Thor: Love and Thunder

Star quality can be difficult to define. What is it that makes an actor appealing in a way that goes beyond the deliberately simplistic confines of brand-first filmmaking? Is above-the-title billing even a consideration that can be applied to the modern Marvel machine? Since Robert Downey Jr's departure there seems to have been a concerted effort to tidy away the idea of a bankable, middle-aged, leading man. The unending Disney slate preferring, instead, to offer up a hyper-caffeinated production line of poppy neophytes - a sort of The Mickey Mouse Club for big-screen action cinema. Whatever the desired destination, Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder presents an interesting case study in silver screen allure not 10 minutes into its runtime. We get a Chris-off: Chris Pratt versus Chris Hemsworth. Pratt, recently seen in the excretable Jurassic World Dominion and a veteran of several streaming-only also-rans, seems better able to communicate the snappy (and increasingly dull) impatience that underlines the majority of the interactions in this four colour universe - he's a living embodiment of Joss Whedon-style scripting then. Pratt offering himself up as a mouthpiece for the frustrated point-scoring that has, undoubtedly, burrowed itself deep into the series' DNA - a tick that refuses to be dislodged. 

Chris Hemsworth does something completely different. There's very little sense that he's concerned with seeming cool or even credible within this specific Summer blockbuster context. It's not even that he's behaving above the material, he's simply apart from the myth-making we've been trained to expect from the live action Disney floppies. With that in mind, Hemsworth's performance as the oblivious himbo secretary in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call seems to have become the actor's calling card. Hemsworth, likely recruited for that film because of his then-recent Marvel ascension, revealed a genuine instinct for absurdist comedy; one that seems to be completely at odds with his muscular movie star looks. If anything his fluency in pure nonsense adds an extra layer of bafflement to his strapping performances. Watching Love and Thunder, it was difficult to not be constantly reminded of Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam's post-Monty Python projects - Ripping Yarns or Erik the Viking; Time Bandits or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - pieces in which expensive spectacle operates as a sight gag rather than an invitation to gasp. Collectively, these works all revolve around deluded maniacs who, it is eventually revealed, have their heart in the right place. At this point, Hemsworth's Thor has had his peculiarities exploded. The odd farcical aside has become the totality of this character. Broadly, Hemsworth's Thor is an invincible superhero who combines the moulded physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger with the good-natured psychosis of a Michael Palin. 

Thor by Tom Scioli

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Film Thor's come a long way from a misfiring debut that saw him propping up a mid-range blockbuster with (maybe) two distinct locations. Thanks to Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok is instantly recognisable as a work that has flowed from the pure delight experienced when flicking through one of Jack Kirby or Walt Simonson's cosmic comics.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Like last summer's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron is an accurate big-screen simulation of randomly dipping into Marvel's pre-Image output. Although a complete villain originates and disintegrates over the course of the film, you're left with an overwhelming sense that you've just had a brief insight into a larger, never-ending epic. Age of Ultron is reminiscent of an incomplete run fished out of a ballast bin or an 80-page Summer Special jammed with luridly coloured crossovers.

The first Avengers was notable for its smoothness. Whedon juggled umpteen leads, a get-the-gang-together plot, and a few decent car crashes with such ease that it was actually jarring. Whedon was too efficient, nothing stuck in your throat. Avengers was entertaining with well-structured character interactions but it didn't feel particularly personal. It was more like billion dollar problem solving. Momentarily exciting then quickly forgotten, like the red plastic lump Robert Duvall obliterates in THX 1138. In comparison, Avengers 2 is messy and overloaded. A rampaging mutant that offers zero resolution.

This cinema release (home video hype suggests an utterly superfluous hour is to be added for the BD/DVD release) is so laser focused on hitting beats that there's nothing else. The story's all in place but the communication is rarely verbal, it's geography or image or sometimes even a sound. The film is also littered with sequel embeds. Spotted around the action are elliptical, slashed to the bone interludes that promises further, catastrophic product. As far as the blockbuster sphere goes, this is world-building straight out of David Yates' Harry Potter playbook. Make it vague, keep them wanting more.

