It’s Not About Taika: On See-Saws, Raimi, Corny Code Words & De-Powered Fantasies (Patreon)

Writing about movies is a weird thing that doesn’t always make sense. For one, it’s a subjective art with a subjective audience. Which is probably why so many believe the goal of writing is to not get tripped up on that subjective-ness and just say what you think, darnit. But at the same time, I think an equally important part of criticism is about creating a bigger space of reflection. Sometimes that means taking stock of how we all seem to be relating to a given piece of media. That’s especially true when a movie comes along and seems to elicit a whole spectrum of different reactions. They’re movies that make us feel like we’re all in the Tower of Babel, not just speaking different languages, but feeling like we saw completely different movies! And last week for Thor: Love and Thunder? Well, it seems like there’s a whole lot of people that found it light and enjoyable and a whole lot of people saying it’s one the worst movies they’ve ever seen. So what’s going on here, exactly? While no one can really account for it all…

We can still try to understand…

1. RULE NUMBER ONE + SEE SAW

I dunno if you know this, but Billy Wilder was a pretty smart dude! He wrote for both Lubitsch and Hawks, hated Nazis, and made some of the best films ever. Did it all, really! But among the many wonderful things Wilder left behind were his ten rules for storytelling (which were probably written off the cuff). They were not meant to be exacting tenets, of course. Like most great writing tips, they’re some elegant-but-folksy ways of talking about setups and payoffs, along with developing clean lines of action for your characters. But it’s his first rule he offered that stuck around as an old adage. And it kind of even acts as a warning for all the so-called “rules” that followed. And that rule number one?

“The audience is fickle.”

No further explanation is given. Which is purposeful because I think there’s a lot of ways you can take it, but I think the most important is that you can’t really count on what you think an audience will do en masse. Because an audience is a complex system. You can’t predict if people will necessarily want to see it / whether they will know to go / and there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like it. So you just have to make an educated, sincere attempt to make the best, most functional film you can. But where the phrase “the audience is fickle” gets more interesting / troubling is when you consider the idea of the public “turning” on a given figure. To wit, you’ll see audiences “fall in love” with someone, usually a young ingenue and then things change. You have your Anne Hathaway or your Jennifer Lawrence types and they’ll blame the turn on “over-saturation” or say that audiences “got tired” of them. We thus chalk this up to audience fickleness. And lately? Oh boy, it seems to have been building with Taika Waititi lately. And now with the release of Thor: Love and Thunder, things seem to be hitting a fever pitch. Admittedly, it’s resulted in some funny tweets of things like @JeremyMonjo saying “The Taika situation's funny because it's so rare you see a reversal of fortunes so precisely attributable to 'kind of annoying’” But as is true with all these cases...

I don’t think that’s what is actually happening.

Because I don’t think this about the fickle-ness of individuals. I think this is more about power dynamics of opposing views on the see-saw of popularity. Because we are witnessing the same exact dynamic that often happens. A Figure comes onto the scene. They have a “thing” they do or a personality that seems charming and different. They develop a group of steadfast fans. The Figure stays who they are and grows in success because of it. But because the machine then eats it all up, they become “oversaturated” in the public eye. But rarely is it the people who were immediate fans who move away from these folks (and if they do, it’s usually because they make a living being critical of pop culture). It’s never “yeah I’m sick of that person whose movies i really like!” Like, Anchorman hit me at the exact right time and place and even though some of his later movies didn’t work for me, I never “got sick” of Will Ferrell in all this time. No, I think it has much more to do with the flip-side of people who are responding to the saturation…

Because then there’s the people who “always hated” The Figure in question, along with the group of people who found them innocuous, and they’re the ones who tend to shift the most. Because as The Figure becomes more and more powerful, the resentment of them grows in proportion, especially with lavish praise from communities the resenting folks are often not in. Then, when The Figure inevitably falters with a project that doesn’t land (which all artists invariably do) or does a public gaffe, the resenters see the opportunity. They go for it with relish and as the hate-talk expands, thus, from the grand view of “how the public eye feels about The Figure” there is this see-saw flip. It’s easy to read as fickleness, but I think it’s about power dynamics and who has the opportunity to exercise them. This is all a simplification of course, but we watched it happen with Anne Hathaway (too theater kid!), J-Law (too natural!), Lin-Manuel Miranda (too schmaltzy!) and note there’s often a looooot of misogyny / racism wrapped up in these things, but even folks like Ben Affleck have gone up and down a million times in the public eye already. And the point is, now it’s all happening with Taika.

