beers were chilling in anticipation and I was eager to submerge in another incredible Marvel action epic.

But Danger, Danger Will Robinson! This film is not what it’s cracked up to be. Instead of a Saturday boys-night-in-er, it’s a very definite Tuesday-while-doing-the-ironing-night-in-er!

Throughout the first three Waves up to Avengers End Game, Marvel had dialled the comedy element in their films up to about thirty per cent with the action, adventure and plot occupying a safe seventy.

Surely everyone loves those witty outtakes, Downey Jr picking up on the bridge operative playing Galaga, Starlord dancing his way to the infinity stone and of course who doesn’t want to slap Peter Parker when he makes yet another you are really old dig. The witticisms are absolute gold dust and they elevate what are incredible action films right up to the heavens, dumping heavily on certain other cape-wearing superheroes on the way up.

Who isn’t holding their breath waiting to see if Iron Man will make it back through the portal in time? What office did not grind to a halt the day after Infinity Wars, as all the staff analysed which Avenger was the strongest based on their performance toe-to-toe against the big purple guy?

But now comes Marvel Wave 4, in which surely Thor, Love and Thunder is the crowning achievement and where we’ve flipped the silly scales, ramping the humour up to 70% and backing the action off, down to thirty.

This is a completely different beast to Endgame and if you’re turning on the TV expecting that non-stop action thriller, you are going to be disappointed.

But don’t worry, different does not equal bad and the laughter is non-stop. Your sides will be splitting at the love triangle of Thor, Mjolnir and the love-lorn Stormbreaker, (not forgetting the cheap two-bit, back street lightning bolt of Zeus), which utterly blows away the boring same-old Jane Foster romance.

And my favourite bit by far is when Thor becomes a daddy to a ten-year-old India Rose. As he admires her colouring efforts, (all over his beloved hammer), and quips, “yep, that’s never coming off”, I immediately glanced at the wonderful messages scribbled by my own daughter on the side of the TV and the empty bottle of white spirit still sitting next to it.

All kudos, dojos and prestige to Chris Hemsworth, king of actors, surely the applause of Rowan Atkinson and Ben Elton still rings in all our ears.

I adored every single outtake and I’m convinced I’ve missed hundreds of hidden gems, No doubt I’ll rewatch this again every Tuesday for the next month, in the search for more comedy genius.

But alas for the passing of Stan Lee! Marvel Avengers has changed and this movie must surely come with a massive warning sticker on the box. My bottom rumbles with fear and trepidation as to where this series will go next. Perhaps we will see Kenneth Williams and Sid James, resurrected by CGI taking on Nick Fury’s granny?

Finally, I can hardly forget those awesome scenes with Zeus when our team of heroes arrive at Omnipotence City which is almost exactly like I would have imagined it myself. In fact, take a look at the following excerpt:

While the women were up ordering their coffees, the door opened again and a weird-looking old man in a brown robe entered. Just like Santa, he sported a huge white beard, but you could also clearly see a massive set of muscles bulging out from under the robe.

It wasn’t the Rock’s favourite grandad, it was in fact Zeus, the chief of the gods!

“No”, thought Malcolm, “not him, just as I was putting my feet up for five minutes, what on earth does he want.”

Malcolm tried to duck down under the table, but it was too late, Zeus had already seen him.

“Hoi, Malcolm, thought you might be here, glad to catch you, I want a word with you laddo!”

Zeus marched up to Malcolm’s table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Jeff” he yelled over to the counter, “my usual please, that’s right hot chocolate and don’t spare the cream!”

Zeus’ drink was taking longer than normal to come, he peered over and saw that the milk frother had stopped working. He took a quick look around to make sure that no one was watching and as the coast was clear pointed a finger at the machine and hurled a miniature bolt of lightning at it. The frother spluttered back into life and spewed milk all over the barista who’d been trying desperately to make it work.

Once again this was Strictly Against the Rules but part of Zeus’ job as chief of the gods was to Make the Rules and besides, he couldn’t risk some minor little upset blowing up out of proportion and somehow causing Jeff to go out of business.

Zeus had been around a long time and he was certain that Jeff made the best hot chocolate in this Plane of Reality and certainly no one else served two complimentary chocolates with their hot drinks.

What do you think? This is actually a short passage from one of my own books, The Un-god of Fate, it’s not set in space, (much), but I was glued to the screen watching Thor with the phone in one hand waiting to call my lawyer the second my own lines were inevitably spewed out by Russel Crowe.

Maybe I should send a copy to Chris Hemsworth and now that he’s leaving Thor, he could star in my new movie adaptation 😊 Did you enjoy Thor, Love and Thunder as well, then you’ll almost certainly love the Un-god of Fate.

Click here to read all about it.

Graeme

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