Thor: Love and Thunder

The thirty-sixth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though only its twenty-ninth feature film, Thor: Love and Thunder is the sequel to Thor: Ragnarok and the fourth film centered on the Mighty Thor, making the God of Thunder the first MCU hero to headline more than three films.

In the time since Avengers: Endgame, Thor has been using his Story-Breaker Power to help out the Guardians of the Galaxy, while also getting back in shape, before a mass of distress signals come in from every Physical God in the galaxy, setting Thor on the path to confront the God Butcher and an unexpected blast from his past.

Tropes used in Thor: Love and Thunder include:

• A Lighter Shade of Black: Any of the Asgardians' own pompousness is put to the shame by the other gods of the universe. If anything, Asgard is the closest thing the MCU has to God Is Good.
• Adaptational Heroism: Gorr the God Butcher. In the comics, he'd long devolved into Evil Is Petty but here his crusade is framed more as Pay Evil Unto Evil.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • In the comics, Gorr's gods had the excuse of being engaged in a war with Knull. In the film, Rapu and his ilk won, decisively, over Knull but refuse to help the planet just because they're Jerkass Gods.
  • Omnipotence City. In the comics, it was a Truce Zone to mainly discuss the Celestial Bureaucracy. Here it's essentially the MCU's version of Herogasm.
• Advertised Extra: Sif and the Guardians of the Galaxy have a much smaller role than the trailers suggested.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The Asgardians have taken a shine to Earth culture. Heimdall's son is such a fan of Guns N' Roses that he's renamed himself "Axl". Helps that his birth name, "Astrid" is traditionally a girl's name on Earth.
• Amazonian Beauty: Natalie Portman really did bulk up for this film.
• An Aesop: Kindness. Whoever you are and however much you have, it never hurts to just be kind. It's Thor's love and concern for Jane that allows Gorr to realize that not all of the gods are monsters.
• Asshole Victim: Deconstructed. Gorr identifies the gods he's killed as such. But as Valkyrie points out, aside from Rapu and his ilk, none of the gods actually wronged Gorr personally.
• Awesome but Impractical:
  • Strombreaker is framed as such. Yes it channels incredible cosmic power to serve as an Amplifier Artifact but Thor himself is already so powerful that in his hands, the axe is dangerous to control.
  • Jane using Mjølnir. When transformed, she has all of Thor's power. But using the hammer is so energy intensive that it drains her body's own ability to fight the cancer. She uses it one last time as a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Back From the Dead: Gorr uses his wish to bring his daughter back to life.
• Batman Gambit: Gorr abducts the Asgardian children because he knows Thor will rush to a rescue mission and bring him Stormbreaker.
• Bigger Bad: It's implied that the reason Gorr's planet became a Death World is because it was hit really hard by Thanos' Snap.
• The Bus Came Back: Jane Foster returns to headline this film. Sif, Selvig and Darcy also return after sitting out Ragnarok.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Seeing what a jerkass Rapu was caused the formerly devout Gorr to turn against all the gods.
  • Thor to the Guardians. After admiring him as a new leader, his ego and Smug Super traits have quickly soured their view. Says a lot that Nebula seems to prefer Quill over him.
  • Their similar powers led Thor to admiring Zeus. Thor learns the hard way that one should never meet their heroes.
• Call Back: While the lesser Olympians bleed out like mortals, the higher gods who die turn to orange/gold dust like Odin did in Thor: Ragnarok.
• The Cameo: Darryl Jacobson from Team Thor is working at a tour guide on New Asgard.
• Crossover Cosmology: Thor crosses path with the Olympian gods.
  • Among the Olympians, they use both their Greek and Roman names.
• C-List Fodder: While Gorr's victims are characters from Marvel's comic line, none of them are really important and just exist to serve as the Worf Effect to show how dangerous Gorr is.
• A Death in the Limelight: The film serves as this for Jane Foster.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Shadow Realm.
• Destructive Saviour: Thor saves the Sacred Temple on Indigarr from the Booskans. By destroying it.
• Empathic Weapon:
  • Stormbreaker. And it's very much a Crazy Jealous Guy about Thor expressing fondness for other weapons.
  • The Necrosword clearly has a will of its own.