To head the conversation off at the pass now, yes, I think THOR: Love and Thunder is a genuine mixed bag. There’s some things that work (or are at least a lot of well-aimed things) and things that just don’t. But the reasons it doesn’t entirely work are pretty pedestrian and have more to do with storytelling stuff I always talk about - but we’ll get to analyzing the actual film later. For now, the point is that when dealing with the see-saw of popularity, it’s not just a one size fits all dynamic, the specifics matter. Because it’s often about who this person is “for” and how that forms cultural dividing lines. And specifically, how certain figures manage to irk people most often when it deals with media that is not for them.

For instance, there’s been a lot of discussion about Taika’s continued use of queerness, especially after his performance on Our Flag Means Death and then doubling down of those themes in the new Thor film. And please know I speak for absolutely no one but myself, I can only try to characterize what I’ve observed. And in the last couple of weeks I’ve seen a lot of straight people saying “he’s not even gay!” as if fans are somehow being tricked? Yeah, queer people KNOW that. And yes, some people have thoughtful criticisms about the portrayals (but that seems to be of little interest to the haters, wonder why!). And the reason a lot of queer people also seem on board with his work is because he’s so damn comfortable with it anyway. It’s about communication of safety. Taika doesn’t use queerness in a way that feels tokenized, but genuinely affectionate and all encompassing (especially when compared to, say, with what the Russos did with the “queer character” in Endgame). And yes, people are deeply aware there’s probably some levels of hypocrisy wrapped up in all this, most especially when it comes to his real life. That’s also fine. The point is that you can trust queer people to understand what they like about things. And for them to know the artists that are going to make a piece of art that feels safe. And you know the artists that are going to use it in a wake that makes it feel not safe (like the constant stream of storytellers who make whole ass films about queer victimization that are just trying to make straight people feel bad and don’t blink an eye at the effect). Both deal less with figure adoration and more with the end result of the art itself. And truthfully, the queerness of the work is a small part of what’s going on with negative reactions here.

I believe it has more to do with the larger characterizations of masculinity.

Again, I know there is a whole valid spectrum of reactions to Taika’s work, but I want to zoom in on the people who seem especially aggrieved by it in order to provide a framework. Because there’s really something so specific about why people are calling the latest Thor one of the worst films they’ve ever seen. It’s hitting this deep button of resentment and even outright venom. I saw one tweet I won’t even dignify linking to that says “what a joke you are” and “love seeing the downfall of thor and taika with Love and Thunder they had it coming after Ragnarok” and, yes, there were pictures of the joker in their statement because of course there were. But I think it’s because Taika’s work taps into a very, very specific kind of vulnerability, one that doesn’t just try to eschew classic masculinity, but completely undercut it. Yes, you get the sense that he thinks masculinity itself is kind of stupid. And that trying to be tough and / or cool is inherently dumb, which is why those aspects always play as jokes on the character themselves.

And it’s safe to say that feeling taps into some larger… dynamics.

2. “FORGET IT RAIMI, IT’S CORNY-TOWN”

When it comes to superhero films there’s this very telling word I see pop up again and again and again, particularly when it comes to the work of Sam Raimi. And it has come up once again thanks to Dr. Strange 2…  and that word is “Corny.”

The tricky thing is that most people seem to be using it wrong, because the actual definition “trite, banal, or mawkishly sentimental,” and the example of this from Oxford Languages is “"it sounds corny, but as soon as I saw her I knew she was the one.” And don’t get me wrong, there are moments like that in Raimi’s work, but the way people use it’s more about the fact that his work makes them feel silly. This mostly happens because Raimi’s films are willing to 1) use hyper-stylized camera action that takes away from naturalism and 2) is willing to be silly and sincere at the same time. There’s this “classic movie” feeling that Raimi gives actors having a kind of 1950’s air of innocence (and if you’ve seen interviews with him, it comes from his own good midwestern vibes). But when Raimi’s Peter Parker walks around and is like, “Gee whiz!” There are a lot of guys who don’t like it. And the question is, “why not?”

