Thor: Love and Thunder confirms who is the best Chris — and it’s not Hemsworth or Pratt

Let’s settle the Chriscourse once and for all. So far, Hollywood’s holy order of hunky white Chrises has revolved around Hemsworth , Pine , Evans and Pratt . Proposals have been made in the recent past for alternatives and additions — Abbott, Messina and Meloni being three of the more popular contenders. The reason for their exclusion is they are considered a different kettle of Chris, not franchise-fronting box-office draws like the Big Four. There is however one who fits the essential criteria. An actor whose body of work encompasses an American Psycho , a Machinist , a Dark Knight , and a warmongering Vice-president. A human chameleon who can out-act the canonised quartet single-handedly. A most worthy nominee for the crown of Chris supremacy. Yes, Christian Bale indeed. And if his latest turn as a grieving dad turned deicidal supervillain in Thor: Love and Thunder doesn’t get him into the Chris™ Hall of Fame, the canon sure needs a rechristening to say the least.

Three Chrises feature in Marvel’s latest three-ring circus from quirksman-in-chief Taika Waititi. But only one possesses the ability to wake us from the VFX coma each time he is on screen. (No points for guessing who.) Returns continue to diminish in MCU’s post-Endgame phase, as the fourth Thor pageant careens through banter and banality. No number of thundering Guns N’ Roses needle drops, space battles, goats or Gods themselves can prevent the movie from sliding into the void of anonymity. What keeps our butts on the seat for two hours is the thrill of watching Bale ham it up, rather than Hemsworth hammer up.

The truism that a superhero movie is only as good as its supervillain needs a little tweaking with the Thor movies. For the adversary battling the Norse God of thunder has often been the only good thing about them. Whether it was Tom Hiddleston as Thor’s jealous half-brother Loki or Cate Blanchett as his deathly sister Hela, both brought a depth to the roles that made the movies they were in considerably more watchable. The same goes for Bale as the forbiddingly named Gorr the God Butcher in the new movie. In yet another reptilian transformation, the actor shapeshifts into a pale, emaciated, black-toothed freakshow, facilitated not by CGI but good old-fashioned make-up. Less a man, more a wraith, Gorr looks like a long-lost bastard child of Nosferatu and Voldemort. Bale manipulates his sinewy physicality to give his character a pronounced sense of menace as well as vulnerability.

The prologue, which serves as Gorr’s origin story, transports us to an arid wasteland of a nameless planet where a desperate but not yet broken father is hunched in prayer to the Gods to save his daughter — to no avail. After burying her, he hears a dark force call to him. On following the voice to a tropical forest, he finds the God to whom he and every dead soul on the planet offered their prayers. Only, the apathetic God mocks his suffering. Channelling the dark force emanating from an ancient weapon called the Necrosword, Gorr kills the God and vows vengeance against every apathetic deity across the cosmos. If you have been a lifelong devotee of a benevolent God who turns out to be anything but and moreover doesn’t give a shit about your misery, you can’t in good faith argue you won’t share Gorr’s righteous anger. The man’s got a justifiable motive we can understand just as we can also understand slaying every immortal being is a misguided attempt to restore justice. Bale’s performance seduces us into empathising with Gorr without letting us forget his plans of indiscriminate deicide cannot be condoned.

Comic book movies are filled with one too many generic supervillains prone to monologuing, trying to build the world anew or planning overcomplicated but ultimately futile ways to kill their nemeses. Gorr is all that too, but he is also a man fuelled by anguish over the death of his family and everyone he ever knew. War, pandemic, famine, earthquake or any natural calamity (acts of God as some call it) must no doubt confuse a lot of believers about their Almighty’s indifference towards the endless suffering. The most engaging villains tend to make us acknowledge seeds of doubt, bitterness and resentment growing within ourselves.

In a performance rooted in devastating loss, Bale brings a fury as refined as unhinged. When he summons the shadow monsters to kidnap the children of New Asgard, we see a man who has convinced himself the ends justify the means. This allows him to disengage from the pain and suffering he causes. The abduction of the children into somewhere in the Shadow Realm will force Thor and gang to launch a rescue mission. The gang includes: his CG rock bestie Korg (Waititi), his old astrophysicist ex-girlfriend Jane ( Natalie Portman ) who has since bonded with Mjolnir and now goes by the name Mighty Thor, and the New Asgardian king Valkyrie ( Tessa Thompson ).

Gorr’s motivations only get more tenable when Thor, Jane, Valkyrie and Korg visit MCU’s polytheism HQ at Omnipotence City to ask the other Gods for help. But the tutu-wearing Zeus ( Russell Crowe channeling a strange mix of Greek and Italian caricatures) and his fellow immortals are more interested in figuring out the scheduling and logistics of their next orgy, than foiling an adversary killing their kind one by one. Indeed, the revelations of this silly B-plot tracks with how Greek Gods are often depicted in ancient myths: as egotistic, spiteful and horny beings with little regard for how their actions affect the humans. In truth, the idea that Gods are uncaring has always been a lot more viable one than what every world religion proposes them to be.

If Gorr confirms Bale’s top spot in the Chris hierarchy, Hemsworth should be ranked second on current form, even if Thor has gone from a faux-Shakespearean Viking to a self-parody caught in a love triangle with two weapons. Credit must be given to how he has used his God-like muscular frame, sense of masculinity and image to maximise his comedic range. When Zeus takes off his clothes and exposes him whole, he is unafraid to play the scene for laughs. When we meet him in the beginning of the movie, he is a little lost and adrift, saving intergalactic civilisations as a freelancer for the Guardians of the Galaxy. Speaking of which, Pratt is yet to make a solid case for why he should be promoted from the bottom spot. With each role he takes on in an action movie or show, he only proves what he may have gained in brawn he has lost in charm.

In Love and Thunder , the Shadow Realm is imagined as a desolate pocket of the universe which drains all colour out of the movie. It is meant to mirror a world where hope and everything good goes to die, but it makes for a more fitting analogy for how Marvel’s endless procession of superhero fare has drained all creativity out of their corporate enterprise of synergistic mythmaking. A similar apathy as the Gods seems to afflict the Disney-owned studio, as evidenced by how most of their movies feel like they have come out of a conveyor belt. One wishes Gorr took a few more Gods and superheroes with him so we don’t have to endure any more of these. Perhaps, a Ragnarok repeat is in order, only this time we get a proper twilight of the Gods. Anyone?

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

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