Is it really that bad? A fresh perspective?

After being the kind of fan that always caught the MCU at the cinema from the very start, this movie was the very first one I didn't see. Things had been going downhill since the apex that was Endgame, and while I found some entertainment value afterwards, movies like the Eternals made the decline all too obvious. Then I heard this movie had ruined Thor as a character, and gone with the typical "woke nonsense is more important than a good movie" approach that has impacted so many formerly great franchises. I heard only bad things, so I avoided it.

Now I'm at a point where I've been completely out of the loop with the MCU for a couple of years, and decided I wanted to catch up again (at least partially) in preparation to see the new Deadpool movie. Naturally as this was my cut-off point, this movie was the first on my list to watch to get myself up to speed. I braced myself for bad things, and yet I found myself pleasantly entertained.

I look at all the negativity around this film, but it really feels like nit-picking. My only real criticism is that it felt tonally inconsistent, but taking it at face value as a piece of entertainment it really didn't seem that bad. Jane as Thor was actually explained rather than being a shoe-horned girl power moment, and I found myself not caring so much about other wokeisms like Korg and his partner, because I simply imagined his race only being males. The villain was actually really good (if only we'd had more of him) and generally nothing felt particularly out of place.

Here's the thing though - I can't help but wonder if I would have had a negative view on this movie if I had watched it at the cinema when it came out 2 years ago. Perhaps swept up in the general consensus, or maybe just because I held MCU movies to such a high standard that I was far more fussy about what I was seeing. Watching it after time away and seeing it from a fresh perspective, I actually rather enjoyed myself.

Has anyone else had an experience like this, either with this movie or another movie/franchise?