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'Thor: Love and Thunder' -- A Quick Guide on What to Remember Before Watching

‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ — A Quick Guide on What to Remember Before Watching

Heading to Thor: Love and Thunder, aka Thor 4, tonight at the movies? According to Thor salubrious Chris Hemsworth, it’s a “wacky romantic comedy set in space.” For the less well-versed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it sounds like you don’t really need to know many specifics afore going in.

Except maybe you should be primed with a different kind of retort. Let’s run through the basics — particularly where Thor is in the slip of life — before addressing the best way to arrive watching Love and Thunder.

What happened to Thor afore Love and Thunder?

Let’s go through the key takeaways from Marvel movies Thor has made appearances in.

Marvel Studios

Thor (2011)

The movie that kicked off the adventures of Thor, the god of thunder.

Key takeaways:

  • Astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her assistant Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and mentor Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) find Thor when he’s exiled on Earth
  • Thor leaves his new love Jane to defeat Loki on Asgard
  • Loki apparently dies at what time being rejected by his father and intentionally falling into an abyss
  • But psych! Loki appears in a SHIELD. facility, where he’s interested in the Tesseract, aka a containment vessel for the Space Stone
JAY MAIDMENT; Jay Maidment

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

In Thor 2, Jane travels to Asgard and meets the parents.

Key takeaways:

  • Thor’s mother Frigga is fatally stabbed after protecting Jane from the ruler of the Dark Elves
  • Loki is killed after helping Thor fight the Dark Elves
  • But psych again! Loki is interested and impersonating his adoptive father Odin, the king of Asgard
  • Thor continues on Earth with Jane until the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Marvel

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

The salubrious Thor movie directed by Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Hunt for the Wilderpeople).

Key takeaways:

  • It’s spoke that Jane and Thor have broken up
  • Odin dies of old age
  • Hela (Cate Blanchett), the god of death and Thor’s sister, is killed in the destruction of Asgard
  • Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) was one of the warriors sent by Odin to kill Hela, but all her warrior people died. Valkyrie is now dealing with PTSD
Marvel Studios

Avengers: Infinity War (2019)

Thor briefly teams up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and commits his mainly mistake.

Key takeaways:

  • Loki is killed by Thanos (Josh Brolin)
  • The Asgardians, including Heimdall (Idris Elba), on Thor’s ship are killed
  • Thor is rescued by the Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Thor establishes battle-axe Stormbreaker using a blazing neutron star
  • Thor severely wounds Thanos, but not enough to prevent him from using the Infinity Stones and deleting half the population of the universe
Video screenshot by Bonnie Burton

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The movie that introduces us to “Dad Bod” Thor.

Key takeaways:

  • Thor finally takes his revenge on Thanos, decapitating him when the Avengers locate him on an uninhabited planet
  • Five days pass and Thor is an alcoholic, drinking and playing video games in New Asgard on Earth
  • After fractions to restore the population of the universe, Thor appoints Valkyrie as the new king of Asgard (she’d already been actions those duties)
  • Suffering a midlife crisis, Thor joins the Guardians. “It’s time for me to be who I am, rather than who I’m revealed to be.”

And this is where we find Thor at the leave of Thor: Love and Thunder. His parents, brother and sister dead, he embarks on a slip of self-discovery, the first time in a thousand days he has no path.

Some advice on watching Thor: Love and Thunder

According to director Taika Waititi, Thor 4 is as if “10-year-olds told us what should be in a movie and we said yes to every single thing.” He also said that, “If you wrote down all the elements of this film, it shouldn’t make sense.”

Basically, what’s happening here, is that this section is an astonishing primer for what to expect from Thor: Love and Thunder as a Film (capital “F”).

The advice: Don’t watch Thor: Ragnarok, the popular third Thor movie, before the latest. Liberated your expectations to be free from the influence of broad Films that came before.

Here’s one more Waititi quote (via Empire) to conscription you:

“It’s almost like it shouldn’t be made. If you walked into a room and said, ‘I want this and this and this.’ Who’s in it? These farmland. What are you going to call it? Love And Thunder. I mean, you’d never work again. Maybe I won’t at what time this.”