The answer they often give is tone.

Which is a subject I’ve written about many, many times, but hey, it’s going to keep coming up every few years. Because there are always going to be people who want movies to be all comedy, or all serious, and never a mix between. Why? Simple. Because it allows them to emotionally prepare to control their feelings in the manner that they want while watching. But also note that they DO want to have that intended emotional experience. They want to feel, not be surprised. And a lot of this has to do with the idea that movies are uniquely powerful objects. There’s a reason propaganda works. And when we relate to a character or story, they make us FEEL things deeply. The reason we watch them is to feel those very things. But quite often there is a kind of 1:1 level of indulgence that comes when a lot of people dive deep into their beloved forms of media. They like to be “in it,” which is often why they like styles that are more grounded and err toward naturalism. But sometimes it’s not even stylistic, but a deeply internal feeling of “this should be making me feel good and it’s making me feel bad, so it must be bad.” And I get what they’re just reacting naturally. When something bumps them, I know that all they’re just reflecting that internal truth. But what’s happening is often a bit more complicated.

For one, taking that belief so far to say “singular tones is something good for movies” is something that I have to just shut down immediately. Because most of the best films of all time will jump in and out of tones with great purpose. Heck,The Sopranos could go anywhere from scene to scene. The key is not only prepping the audience through subtle cues but also locking them into the conflict of the scene, but using set-ups and clarity to make the intent of such jumps clear. And more importantly, having a thematic / character arc point to doing so. Luckily for us, Raimi has historically been a master of control, throwing you from one emotion to the next with vivid awareness. It’s not just spook-a-blast delirium of the Evil Dead movies, but the way his later studio efforts could find all kinds of humor and open hearted tenderness. He grounds it all in these big morality tales that admittedly have very old school forms of punishment. But with Raimi, the entire point of the “gee whiz!” characterization of Spider-Man is that you can have that innocent attitude, but life will still throw horribleness and difficulty at you (if anything, the gee whiz just makes it a little funnier). You will be crapped on again and again. In the end, Raimi is so much more interested in how HARD it is to be a superhero than he is the fantasy of it... Which brings us to the real issue with why Raimi’s “corny” Spider-man movies can rankle some so hard.

The real answer is because it doesn’t make a viewer feel powerful.

Which means it’s not really even about the tone (I mean, there’s a reason some tonal jumps don’t bother when the power fantasy is still working). So often, it’s about if a character is being trod on. Because if the character *feels* like a joke is being played on them by the movie. It will make the viewer feel like a joke, too. Look at the dynamics of how often this shows up in media. For instance, a character can be snarky / funny themselves, but that’s an empowering device that puts the hero’s status above the one they’re making fun of (notice how this drives SO much of the MCU). But if the character is silly and dumb themselves? Then it stops the act of indulgence. It’s not an accident that as hilarious as the Raimi spider-man movies were, the big complaint of the haters was they wanted him to make jokes AT criminals “because it was like the character.” Instead, Raimi’s Peter Parker got pushed around, was full of sadness, and often wanted to give up, which made him low-status. But when compared to Nolan’s The Dark Knight? The character is pushed around and often tortured, too, but it’s literally the glorifying heroic act of the movie itself. Remember the verbiage of the ending and “Because he can take it!” So much of it isn’t about fidelity to material, but the feeling of power.

Remember that people would get mad at changes Raimi made, but often the same people didn’t blink an eye when MCU Parker was literally made a BILLIONAIRE’S INTERN and given a cool new suit, and so much freedom from hardship, because again, it was more empowering. Even when we talk about literal power in terms of big muscly dudes, it’s all about the manner of framing. We see shots in Nolan’s Batman of this ripped Christian Bale, full of scars and can think “ooooh, he’s so tough and tortured!” But in Taika’s Thor: Love and Thunder? There’s literally a scene where the very SIGHT of a ripped, naked Hemsworth causes an entire room full of women to faint. Shouldn’t that be the most indulgent thing in the universe? Specifically if you are a man watching that? No, because it’s done in a female gaze-y way, showing him powerless and in chains, and brushed with a joke about how Zeus “flicked too hard.” It has too much low-status and decentralizes Thor’s control for it to be pure power fantasy.