• Evil Counterpart: Gorr to Jane Foster. Both are empowered by a godly weapon that is killing them. Jane uses her second life to help people while Gorr is concerned only with his selfish desires.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: When Gorr tries to pull a "Not So Different", Valkyrie fires back with this. All of his victims have nothing to do with what happened to him.
• Gender Flip: In the comics, Gorr had a son named "Agar". Here he has a daughter named "Love".
• Glass Cannon: Zeus. Admittedly he was struck by his own divine weapon.
• Hero of Another Story: The Guardians fly off to respond to other distress signals.
• Jerkass Gods: Pretty much all of them but the Asgardians.
• Kill the God: Gorr's goal. Thor manages to convince him to amend it to "bring his daughter back."
• Killed Off for Real: Jane Foster.
• Last of His Kind: Gorr is the last of his people. He dies at the end but Love's resurrection passes the title onto her.
• Lighter and Softer: When compared to the rest of the Phase 4 movies, Love and Thunder has a lot more overt humour and a brighter color palette.
• MacGuffin: To access Eternity's realm, Gorr needs an artifact that can summon the Bifrost: Stormbreaker.
• Meta Twist: The film seemed to be following the trend that started in Spider-Man: Far From Home of new heroes taking up the mantles and responsibilities of their predecessors but Thor ends the film still being the God of Thunder while Jane dies.
• Mood Whiplash: Like its predecessor, it alternates between serious drama and comedy at the drop of a hat.
• Naked People Are Funny: Zeus "flicks too hard" and disrobes Thor in front of all of Omnipotence City. Everyone goes right to Eating the Eye Candy.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • The golden god of Gorr's planet is given the name "Rapu".
  • Inverted. Thanks to rights issues, the previous owner of the Necrosword is never referred to as Knull.
• Near Villain Victory: Gorr was seconds away from victory before seeing that Thor isn't a Jerkass God gives him doubts about his crusade.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Darcy brushes over the events of WandaVision in this manner.
  • At some point, the Asgardians actually ate children. Thor refers to it as a "dark, shameful period" of their history.
  • They also had a seat in Omnipotence City but they clearly fell out of favour with the other gods.
• Not So Different: Gorr to the main three. Like Thor, he couldn't save his loved ones. Like Jane, his Amplifier Artifact is Cast From Lifespan. Like Valkyrie, his sorry state in life is due to a powerful god not thinking it worth the time to fix.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Gorr's Start of Darkness. Eternity averts it at the end.
• Real After All: Eternals hinted that the Greek Gods were the Eternals themselves being mythologized over the eons. Turns out at least some of those myths were about genuine gods.
• Reforged Blade: Mjølnir was shattered but the enchantments on it remained. Thor's command that it protect Jane causes it to reform.
• Sequel Hook: Zeus sending Hercules after Thor.
• Shout-Out:
  • On Indigarr, Thor rides Strombreaker like a broomstick from Harry Potter.
  • The invading Booskans would not look out of place among the creatures from Labyrinth.
  • Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder reference the famous "Screaming Goat" meme.
• Status Quo Is God: Thor is back to being thin. And wielding Mjølnir by the film's end.
• The Stinger: Jane Foster being greeted by Heimdall in Valhalla. Perhaps, despite being Killed Off for Real, the story isn't quite done with her yet.
• Thinking Up Portals: Why Stormbreaker is so coveted by Gorr.
• Truer to the Text: Zeus. After the Titanomachy, Classical Mythology generally portrayed him as a deadbeat Depraved Bisexual drunk who was only in power because he was too powerful to overthrow. While other Marvel media generally portrayed him as a warrior, this Zeus is much more in line with the myths.
• The Unreveal: The audience never hears Jane's perfected catchphrase.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Gorr. Most gods in the MCU are total Jerkass Gods who don't give a damn about anyone but themselves and most seen in the film do little to discredit his belief, Zeus being perfectly willing to sacrifice other gods for his sake. The only thing that ruins his argument is that the gods he's targeting, Asshole Victims they may be, didn't actually wrong him in any way.
  • Downplayed for Zeus. Since the Necrosword is Cast From Lifespan and will kill Gorr, all the gods need do is wait, especially since Thor risks bringing Stormbreaker to Gorr. But he's still willing to allow innocent children to die in the name of his safety.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Fittingly given the character's mythological origins, Zeus' accent is somewhere between Greek and Italian.
• Wrecked Weapon: Jane is able to use Mjølnir to destroy the Necrosword.