Legend has it that Vikings loved their weapons so much that they gave them names and thus magical powers.

Wouldn't it be logical, the New Zealand director Taika Waititi now asks in the fourth part of the "Thor" series, if Nordic deities would also talk with their weapons, if they could even have their own personality?

In Thor: Love and Thunder, the god of thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to Earth after lengthy wanderings, only to find his ex-girlfriend, scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), reassembling the pieces of his destroyed hammer, Mjolnir and, because she knows cosmic secrets, proved herself worthy of being able to use the weapon.

As Thor mends the broken bonds with Foster,

he succumbs again and again to the temptation to flatter his former hammer in a double courtship.

And whenever he does, his new powerful battle ax sneaks into the frame like the jealous girlfriend.

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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The fact that this constellation is as funny as it is absurd is due to Taika Waititi, who seems to have ten such ideas per minute running through his head, which explains why he likes to regard scripts as rough guidelines and prefers to rely on improvisation on set.

In his first directorial work for Marvel in 2017, he proved with "Thor: Day of Decision" that you can work as an artist for one of the world's largest entertainment companies and still maintain your integrity and your own voice.

So Waititi didn't even try to imitate the holy seriousness with which fellow director and actor Kenneth Branagh dressed Thor's first cinema appearance on the screen in 2011.

Rather, New Zealander Waititi's strength lies in simultaneously respecting a subject matter and reinterpreting it with the greatest possible fun.

(In his documentary-style debut, Five Rooms Kitchen Coffin, he asks how vampires would get along in a shared apartment if everything Bram Stoker told us about Dracula was true.)

Balancing like Jean-Claude Van Damme

He creates the latest "Thor" film as a homage to the eighties and explores the question of whether the Nordic comic god shouldn't actually be read as a rock opera motif.

The film's first battle sees Thor fighting alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy as Guns N' Roses howls Welcome To The Jungle.

The fight choreography pays homage to the action heroes of the day: Hemsworth holds off two enemy desert gliders with a Jean-Claude Van Damme-style split, while kicking other attackers off the field by raising his legs like Chuck Norris did at his best.

But all this is only a prelude to the reinterpretation of the formula "The Mighty Thor".

Waititi brought Natalie Portman back into the comic book film business.

The scientist Jane Foster had already played it in 2011,

who whispered to Thor instead of a declaration of love that she was the smartest person in her realm.

Then Portman was absent from the Marvel cinematic universe for almost ten years.

Where her character was important to the plot, unreleased archive footage was used.

Now Waititi made her an offer she couldn't refuse: she should become a superhero herself.

It has been known since her performance as the crazy prima ballerina in Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" (2010) that this actress is particularly attracted to characters that also challenge her physically.

If she had to make herself as thin and small as possible for this role, this time she had to gain significant mass.

When the slender scientist becomes the muscular "Mighty Thor" with the help of the mystical hammer Mjolnir, she takes double the place.

Contrary to wild internet speculation, which after the first photos from Portman's location dismissed strongly defined upper arms as digital post-processing, she simply did what has long been normal for her male colleagues in such films: completed ten months of intensive strength training.

The only thing she couldn't change was her size.

To get her on par with Hemsworth, Waititi resorted to an old studio trick.

Just as Humphrey Bogart was shot in Casablanca so that he towered almost a head over the 1.75 meter tall Ingrid Bergman, a pedestal was built here for Portman.

She keeps the balance between saving the world and repairing her relationship on this device without any visible effort.

Fun with the amateur reenactment of the first three parts

Portman isn't the only star in this sequel.

Waititi seems to have submitted his Hollywood wish list at the casting.

Christian Bale, consumed beyond recognition by hate, is the god-slaying antagonist.

Russell Crowe belted his corona kilos with a golden short tunic and throws lightning bolts as the Greek god father Zeus.

Tessa Thompson rides her flying horse into battle once again as Valkyrie.

And Matt Damon, Luke Hemsworth and Melissa McCarthy have fun recreating the first three Thor movies in amateur ways.

"It can go on like this forever" is sometimes a curse for those annoyed by a series, sometimes praise, but in this case simply a factually correct and at the same time well-entertained statement.