Again, the whole “tone” conversation is a distraction. So much more it’s about looking at the notions of control and empowerment, which is why you have to dig into the specifics of what’s happening. It’s asking yourself, what feeling is being created for? Who is it for? Why? I acknowledge I am fully a part of this spectrum, too. I have things I want and I have things that bump me. And I acknowledge those things are part of why Thor: Love and Thunder doesn’t feel undercutting to me, but I’m also having a different relationship to Thor himself, perhaps (we’ll get to this later). But it’s also why having a partial sense of detachment is so important in any viewing. Because I’m not really watching these scenes to feel empowered. I’m watching with a sense of laughter, even a sense of irony. But note that you can still take it all seriously. Even if it’s not for you, you can find genuine solace and catharsis in who it is for.

So why don’t I have the same sense of empathy for movies that cater to straight white indulgence? Uh, technically speaking, I don’t have a problem with it at all. Historically, I grew up on it and loved it, I’ve just been coming out the other side of it this decade with a loooooot of realizations. And even now, I like the vast majority of Nolan movies. Same with Tarantino, Verhoeven, and all the familiar voices who play in a lot of those spaces, often with knowing guile. I’m just arguing the same kind of mindfulness that I want to go in the other direction. Especially because a lot of that stuff has historically made up, like, 90% of media and finally there’s just new kinds of center points that creeping into the picture. And most of all, we have all become deeply familiar with the portion of movie-goers on the grand spectrum for whom the power indulgence is the most important thing in the damn world. The part of the audience that craves stories about unfeeling stoicism and mastery of emotions, badassery, and control. And there’s a reason we’ve all become so sensitive to those kinds of power fantasies…

Because we know where that spectrum can lead.

3. HOMELANDERS

There was a TikTok by @zerowoolfe recently and so succinctly gets at a core idea I’ve been writing about forever, that I slapped my forehead at the clarity of exact expression. But since it’s kind of long and rather than have you sit through all of it, I transcribed the whole thing:

“A lot of people are so surprised there are a lot of right wing fans of THE BOYS because [the show] is a really unsubtle criticism of corporations, fascism, and right wing politics. So a lot of people are really confused how so many alt-right weirdos are fans of Homelander, despite the show obviously depicting him as the bad guy. Because he does all these heinous things and is a total asshole. But the thing is that alt right politics don’t operate on a value system that is based on morality, they operate on a value system based on power. So it actually doesn’t matter that Homelander is depicted as an amoral sociopath. Because he’s a POWERFUL amoral sociopath… Fascism is operating on a value system that is so removed and alien from conventional ethics that attempts to indict fascism USING conventional ethics go completely unnoticed by fascist audiences. And so a lot of pieces of media that intend to criticize fascism along with a lot of pieces of fascist propaganda that intend to glorify it, end up portraying fascists basically the same way… This is not a criticism of THE BOYS, the show is not written for a fascist audience. So fascist’s predictable misinterpretation of it is not really the writer's problem. But what I think is interesting that if the show were written by a fascist writing team as a piece of fascist propaganda, the show at large would be very very different, but specifically the depiction of Homelander, would be almost identical.”

To be very, very, very clear: I am not saying that casually indulging in a power fantasy is an inherently fascist activity. Fuck no! Again, there’s a spectrum to this and we all have ways we mindfully indulge in media. But it’s where that exact lack of mindfulness can create these scary pipelines to schools of thought. Going back to The Dark Knight (a movie I love and will always stand up for), they created this terrifying villain in The Joker. The REASON he was so scary was because his motivation was “just wanting to watch the world burn,” with the crystalline, nihilistic glee. He was tearing people apart just for the fun of it. To say this struck a chord with a subsection of internet fandom who was “in it for the lulz” is an understatement. And without going deep on and on about recent history, it’s no accident it soon became part of this weird internet pipeline the alt-right took advantage of it - and soon it led people into a form of modern fascism that’s less about patriotic ideals and more either anti-wokeness or nihilistic annihilation. But SO much of it is rooted in those feelings of power.

