Love and Thunder is, quite simply, a mess.
Category: superhero
It’s still an overstuffed show, but in building up the relationships audiences truly care about, season 3’s existential musings become time well spent.
Wanders from MCU standards without completely losing the trail, and every strange cranny it finds proves enlivening.
No, the myth that superhero movies have to choose between being bombastic, money-making productions or contemplative allegories is just that, a myth, and Zhao had the potential to bring the false dichotomy crashing down. Unfortunately, the picture she’s made may just reinforce it.
Smaller in scale than recent outings and less afraid of its characters’ emotions, it introduces the wayward but destined for greatness Shang-Chi with plenty of the tricks the MCU used to create its box office supremacy while finally pushing the series in a mildly different direction.
That Black Widow doesn’t find the right way to tell one of [the MCU’s] most serious stories to date is frustrating, especially considering it comes off as a mere tepid misfire.
A movie that is fascinating in its first half, which is basically a feature-length setup full of promising starts and weird asides, but peters out as the plot kicks in and real structure must be applied. It thrives on Snyder’s idiosyncrasies , and while I can’t in good conscience call it a success, it’s just about the best such an ill-conceived mess could’ve ever become.
Emily Wheeler Movie Ops 