“Another classic Thor adventure!”

It’s an early quip from Chris Hemsworth’s hulking supe, an attempt to wrestle an ever-transmogrifying character with something approaching a… catchphrase? Later in this, his fourth solo outing (a Marvel first, incidentally), Hemsworth’s God of Thunder and King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) take a couple of cheeky jabs at Natalie Portman’s newly-returned Jane Foster, for her hokey attempts at forging a catchphrase of her own. Talk about potshot calling the kettle black.

It’s indicative of the at-times almost chaotic tonal freefall that besets much of Thor: Love and Thunder. Taika Waititi waded in with 2017’s Ragnarok and injected perhaps the most stoic and sullen of the MCU alum with a flippant 80s punk vibe that, for the most part, worked to great effect. Hemsworth was already establishing himself elsewhere as having the comedy chops to go alongside the rippling physique, and paired with Waititi’s penchant for irreverence, Thor, it seems, was reborn.

Thunder, alas, does not seem to strike twice.

Perhaps most surprising is that, when you scrub off the Waititi silliness (which remains mostly enjoyable in a dismissive, inconsequential sort of fashion), the core bones of Love and Thunder are remarkably similar to 2013’s first Thor sequel, Alan Taylor’s placid and formulaic The Dark World (generally regarded as something of a low ebb amongst early MCU offerings). Thor and friends set out on a galaxy-trotting adventure to stop an embittered super villain from getting his vengeful claws on an apocalyptic McMuffin, all under the umbrella of impending doom for do-gooding love interest Foster.

True, there is a lot of Waititi nonsense/fun (delete as applicable) here. For some, this will make Love and Thunder a more buoyant jaunt, but even ardent fans of the distinctive Kiwi director will likely feel the recurrent undercutting of tension. There’s an overall breeziness and fleeting sensation to much of what transpires here, a little discombobulating when it covers things as heady as parental bereavement and terminal cancer.

Portman’s much-hyped return as Jane Foster, newly imbued with the powers of her godly ex (hammer included) is at least underpinned with some poignancy, but it’s often rather sped through. Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher begins strong, but then gets relatively sidelined to glorified child snatcher for much of the rest of the film. The vast majority of his god-slewing atrocities are completely bypassed. There’s a niggling sense that Waititi wants to get all this heavier, comic-booky stuff out of the way so he can get back to cracking puns and being goofy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the main man himself. Russel Crowe pops up and injects some genuine laughs into a second reel pitstop to a City of Gods that really, surely should have had something to say about that Thanos chap. But the biggest goofball is supreme ‘himbo’, Thor himself. There’s an undeniable sense that Hemsworth is enjoying himself in this Mk II Odinson, and there’s some gleeful silliness in concepts such as the anthropomorphic jealousy between his iconic two weapons, which offers classic rom-com vibes with a goofy Marvel/Waititi twist. But still, looking at the character over the course of his early Avengers days, the brooding ‘dadbod’ of Endgame, to this almost parodic figure, and you can’t help but wonder if the joke is starting to wear a bit thin.

“There’s an undeniable sense that Hemsworth is enjoying himself in this Mk II Odinson… but you can’t help wonder if the joke is starting to wear a bit thin.”

In fact, that’s true of Waititi’s handling of the franchise as a whole. There’s enough here that works, that is funny, that is entertaining. It generally avoids integrating itself into any wider MCU shenanigans, though this could be partly because post-Endgame, the MCU as a whole seems to be flailing around aimlessly as Kevin Feige stretches himself out to Reed Richards-defying proportions. It saves some heftier emotive thwacks for its third reel. There’s no multi-verse ‘madness’ at play (thank Zeus), and fans of the character will likely appreciate the full circle feeling that the handling of the Thor and Jane relationship evokes here, ABBA-abetted flashback sequences included. A giggle-worthy duo of scene-stealing, screaming giant goats are quintessential Waititi fare, even if they end up being over-applied.

But where Ragnarok felt fresh and invigorating, Thunder feels familiar, trodden. We’ve seen it all before, including elsewhere in the Waititi oeuvre. A late-game beat involving kidnapped Asgardian kids, for instance, feels ripped straight from the finale of his 2019 Oscar-winning JoJo Rabbit. And whilst Ragnarok had Waititi stepping in, sprucing up and having fun with a screenplay not of his penning, Love and Thunder is his output from page to screen.

It’s difficult to dislike Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s just how firmly it lands in the category of being solid but unspectacular. In a world of laden, three-hour slogs (The Batman, anyone?), getting back to a relatively lean 120 minutes is no bad thing. It’s just a shame that it routinely bypasses much in the way of substance to grand-slam yet more style and silliness.

Ultimately, we’re eight visits in for Hemsworth, and Odin-knows how many more for Marvel releases as a whole. Fatigue is, perhaps, inevitable. But it is a little surprising that, only two outings in, the Waititi magic has already become rote. That it is sprinkled on a film that, much like Multiverse of Madness before it, hung on a painfully atypical Marvel structure, only compounds the beige.

It proves to be, after all ‘another classic Thor adventure’, but precious little more.