We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Cody watches a couple disappointing franchise additions.
THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER (2022)
Back in the day, there was a lot of talk about people thinking the even-numbered entries in the Star Trek film franchise were significantly better than the odd-numbered entries (which is to say that parts 2, 4, and 6 were much better than 1, 3, and 5). Four movies into the Thor film franchise, we see the opposite pattern emerging. The first Thor was a decent superhero movie, but Thor: The Dark World is considered to be one of the lesser films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then director Taika Waititi came along and really shook things up by boosting up the humor for Thor: Ragnarok. Problem is, Waititi returned for Thor: Love and Thunder, a movie that pushes the humor even further – and wasn’t nearly as well received as Ragnarok was.
When Love and Thunder was released, the actors on the press tour seemed to talk about the amount of deleted scenes almost as much, or even more, than the finished film. Waititi hacked a lot of movie out to reach the film’s 119 minute running time, but he said that everything that was cut was expendable. Most of it had been humorous tangents that wouldn’t have added anything but extra minutes and more laughs. But even the final cut feels like one long humorous tangent, a collection of half-baked ideas that were tossed together just to give Waititi, co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and the cast excuses to tell some goofy jokes. There are some very dark and serious ideas at the center of the story, but they don’t have much weight because the movie feels ridiculous from beginning to end.
As Avengers: Endgame wrapped up, the Asgardian god of thunder Thor was seen heading into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy – which led some fans, including myself, to hope that we’d be seeing a full Thor and Guardians team-up movie, possibly titled Asgardians of the Galaxy. But that wasn’t to be. While we’re told that Thor and the Guardians have had some classic adventures between Endgame and Love and Thunder, we don’t get to see much of the Guardians before they and Thor part ways less than 30 minutes into this movie. Thor is called away from the Guardians by his old pal Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander), and it was good to see her, very briefly, after Alexander missed out on being in Ragnarok because she was busy working on a TV show. Sif warns Thor about a fellow called Gorr the God Butcher, who has gotten his hands on a blade called the Necrosword, which is capable of killing gods.
Gorr is played by Christian Bale and looks super creepy. The character has a tragic back story where his prayers to his god of choice Rapu went unanswered, so his young daughter Love died of thirst and starvation on their world, which had become a wasteland. Rapu was Gorr’s first victim when he got the Necrosword, and now he’s on a mission to kill all gods. Which is a really interesting, intense set-up, but it doesn’t amount to much because we’re too busy watching Thor and characters around him act like doofuses while a pair of goats scream. Repeatedly. Some of those doofuses are Thor’s fellow gods, which we see at a place called Omnipotence City, where Zeus (Russell Crowe) is revealed to be little more than a cheesy celebrity.
Thor is joined on his mission to thwart Gorr by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), the rock creature Korg (voiced by Waititi), and his ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who is suffering from terminal cancer. Thor’s hammer Mjolnir was shattered in Thor: Ragnarok and he replaced it with the battle axe Stormbreaker in Avengers: Infinity War, but when Jane comes in contact with the pieces of Mjolnir in this film the hammer reforms and gifts her with the same powers as Thor. Which was cool to see, but like everything else in the movie, it felt like more could have been done with the idea.
Even Thor’s powers are an issue in this, because he is extremely over-powered. If he were as powerful in all of his previous appearances as he is in Love and Thunder, the battles would have been won much quicker. There’s even a scene where he is able to gift his powers to multiple other characters at once. Imagine if he had thought to do this when he was fighting alongside the Avengers! It could be said that he is able to give the powers to the characters here because they’re all children, and children are worthy of having the power of Thor while adults lose their worthiness along the way. You could say that, but the movie doesn’t say that. So it’s just left looking like Thor can give his powers to anyone at any time.
Thor: Love and Thunder is entertaining at times, for sure. But it’s an underwhelming mess overall, quite a letdown after Thor: Ragnarok. And it all builds up to a baffling, eye-rolling ending with a character I have no interest in seeing return for future sequels. Surprisingly, I would rather watch Thor: The Dark World than Thor: Love and Thunder.
CHUCKY: SEASON 2 (2022)
The Child’s Play / Chucky franchise is one that goes off the rails frequently. The original film was a brilliant, dark slasher that worked so well, it managed to make Chucky, a doll possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, a horror icon. Child’s Play 2 was the same but bigger, and the rushed Child’s Play 3 didn’t work quite as well as its predecessors. So when Bride of Chucky came along seven years after part 3 and leaned into comedy, it was like a breath of fresh air. But then franchise mastermind Don Mancini went too far with the goofball meta humor and delivered Seed of Chucky, the most poorly received entry in the franchise. Mancini needed to course correct – and after considering starting from scratch with a remake, he ended up making the direct-to-video sequel Curse of Chucky, which took the franchise back to its horror roots. The follow-up Cult of Chucky went weirder, but then Mancini was able to blend the weirdness of Cult with a back-to-the-basics approach for the first season of the Chucky TV show. Now we have season 2 of Chucky... and we’ve gone off the rails again.
