Review Detail

For the record, I have never seen Thor: Love and Thunder (I have seen the previous films). Every now and again I choose to make a fanedit my first experience, as I find it interesting to just go in blank sometimes and without familiarity bias. That being said, I had seen one or two clips from the thread and I also knew that Korg was going to be "actually" dead, when previously he was a talking head I think? And I knew that there was some kind of character change for Zeus, but I didn't have full context.

NARRATIVE

First off, it's clear tremault put a lot of work in here, and I do admire that. The opening montage seemed like a good way to open the film and was really only let down by some audio stuff (more on that below). I haven't seen the original, but my friend said that the opening scene with Christian Bale played out much better.

Unfortunately, I found most of the viewing to be a bit of an odd experience. I see from the description that tremault wanted to allow the film to "breathe" but I'm afraid that doesn't really come across. Instead it felt very rushed and choppy. It's my understanding that the original film maybe has this problem anyway, but I watched this with someone who had seen the original cut and they said they were having trouble following and basically having to remind themselves of what context was cut.

Why is Natalie Portman now Thor? There doesn't seem to be any explanation for this, which felt to me like a pretty big hole. Korg is dead, but events surrounding that are still lighthearted even if humour has been excised. In fact, one of the really odd things about this edit is that you can tell everyone is playing things "tongue-in-cheek" except there aren't (hardly) any jokes. So it just comes across like everyone is acting really strangely. This changes a little in the second half - events seem to take a darker turn and become more action focused, but by this point I kind of felt like I was coasting along just accepting events as they happen. I didn't understand why there was significance to this weapon for opening this gate... Why the bad guy was going to make a wish to some statue. There's a scene where one minute Thor and the others are talking, and suddenly a child's head just appears on screen and Thor teleports to where they are to chat to them. This all happens so quickly and it's very confusing.

Possibly the most bizarre change is what's done with Zeus. Reading the intent, I think Zeus is secretly helping Thor? So the visual trickery here is quite well done but it just isn't clear what's happening. My friend was completely thrown by it and I had to pause the film to give them context - they, who had seen the theatrical film, and me who hasn't seen it giving them context... because I'd caught some context from what I'd scanned from the project thread. That's not how it should be and fanedit narratives need to hold up for someone who doesn't have the context of the theatrical cut or details on an IFDB form.

But let's say it works and the audience has clocked onto Zeus helping Thor psychically - why does Zeus then kill Thor's friend Korg? Why does Thor immediately jump to kill Zeus? And why is he excited about having done this? I'm afraid I just don't see the logic. I also don't see how the segment is relevant to anything else that happens in the narrative.


QUALITY

In regards to the technical aspects, the visual quality is mostly reasonable considering the file size, but personally I think it's at the lower end of what editors should be putting out. Unfortunately, the opening titles and closing credits dip lower than this and have visible compression artefacts.

The audio quality skirts the line of decent throughout and sometimes does not hold up well. Perhaps this has just gone too far on the compression end, but in some cases I think it's clear that a lossy source has been used and broken up under compression. Some added audio elements are clearly of a lower bitrate, so these poke out and break apart where the main film audio fares better, revealing some changes. The opening montage, for example, features a song that sounds to me like the source was possibly a lossy mp3 and the S's at the end of lines are quite piercing as a result of what I assume is further compression.

I personally think that far too much quality has been sacrificed here and it reflects negatively on the edit. It's not always possible, but whenever it is, we should be using lossless audio sources. These are much smaller and more practical to work with than lossless video files and it really make all the difference. Rendering at a higher audio bitrate also doesn't add much onto your file size when compared with visual compression.


VISUAL EDITING

While the general editing style comes across choppy, in terms of the more "fancy" stuff - transitions, special fx - there's some great, creative visual editing here. The likelyhood is I probably wouldn't have noticed some of it, but there are a couple of things I saw from the project thread and I thought they were nicely done. I also very much appreciate tremault taking the time to include subtitles. I'm a big advocator for that these days.


AUDIO EDITING

Quality of added elements comes under this umbrella a bit, and I'm afraid that the weakest moments of the edit were pretty much any rescoring work. The music is generally well balanced in the mix, which I don't often find, but because of the audio quality and incomplete sound design, the scenes just aren't sold. Rescoring is hard. It requires a lot of time, effort and patience. If you're doing it in surround, it's very demanding. This edit is presented in stereo, which makes things a touch easier. But the reason it doesn't work is simply because it sounds unfinished. Random dry sound effects poke through what is mostly a music-dominated mix. This is not what you expect from a film mix and it just immediately tells me "oh, this has been rescored" and I'm taken out of the edit. Aside from key sound effects like sword clashes, punches, etc, you need to add back ambience. The sound of weather, the sound of a crowd, footsteps, shuffles, grunts etc. The brain notices when this stuff is absent and only music is playing. Often it's the sounds that you don't think about; the kind that when you listen, you don't think you can hear them, but if you were to mute them in the mix, you'd know something was missing. It's also important to add the appropriate room sound to sound effects so they aren't just leaping out of the mix bone dry.

Some montages might be the exception to this rule. The opening montage in this edit could maybe get away with not having all the sound rebuilt. The issue is tremault decides to rework select sound elements for select scenes, so it's inconsistent, and again comes across weird on the ears.

Putting aside rescored elements and one or two other moments, there were significant portions of the edit where the audio flowed smoothly and went by unnoticed. I imagine there were a lot of cuts made to the film, and so I would guess there was a lot of good work on transitions throughout. Excluding rescoring, it was typically the audio quality and visual cuts that let things down.

I do often try to give timecodes but if I'm watching with someone else I don't like to ruin their experience by constantly pausing the film to make notes. Hopefully what I've mentioned is context enough but I did go back to get a timecode for a particular moment that stuck out as needing more work:

- 47:57 - 48:02 - this doesn't work at all IMO. I can hear the audio crossfades and the visual cuts are abnormally quick. The shot of Korg's head is also very odd and somewhat in poor taste considering he is meant to be "actually" dead in a serious way in this edit(?). I don't think the segment adds much narratively, so personally I would just cut from the kiss to 48:02 ("guys we're here").


ENJOYMENT

It was difficult to enjoy the film because it was difficult to follow the film. The noticeable compression on opening and closing titles and limited audio work for rescored elements was also a distraction. Personally, I was not a fan of the music choices for the beginning and end of the edit, but that's subjective.

It's worth bearing in mind that I'm a musician by trade and am used to needing to be picky about audio. I also watch edits on some relatively expensive gear, which does tend to highlight faults more clearly than on your average device.

Thank you, tremault, for letting me watch this. It's clear that a lot of work has been put in, and I do admire that. It never feels good posting a negative review (especially when going against the crowd!). I always strive to be honest when I give feedback though, and I think that is the best way towards building a better community and helping us all improve on this hobby of ours :)