Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) is a children's story

From every Guns N Roses song to every "my hammer is my ex" joke, the new Marvel tale starring the god of thunder is the high school play version of a children's story. Thor (Hemsworth) returns to reunite with a newly powered Mighty Thor Jane Foster (Portman) to face off against Gorr (Bale) as he attempts to kill all the gods. What could be more basic than that?

     We meet Thor some time after Avengers: Endgame tooling around with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Back in fighting shape, the god of thunder then learns that gods from around the galaxy are being slaughtered. Good, bad, and all between. He makes his way back to Earth where he finds Jane Foster, now wielding Mjolnir while fighting off cancer. They go on an adventure, united against Gorr and his god-killing sword before he can reach Eternity and remake everything.

     Sounds like a standard Marvel story, right?

     Except what we are watching is not what happened. We are watching the story that adults tell to children to make them better people, to fight the monsters, and to find something to love. The Thor that Taika Watiti created with Ragnarok is a myth becoming a legend. 

     The trailer and the movie starts with Korg talking to a group of children, but he might as well be talking to us. "Grab your popcorn…" he starts, as if millions across the globe had not already done that in the theater. There's no real break from reality after that to signal we have transitioned from "someone telling a story" to "us watching that story." We are watching the narrative bounce and dance on the cave wall in a shadow play.

     The movie reinforces this multiple times. Each character gets to sit down with children at some point. Gorr has his grotesque puppet show. Thor empowers them. Even Valkyrie (Thompson) has a montage dealing with interviews with humans so much younger than her they might as well be infants. 

     The only exception to the children rule is Jane, but she has a very grown up problem. Her villain in the story is cancer, and it is killing her when she is not using the strength of Thor. But children's stories do not deal with existential problems like that with subtlety. They teach us to fight monsters, and that is what Jane is doing with her last breaths. Jane beats her villain by showing up and being present and is rewarded.

     Rewards are the ultimate incentive in a children's story. Along with explanations, stories with gods in modern times offer hope as a reward. They offer the idea that all the struggle and pain here on earth means something. That a life exists beyond this one where pain is a memory. The stinger scene with Jane meeting Heimdahl (Elba) in Valhalla caps off the story with that reward as our main hero, Thor, struggles onward.

     Of course, when I say "struggles," I mean "loves." That's another end cap to this story and to most children's tales. Life continues in a more fulfilling way. Thor and Love continue onward, each with someone to care for who cares for them right back.

     I can only hope this is also the story that Thor tells Love when he tucks her in at night. The story of an evil force of nature killing gods. The hope that gods, even flawed ones, can bring light into the darkest places. The story of the women Thor loved the most. The story of how Love came to be.