And at the center of not feeling powerful is the feeling of displacement.

Once again, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve written about it so much the last few years that I honestly don’t want to get into it and keep this section short. But it’s all the conversations about Star Wars casting announcements, the discussion of the movies, the DCEU blowups in all directions, and every toxic cultural interaction on the internet. It’s about everything that takes it away from white-male-centric power structures. But since we live in a world where this possibility is always “in play” it’s something we just always have to think about. This is the modern media landscape.

Most viewers don’t have a malicious intention with ANY of this. But because we all live within it, I think a mindfulness about superheroes in particular is important in a culture that is saturated with them. And challenging the power structures behind them isn’t just about representation, it’s about breaking down status quos, politics, and sometimes even taking the piss out of the entire concept at large, precisely because the power fantasy can be so dangerous. It’s about showing that vulnerability can be strengths. And it’s why I think storytellers like Raimi, Taika, Coogler, and other creators have been so important when tackling masculinity within this genre. And as a viewer, it’s about constantly asking yourself, how much is this about power? Are we subtly susceptible to the power fantasy in ways we don’t even think about it?

And that’s all the context we need to know before…

4. NAVIGATING LOVE AND THUNDER

Whatever you think of Taika’s comedic voice, I think he is a very good writer who has historically displayed a great understanding of character, theme, and structure. Admittedly, he’s much less interested in drama than I am, but hey, that doesn’t stop any sense of appreciation. Movies like Boy, What We Do In The Shadows, and Hunt For The Wilderpeople are proof pudding of those abilities. I also think Thor: Ragnarok works great, particularly when it comes to having a strong thematic through-line for all of it (I even think JoJo Rabbit works, but there are problems and it’s just a giant conversation that’s irrelevant to this one). But within all these works there are two things that are true. The first is that all of these movies often centralize their jokes around undercutting masculinity and toughness. And second, the success of all of these movies admittedly hangs on the edge of the knife. Because they have charms and jokes, but they ultimately work because the little story things add up in a way that creates meaning. And for all the talk about the current film in terms of tone, identity, and everything else…

The ultimate problems of Thor: Love and Thunder are more pedestrian.

The first problem is a looooooooot of rushing in the first hour. I get the instinct. Heck, I’m usually Mr. Screen Economy, but you still have to give the big transitional moments their due and ground them in action. For instance, there’s the opening coda with the dawn of Gorr the Godkiller. It starts with some really nice series of shots and his daughter’s death, done really tastefully. But then we get to the god in a way that feels so rushed and the actor’s playing it a hair too broad. My issue isn’t the tone jump. It’s supposed to be jarring, as it is for Gorr. The issue is that it’s part of what is making it so, so easy for Gorr to make his villainous choice. I mean, it’s not even a choice. The sword is literally going into his hand and the more effective way of doing this is to SEE the turn of anger instead of just putting him into the villain pipeline like it’s obligatory. The sword is simply the tool, not the motivation. Again, the idea and shape of the opening coda is right, but it falters because it’s rushing through Gorr’s headspace specifically to get to the end result.

There’s so many moments like this in the first hour. For instance, I understand that the film wants the surprise of the moment where Thor sees her and goes “Jane!!?!” But if this is a genuine two-hander, that mjolnir moment (along with the fallout) is actually so important to dramatize for her character? Because it’s this moment where she experiences this big shift. And instead of the story rightfully engaging with it, it gets trapped in all this shoe-leather and avoidance of what’s going on for, like, 20 minutes. By the time we get to the bathroom scene which retroactively tries to explain it all, even if I think the scene itself is good, I still think it works so much better if we get to see all this before. THEN we can see her putting up front in the first interaction scenes of her and Valkyrie. And the audience knowing what’s happening would allow us to better play the heartbreak that’s happening underneath (once again, the instinct to go for surprise and retro-active explanation ends up hurting important things).

