Thor: Love and Thunder is another of those jokey, self-referential Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, but if you’re going to lean hard into mocking the conventions and cliches of the superhero genre, you’re going to have to deal with the existence of Prime Video’s The Boys, whose third season just debuted a few weeks ago.
At this point The Boys is so far superior to the MCU movies, all of whose recent entries have been disappointments except Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, that the comparison seems unfair. Yes, The Boys can get away with a lot more since it would have a hard-R rating if it were shown at the multiplex, but it’s superior in every way except in special effects. The Boys is hilariously cutting about everything from fake-woke entertainment conglomerates to gun fetishists. Love and Thunder has a joke about . . . the god of dumplings.