Thor: Love & Thunder Hits Box Office Milestone Despite Mixed Reviews

Thor: Love & Thunder hits a new milestone at the global box office, coming after its third weekend in theaters. The Taika Waititi-directed superhero film from Disney and Marvel was officially released on July 8 and features Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, and Natalie Portman reprising their roles as Thor, Valkyrie, and Jane Foster, respectively. Coming on the heels of 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, which received high praise from critics and audiences alike and performed well at the box office, the expectations were set high for Thor: Love and Thunder. It doesn’t help that the first and second Thor films are some of the less popular MCU movies, with complaints that they didn’t find a way to balance their more serious tone with some levity. Those criticisms were reflected in the box office, with Thor and Thor: The Dark World bested by several other MCU films over the years.

Thor: Ragnarok marked a new era for the character, with Waititi’s MCU directorial debut successfully balancing humor and gravity. Though Ragnarok may have felt like a purely comedic romp, the serious moments such as Odin’s death and the destruction of Asgard managed to carry serious emotional weight. Five years later with the release of Love & Thunder, Thor’s comedic rebrand is alive and well. Though early responses chiefly praised the film’s tone, the conversation about Thor: Love and Thunder shifted over time. Still, it boasted the #30 opening weekend of all time with $302 million globally and the highest ever opening for a Thor movie. However, the film took a dive in its second weekend, dropping in sales by a steep 68%. 

Thor: Love & Thunder seems to have earned back momentum in its third weekend. According to THR, the film is now just under $600 million globally. It brought in $31.8 million outside of the U.S. this weekend for a total of $322 million so far. Domestically, it earned $22.1 million in the third weekend, putting that total at $276.2 million.

Thor: Love & Thunder‘s box office drop in the second week may have been caused by an onslaught of negative reviews following the film’s opening, which criticized the use of humor as excessive, pointed out continuity issues in the story, and expressed disappointment over the villain’s perceived wasted potential. Though the film contains many of the elements that made Ragnarok an MCU darling, much of the conversation implies that Love & Thunder was simply oversaturated. Currently, the movie stands at a 67% score on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a far cry from the previous installment, which received a 93% but close to the 66% of the franchise’s worst reviewed movie, Thor: The Dark World. 

So far, mixed reviews are something that most of the Phase 4 films have in common, with three of the five movies released before Thor: Love and Thunder having a Rotten Tomatoes score below 80%. It seems that audiences are increasingly deciding to see for themselves whether or not they will enjoy the film, which could explain the high box office numbers in the face of such criticism. Thor: Love & Thunder has earned a spot on the list of films whose unfavorable reviews just don’t match up to its impressive ticket sales. And for every person who disliked the movie, there’s a viewer that thoroughly enjoyed the charms of the space romp. As the MCU continues widening its scope to cosmic and multiversal storytelling, the variety in audience opinions is widening as well.