But when it comes to what “undercuts” things there’s all the familiar notions of masculinity, but even I feel like there’s a few times in this film where a beat goes just a step too far because it can’t help but go for the joke. It’s not tonal, it’s about missing just one or two tiny little ground beats that you need to keep the 90% joke strategy afloat. There’s a few times like this in the interactions with the kids in the cage (we’ll come back to this plot), but the big one is where Thor literally admits once upon a time the Norse gods ate children? It’s funny because the idea is darkly funny. But it’s also one of those jokes that can’t be “real” because if it is, then goodness. The logic invitation just makes for something so so so much darker and throws Thor directly into “the rules don’t apply to me,” camp. There’s a massive difference between endless levity and flippancy. And it’s the kind of thing that just one errant joke can unmoor.

Still, even all this wouldn’t be the biggest problem were it not the age old issue of set-ups and pay-offs. Because I think the movie has very sweet, sentimental ideas about where all this wants to end up that are well-intentioned. But there’s a difference between scenes expressing good sentiment out of nowhere and good catharsis, which relies on setting up the audience to want that very specific thing, often without making them realize that that is the thing they want. To wit, I think Ragnorok does a very deft job of this when it comes to the destruction of Asgard, among other ideas. But here, the reason so many people talk about the film feeling “messy” is that a lot of those ending places feel like they’re arrived at more haphazardly.

Take a simple character moment. Portman gets to give the big “Lady Thor” speech as she battles Gorr, and yup, it’s saying all the right things when it comes to the meta-fan level so there’s a way we get it. But it’s not cathartic to something set-up within the story itself. I didn’t even change a single time the phrase Lady Thor was used before? So it doesn’t feel like a release of something that was built before and now being beaten down. The only part of it that was set up was the “eat my hammer” line. But even this is small when compared to the film’s biggest set-up problem with the ending.

Because Thor ends the film as a dad with a new adoptive daughter. To be clear, I like the general sentiment of this. You even feel how this is a big personal thing for Taika and I love details like the drawing on Mjolnir. All of this is nice, but it should be the moment of transcendence. The ultimate catharsis that we have been made to want this whole time. You see the way there’s little bits of lip-service, like when Korg says “I think Thor would make a great dad” and the way the last frame plays as a big “Love and Thunder” title hit where it’s like “haha! this is where the movie was headed the whole time!” But it’s not enough to make the audience secretly be rooting for it, especially as it is dramatized here. For one, Love is a character we basically met just two minutes ago? That’s honestly a hard thing to really embrace. There’s just so much more you have to do in the set-up. For once, you can have the actress and her personality more in view by showing memories / scenes in Gorr’s head, anything that can make her feel like a character we KNOW and is looking for catharsis and parentage.

Simultaneously, we need it to set up as a desire for Thor himself! Honestly, I really don’t like that he got saddled with the Guardians because that’s just not a part of his story. For example, think how much cleaner it could work if you showed him as the kind of guy at the start who was overly attached to the kids of New Asgard. You could see the comic side of the “wannabe dad” play out and see how much love he wants to give the world. Doing all this would also make us actually feel something when those kids go missing. Better yet, it would give a space to actually set-up the storm-breaker thing by showing all the kids wanting to play with it and shoot lightning and it could be like “no, play with your own toys!” It’s the exact thing that would turn the neat finale moment where all the toys get stormbreak power into an actual moment of catharsis (you would also have to set up that this is a thing that Thor’s ax could actually DO). If this is a movie about parentage, it has to make that a pay-off with the characters in question. If you don’t? Then it’s just a random result. And honestly, it just makes Love feel like a weird consolation prize in the loss of Jane, which should NOT feel like the case whatsoever.

Speaking of which, Jane’s arc and the use of Cancer is… hoo boy. Look, cancer is something that’s touched everyone’s lives, which MAY make it seem like a universal experience that a storyteller could touch on, but it’s just so loaded that it never, ever works that way. If you’re gonna use it, you really gotta honor it in a way that doesn’t make it feel like you’re using it as a mere plot point. And there’s moments of sensitivity and normalization, but again, it’s not about tone, it’s about the intent. Because in the end, my 10,000 dollar question is about what’s is it about? It feels so odd in this shifting metaphor way. What is the hammer actually doing here? What is it trying to say about strength and projection? What is the point of making this story about star crossed lovers? And what about her entrance into Valhalla, which gets so damn theological I almost don’t know what to say? The film will touch on all these little points that feel like they could be in the right ballpark, but it lacks a clear, striking arc with Jane to make it resonate with story meaning, not just sentiment.

