This past week, I was finally able to watch Thor: Love and Thunder. It's actually pretty rare that I watch movies too much anymore. My time just doesn't allow me the luxury of sitting through a whole movie all at once.
Between laundry, snacks, refilling drinks and Jovi needing to go outside, we need something that we can easily pause or watch a single episode at a time. On top of that, 
Like I said though, this past week, I was finally able to watch the latest Thor movie.
I don't know if you recall, but there was a big ruckus over some of the previous Thor movies. The first one was pretty well received, but then the second one people downright hated. I honestly don't even remember what the name of the second one was. Dark something maybe.
That should tell you how good it was right there.
Then, with Thor: Ragnarok, they decided to take the hero a totally different direction. Actually, a direction that it seems would lay a path for the future of all things MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe).
The thing that made the huge difference in the last Thor movie was the fact that they basically made fun of themselves. I remember reading an article that talk about Ragnarok being so good because it basically didn't take itself seriously.
That's definitely the case with Love and Thunder as well.
Like I said, it feels like a lot of the stuff from them lately has been taking that track.
I subscribed to Disney+ a while ago with every intention of cancelling it after I finished watching The Mandalorian. Then they just kept coming out with more and more shows. Before I knew it I had been paying for close to a year of the service and enjoying every minute of it.
There has been a lot of critical response to the stand alone series that the MCU has been producing, but I have found them to be pretty good. Like I said, they have really been "leaning in" (my dad hates that phrase) to comedy and trying to bring it to nearly every piece of intellectual property they release these days.
It was really nice to see Natalie Portman back on the screen with the rest of the gang. It was also really exciting to see Kat Dennings return as Darcy, even though her part was no more than five minutes in the whole movie. We really need more Darcy in pretty much every MCU offering from this point forward.
There was also a relatively short appearance by the Guardians of the Galaxy at the beginning of the movie.
It's interesting to note that much of the comedy relief supplied by the character Korg is voiced by none other than Taika Waititi the director of the movie.
Christian Bale did a great job as the villain in the movie, but honestly I didn't like it as much as Ragnarok.
I felt like it tried too hard in a lot of places leaving the dialog stale and stunted. It's like they were trying to force something that they knew the audience just wasn't going to be able to grasp. Either that, or they were just showing up to get a paycheck and not really putting a lot of effort into the acting.
The movie also made a point of trying to integrate 80's rock songs through much of the show. While that lends itself to an awesome soundtrack, it was once again more forced than we have seen in past movies. Guardians of the Galaxy 1 was a perfect example of the right way to integrate a killer soundtrack with a movie.
Speaking of soundtracks. I have to point out that Ms. Marvel and SheHulk have both impressed me a great deal with their soundtracks. You can tell the producers put a lot of time and effort into getting things just perfect with those two shows.
It honestly took me a little bit to get into Ms. Marvel, but after about the third episode I was really impressed and I ended up learning a lot more about world history than I had expected. The whole partition with India and Pakistan was a foreign concept to me. I had pretty much zero knowledge of it.
Not being from either of those countries, I won't speak to how well the show handled the material (I have read they did a good job), but I will say that it taught me about a period of history that I never knew before and for the educational value alone, it was worth it.
If you are a Marvel fan, you are clearly not going to skip Thor: Love and Thunder, but you definitely need to watch it with an open mind and take it with a grain of salt. If you are looking for a critical masterpiece, you aren't going to find it here.
It's honestly probably best to just think of it as a rock video with some fight scenes and questionable comedic timing.
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