Can Thor Love & Thunder include everything it needs to without it feeling rushed?
The run-time for the upcoming Thor Love & Thunder movie was announced. We are looking at an hour and 59-minute long movie which will be the shortest run-time for a Marvel movie in phase 4 and some fans are starting to worry. Is it really time to worry though?
Thor Love & Thunder will be the MCU’s second straight movie that has a run-time around the 2-hour mark the other being Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. As successful as the movie was, even our journey with the beloved sorcerer supreme and Scarlet Witch was followed by some criticism about people wanting more. There were a good amount of people that felt some scenes should have been longer or that the decision-makers could have left in scenes that were potentially left out.
No matter how you felt, The Multiverse of Madness did what it needed to do and hit the plot points it needed to hit. The movie was able to do this because of how it was set up. WandaVision, Loki, and Spider-man No Way Home allowed for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to hit the ground running from the start because certain stories were already told and much background was already given.
Thor Love & Thunder feels like it has a lot more to cover in the span of 2 hours. This movie also does not have the benefit of a Disney + show or other movies setting it up based on what we’ve seen from the trailers. The last we’ve seen from the Thor character is that he left what was left of Asgard for Valkyrie to command and is off adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
So what do we know that has to happen based on the trailers we’ve seen?
We know there has to be an explanation about Jane Foster and how she’s come to be Lady Thor which deserves attention. What has she been up to? How and why does she have the powers of Thor? We know Gorr the God Butcherer is the villain of this movie and a popular villain at that. Even though the MCU may be in a new era of not killing off villains in a single movie like in the past, it’s hard to imagine a character with his mindset of going around butchering gods to remain alive in the MCU after this movie. But that’s for a different discussion, this movie still has to show his origins, his motives, and his development which should not feel rushed to really appreciate him as a villain. Not to mention, they have to show him going around killing numerous other Gods to make his presence feel more terrifying when he’s on-screen, especially when he’s sharing the screen with our heroes.
And last but not least, the God of Thunder himself Thor.
We know he has to rediscover himself and figure out his purpose. That will include the getting back into shape montage, seeing Jane Foster and figuring out the feelings there, and seeing where his overall place in the world is. It seems like he will be adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy, then break off to go solo, end up in Olympus with Zeus along with figuring out there’s a villain hunting Gods, and after that will most likely be the several interactions between our heroes and this villain.
The point is all these things deserve attention, and it’s quite a bit of story to squeeze into a movie in just under 2 hours without some of it potentially feeling a little rushed. It would have been nice to of had some kind of show or movie or even a post-credit scene to help set up some things for this movie, but there aren’t any. There also isn’t a good reason to be concerned just yet as Taika Waititi has shown how to handle the Thor franchise plus the prior Thor movies also hover around the 2-hour mark with the latest in Thor Ragnarok being 2 hours and 10 minutes. All we can do is hope the movie can deliver Thor, Jane, and Gorr the God Butcherer their well-deserved story arcs and do them justice.
Do you think Thor Love & Thunder will deliver and hit on everything it needs to within the 2-hour time-run? What are your thoughts and theories on this upcoming movie?
Chris Hemsworth, Taika Waititi, and Tessa Thompson recently sat down for an interview with Fandango talking about the upcoming film. Check it out here!
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