So what are all these problems a symptom of? Honestly, I don’t think it’s a lack of know how, it just feels like it all needed a couple more drafts. It all feels like a director who is spread thin, which can get into the real problem of over-saturation and why so many directors like to go one thing at a time. Because one of the biggest important factors of quality is time. And it’s hard to watch a movie that will have a really great executed sequence like the black and white planet battle (maybe it’s just that black and white actually requires the use of CONTRAST in a shot) and some other scenes that feel way, way lazier than I’d ever want to see in this work (also, did anyone feel like that was the exact Rick and Morty joke when they crashed into the smaller planet?). Anyway, it’s all about the difference of making the conversation about authorship versus getting endlessly caught up on the author. Because as much as I loved this plotline, it’s that weird that one of the best drawn relationships in the film deals with the jealousy of an ax (and it’s an example of what Taika can do very well in terms of giving meaning to the absurd). All of these things are real problems, but I don’t think they're the kind of things that should be turning this film into this hugely divisive piece of work.

And I feel like getting past that depends on our ability to go…

5. BEYOND THE VIBES

As I said at the top, sometimes the goal of writing is to look at a spectrum of opinions and try to find the common ground of what we’re all talking about. I don’t have some amazing perfect characterization for why you may feel a certain way about this movie. I just don’t want us to all feel like we’re in the Tower of Babel. And I want us to realize that there’s some potentially loaded issues that go into this one in particular. And most of all, I want us to realize the deeper forces at play. Because there was another funny tweet by the person who made the joke at the top and said “Taika could get a Star Wars movie in purgatory on vibes alone. Pretty remarkable.” Which is definitely a funny joke, but the whole point is that vibes are always part of an incredibly complicated system.

Everyone’s arguing, but somehow it all feels misdirected or reductive. We’re asking if the marvel formula has broken down! Is it Fickleness! Is it Taika! Is it using Cancer! Is it Tone! Is it too many jokes! We’re all just all just trying to figure it out, using the resources we understand. But the more I write, the more I realize how staggeringly personal movies are and how much they’re grounded in what we relate to. As much as we have power of analysis, our “home base” feeling is so often tied to what emotions are being tapped into and what we feel is for us. There’s streaks and personalizations. Sure, they both like de-powering the fantasy, but Raimi’s is way more white guy heteronormative and Taika’s is more queer, and it’s not a mere accident we sometimes see audiences splitting along those lines. But none of this is inherently a problem. We’re all playing the same game in the same way (kind of). And all I’m trying to create is this sense of mindfulness for what is at the root of our connections. And most of all, we’re trying to find the more vulnerable center points. For instance, with Nolan and all his cool, posh characters? One of the reasons I feel like Dunkirk is the most emotional thing he’s ever made is because it gets at the heart of fear and that emotional reservation, in particular with the way it creates existential dread of “how much time we have left.” I see that scared kid on the beach and I think that’s the beating heart of his empathy. And I think extending that throughout the rest of his work helps it make more sense. Because it’s the way to look at the piece of media through “your most vulnerable self.”

Which is why I often gravitate toward the question: “who do you feel like you ARE when you watch this movie?” And how much it can shape our response. In Love and Thunder,  it’s perhaps tellings how often I feel like Natalie Portman, ogling that sweet dumb idiot in Thor. Thus, the more we make our viewing not about “yourself,” the more you oddly find a spectrum within yourself. Because we are all doing this all of the time. And in talking about it, in understanding where we’re coming from, what we want, and yes, understanding how sometimes a few little story decisions can impact effectiveness, can really help us meld us as we talk about it in groups. And if we don’t? They just seem to make the drawing lines of all this more palpable. But it’s probably not about fickleness, or vibes, or even what may seem annoying. There’s a lot of big, complicated forces at work here and appraising them isn’t always cut and dry.

Sometimes, the best thing we can be is cautious.

<3HULK