I waited until all eight episodes of Chucky season 2 were available so I could binge them. And I’m glad I did, because I would have had an even worse time watching these episodes if I had to deal with tuning in for them weekly. While I avoided spoilers when the episodes were airing, I did see some headlines and interviews about episodes, and I’m shocked I never saw fans complaining about how bad this season was. I thought it was teetering on the edge of being awful, and the two franchise fans I watched it with didn’t enjoy it either.
Charles Lee Ray figured out how to split his soul into multiple bodies in Cult of Chucky, and there were a whole lot of Chucky dolls possessed and ready to wreak havoc in the season 1 cliffhanger. Thankfully, most of those Chuckys get wiped out early in season 2 – but there are still multiple Chuckys to deal with as the season goes on. Season 1 protagonists Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur), Lexy Cross (Alyvia Alyn Lind), and Devon Evans (Bjorgvin Arnarson) are back in the lead, and when a Chucky detonates a bomb in their general vicinity they end up being blamed for it. Instead of getting sent off to juvenile detention, they are enrolled in the Catholic School of the Incarnate Lord, which is set up in an old building that used to be the orphanage that Charles Lee Ray grew up in. And Chucky’s old psychiatrist Dr. Mixture (Rosemary Dunsmore) is still a staff member. The school is headed up by Father Bryce, played by Devon Sawa, who already played two different characters in season 1, and there are also some nuns around, including Lara Jean Chorostecki as Sister Ruth... a character who, in one of the many mind-boggling storylines in this season, comes to believe that Chucky the living doll is Jesus Christ Himself.
Well, she thinks one of the Chuckys is Jesus. As mentioned, there are multiple that the characters have to deal with – including one they manage to brainwash into becoming Good Chucky, who is actually adorable; a Chucky with a muscular body; and a bald Chucky who is referred to as The Colonel and is quite reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz character from Apocalypse Now. So reminiscent that Brad Dourif, who provides the voices for all of the Chuckys, does a Brando impression while speaking The Colonel’s lines. The character even has a trippy ‘Nam flashback, which is just one of the bizarre elements in a season that is packed with bizarreness. It is frequently annoyingly bizarre, and made me wonder “What were Mancini and the writers thinking?” on many occasions.
While we’re getting a mixture of Chucky strangeness and general dullness in the Catholic school side of things, episodes also cut away to catch up with Chucky’s girlfriend/bride Tiffany Valentine, who has been inhabiting the body of Hollywood actress Jennifer Tilly since the events of Seed of Chucky. Tiffany has Curse and Cult heroine Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif) imprisoned in her home, having removed the arms and legs of the woman, who also has a bit of Chucky’s essence trapped in her mind and body. And the season ties up loose ends from Seed of Chucky when Chucky and Tiffany’s children Glen and Glenda (both played by Lachlan Watson) come to visit their mother.
Chucky season 2 often veers into Seed of Chucky territory, especially in an episode where Jennifer Tilly is visited by her friends Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, and Sutton Stracke of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. That episode is set in Tilly’s home, and the only Chucky we get in it comes in wrap-around segments where Chucky speaks directly to the audience like he’s the host of a talk show. With a special guest appearance by professional wrestler Liv Morgan. That episode was particularly painful to sit through.
The cast of the show, which also includes Alex Vincent and Christine Elise from earlier installments and Bella Higginbotham as likeable new addition Nadine, all do fine work in their roles. They were just given seriously questionable material to work with this time around.
Making this season such a direct follow-up to Seed of Chucky seemed like a bad idea to me, given how few fans that movie has. I have to assume that this Seed weirdness didn’t go over as well with the average viewer as the less-strange season 1 did. I found the season difficult to watch as a fan. If I wasn’t a fan, I would have tuned out early on. USA Network and Syfy announced that Chucky had been renewed for season 2 the same day the season 1 finale was going to air. About a month has gone by since season 2 ended, and there’s still no word on a season 3, so it seems like season 2 might have made the networks less enthusiastic about the series. I would definitely understand if it has, because it so effectively killed my Chucky enthusiasm that I wouldn’t mind not seeing anything else from this franchise. Of course, if they do make another season of the TV show or another Chucky movie, I’ll be watching it because that’s what I do.
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