By Charly SHELTON

The Mighty Thor can be found again on screen and with him comes another, also mighty, Thor. With this many Thors, one movie theater screen just isn’t enough.

ScreenX is a new movie theater format that takes over the whole room with 270 degrees of projection. In a normal theater, the front wall is a screen. But in ScreenX, the front wall and the two side walls are all projection surfaces, bringing the widest of widescreen views. For certain scenes in each film, the action extends beyond the traditional one-screen show and fills the whole theater. For those in the back rows, it becomes the ultimate widescreen. And for those in the middle or front rows, it becomes a surrounding, immersive experience that knocks their socks off the first time it’s experienced.

CV Weekly was recently invited to try this new style of movie theater experience at the Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance theater at a screening of “Thor: Love and Thunder.” And, honestly, it was an amazing show. When Thor taps his ax on the ground and suits up to go into battle, the lightning burns away the walls of the theater and theater-goers are surrounded by the battlefield. And for some of the sequences that are less about action and more about appreciating the cinematography in a quiet moment on screen the extended projection surfaces become even more impressive.

And if there’s one film to see in ScreenX, it’s this one. There’s Thor, God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth); Stormbreaker, his Thanos-killing lightning ax that summons the Bifrost; Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who picked up Thor’s hammer Mjolnir and now possesses the power to become The Mighty Thor. Also there’s one of the all-time greatest villain performances in Gorr, the God Butcher (Christian Bale) and two giant, immortal, incessantly-screaming goats that pull a Viking longboat through space to reach the Shadow Realm. All of this is set to a soundtrack featuring the likes of Dio, Kiss, Guns N’ Roses and Abba. This is nuts. It’s a crazy, fun ride that is so much better for theater-goers when wrapped 270 degrees around them like a warm blanket.

Side note on the film: The promotional materials for the film feature the Guardians of the Galaxy heavily but they barely make an appearance. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s one scene and a quick flashback montage then they are off to save the galaxy, leaving Thor to do the film without them. That’s not a bad thing – the cast carries the film ably and the Guardians are really unnecessary. When there is already a hot, quippy, man-child hero to lead the team named Thor, Star Lord becomes second fiddle. Only Spider-Man can handle having multiples of the same hero archetype around in one film (see “Spider-Man: No Way Home”). Here, Star Lord has to change and become more serious and responsible, a straight man to Thor’s funny man. And that’s not something people want to see in Star Lord; it corrupts his persona. It was the same problem in “Avengers: Infinity War” when the quippiest cool guy characters were thrown together on one ship. In order to differentiate them, Iron Man got to stay cool quippy, Dr. Strange was angry quippy, Spider-Man was childish quippy, and Star Lord was dumb quippy. It’s too many quips. You can’t have the same character four times in one scene; they all start to run together a bit in their personalities.

So, luckily, in this outing the Guardians read the room and split before it got too weird. Thor can quip with the best of them and, while this film maybe isn’t as funny as it thinks it is, it is still a sure sight better in tone and comedy than were the first two films. It may not be poetry in motion, but this film still satisfies that “comic book movie” itch that we all get from time-to-time.

For those in the mood for a rock ‘n’ roll, lightning ax, hammer-smashing, popcorn movie ride on the back of a giant screaming space goat, then they’ll want to see it in ScreenX. These theaters can be found exclusively in Regal cinemas across the country with several close to home in the LA area.