Doom is treated like a destination or a feeling, a word on the tip of your tongue. You can't quite get it out. A hypnotised Tony Stark sees Hulk pinned to an asteroid with barbed, alien spears. Thor takes a dip in a holy well and dreams of Ragnarok. Avengers 2 is the tipping point, permanence creeping in around the edges, putting the team off their stride for a two-part finale written and directed by someone else. Whedon's sequel is breathless, a smarmy set-piece generator that doesn't stop building momentum. The writer / director's parting gift to the Marvel Universe is an action collage that has learnt a valuable lesson from apex franchise entry Fast & Furious 6. Stay in your seats. There's a great big bruiser on the way.

Marvel's The Avengers

Joss Whedon brings his ensemble cast skills to bear on The Avengers, a billion dollar victory lap for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Whedon finds plausible perspectives for each of his heroes as they find themselves unwittingly enrolled into the financially lucrative collective. Dr Banner wants to stay in the lab, Iron Man and Captain America rub each other up the wrong way, a bemused Thor acts like he's working with a gang of tall monkeys. Although no individual hero (or constituent franchise element, to be more exact) gets special treatment, Whedon puts work in elevating Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow from the haircut we saw in Iron Man 2 to an indefatigable linchpin. 

Johansson gets the real hero moments - shaking herself out of Hulk-induced shock to go punch some memories into her amnesiac friend or impressing the living embodiment of the Greatest Generation with her suicidal enthusiasm. While the guys call and play a cosmic game of gridiron, it's notably Widow who zeroes in on the source of the threat and sets to trashing it. Come the finale - Thor's bad-egg brother Loki summons an anonymous intergalactic army to level New York - Whedon uses action to express character beats, demonstrating how the team works instead of just telling us. It's all faintly reminiscent of the Nuke in Hell's Kitchen interlude from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Daredevil: Born Again; a page full of grimy panels blown up into a chromed, forty-minute set-piece. Cap shouts out the strategies, his team dutifully obey. It's Hulk who steals the show though, moving with the same soaring, anvil like grace as he did in Ang Lee's gem. Hulk is Mark Ruffalo scaled up into a ferocious hybrid of Lou Ferrigno and a Sal Buscema drawing; his gleeful lack of restraint easily the film's giddiest thrill.

Thor

Unfortunately, Thor is little more than perfunctory world-building in preparation for The Avengers. Despite a storyline that takes place over three distinct realms, Thor is surprisingly small in scale. Earth action is rooted to a tiny desert town and a few anonymous science rooms. Asgard is one gigantic, empty room, the Norse pantheon shrunken down to Thor's family unit and a few bumbling acquaintances.

Jotunheim, the domain of the frost giants, is one starkly lit glacier, manned by an army of unremarkable action figures. The cosmic creativity of Jack Kirby and Walter Simonson is lightly stressed in the winding, celestial architecture of Asgard, but it's no exaggeration to say that there's significantly more imagination in a film like cut-price Cannon's Masters of the Universe than this.

Thor isn't completely without merit though. When the plot will leave him alone, Chris Hemsworth gets to play Thor as an arrogant super-Viking, inclined to booze and batter his way around exile. This culture clash is quickly abandoned to knuckle down to action machinations, but it's the best use of the actor. Hemsworth, and the film around him, are much more comfortable tuned to the central character's hulking, petulant charisma. Thor is much more fun to watch striding into a pet shop and demanding a steed than stranded in unclear, canted, computer animated drudgery.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki is similarly schizophrenic, pinballing back and forth between an interesting, conflicted adversary and a panto villain. With all the major players locked in dynastic drama, it falls to Idris Elba as Heimdall to stress the otherworldly. Elba's God seems to operate on an entirely different plane of consciousness to his Norse stablemates. His speech and intonation are slow and soft, his gaze always locked elsewhere. There's a sense that the universe's information is constantly flowing into him. Heimdall is unmoving and eternal where the other Gods actually seem rather temporary. Elba's performance is the only thing in Thor that evokes a real sense of wonder Everything else borders on dull.