Initial reviews of Thor: Love and Thunder have continued the current Marvel trend of mixed opinions in contrast to a huge predicted box office. In line with other recent releases like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder had struggled to find a consistent string of early reviews, but that hasn’t stopped projections indicating a worldwide debut of over $300 million for Chris Hemsworth’s return as the God of Thunder.

According to the latest estimates, the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is expected to open to a domestic $140-$160 million, with overseas territories pushing that upwards of $300 million when all is said and done. While this is all good for Kevin Feige and the MCU team, there has been a trend for Marvel films to have outstanding openings, with fans flocking to see the movie before the internet is littered with spoilers at every turn, and suffers a big drop-off in the following weeks. For that reason, while movies like Doctor Strange 2 blew away the box office on its premiere weekend, in the longer game, the film has then failed to break the $1 billion mark by just a whisker.

However, in comparison to previous Thor entries, Love and Thunder is certainly going to have the biggest opening of Hemsworth’s solo outings, beating Thor: Ragnarok’s decent domestic £122.7, which led to an $854 million run in 2017. The real question, is will Thor: Love and Thunder manage to get Marvel Studios back onto the $1 billion track, or will the so-so critical response lead to casual viewers simply waiting for the movie to arrive on Disney+.

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Thor: Love And Thunder Has Landed Some Of the Lowest MCU Review Scores

Thor Love and Thunder featuring Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher and Chris Hemsworth
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

While it is still early days for Thor: Love and Thunder, the initial reviews have been very middle of the road, leading to an average score floating around 70%. This currently puts the movie in the lowered end of the scale when it comes to the rest of the MCU, and is a far cry from the 93% score achieved by Chris Hemsworth’s previous solo outing, Thor: Ragnarok.

However, there is plenty of time for those numbers to change as more reviews come in, and based on past performances, Marvel Studios really are not going to be worried about what the critics think of the film. As has become apparent more and more is that between critics that seem to expect much more from the MCU than they get, and frequent bouts of review bombing for reasons other than the movie itself, such as LGBTQ+ issues among extreme "fans", there is a large chunk of the general public who are quite willing to make their own opinions about movie releases than just relying on the word of others.

While it doesn’t look like Thor: Love and Thunder is going to drop to replace Thor: The Dark World as the lowest-rated entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which sits on a 66% approval rate, it has once again proved that when it comes to something with the scale of the MCU, it seems to be getting harder to please everyone.