Review: THOR: RAGNAROK

THOR: RAGNAROK 
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
★★★
Directed by Taika Watiti
Screenplay by Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle & Christopher L. Yost
Based on characters created by Stan Lee & Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taikia Watiti, Rachel House, Clancy Brown, Tadanobu Asano
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive material.
130 minutes
Verdict: Without shaking up the Marvel Cinematic Universe in any particularly exciting way, RAGNAROK is the best of three Thor-led movies thanks in large part to its light, breezy tone and colorful personality.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THOR: RAGNAROK IF YOU LIKED: 
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2  (2017)
THOR: THE DARK WORLD  (2013)
THOR  (2011)
TIME BANDITS  (1981)
TRON  (1982)

The Thor installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far have been particularly weak points in the franchise; the Kenneth Branagh-directed THOR (2011) was seen as a big leap in bringing a far more fantastical superhero into the MCU than had been featured before, and it got the job done in a mostly staid way, while the Alan Taylor-directed THOR: THE DARK WORLD (2013) remains one of the weakest installments in the MCU yet, with a stock villain, oversized destruction and structurally mangled.  Even Tom Hiddleston as Loki, a fan favorite in the MCU as a whole, I don't think got to a very strong point as a villain until MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS.  But introducing New Zealand-born filmmaker/comedian Taika Watiti as director of THOR: RAGNAROK was an interesting move, similar to Marvel picking James Gunn for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.  Best known for his work on the cult-comedy TV series Flight of the Conchords, and two independent comedies, the 2014 vampire mockumentary WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (co-directed with Jemaine Clement) and the 2016 comedy-drama HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE, Watiti's work is energetic, with an often very weird but witty sense of humor and a fair bit of heart as well, and as the MCU struggles to keep from falling into bland formulas, it needs directors who bring a stronger flavor.  Watiti succeeds partially in that respect, making what's easily the best Thor-led Marvel movie yet, but while often feeling very much like other Marvel movies in a way that the exhilarating candy-colored trailer set to The Immigrant Song seemed to suggest.  At the same time, it also feels very, very much like a certain strain of 1980s sci-fi/fantasy movies, e.g. TRON, TIME BANDITS and THE BLACK CAULDRON.  Terry Gilliam could never make a Marvel movie, but it turns out that a Taika Watiti Marvel movie is a pretty good approximation of what that might be.

RAGNAROK places Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Norse God of Thunder and member of the Avengers superhero team, in an unfortunate predicament when he learns that he is not in fact the first born of Odin (Anthony Hopkins); instead, that title belongs to Hela (Cate Blanchett), the warmongering Goddess of Death, who Odin has been able to keep at bay until now, and she's coming to claim the throne of Asgard.  She makes short work of Thor, destroying his hammer, and Thor and his trickster brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) only manage a narrow escape.  Crash-landing on Sakaar, a refuse planet, Thor is captured by the planet's eccentric ruler, the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), and forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena, where he is reunited with a fellow Avenger, the Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who went missing during the climactic action of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.  The burden falls on Thor to escape the Grandmaster's grip along with the Hulk and make it back to Asgard before Hela kills all who resist her rule.

Presumably, as the subject of the Avengers' villain Thanos's romantic intentions in the upcoming AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, Hela will return in future installments of the MCU, although, in essence as a character, she doesn't bring all that much more to THOR: RAGNAROK than the typical MCU villain.  On the other hand, Blanchett brings a fair bit to the character herself; beautiful in her ethereal way with a Goth makeover and hamming it up as a distinctly comic book villain (on multiple occasions, she slicks her long black hair up into hard and shiny antlers) but with a reasonable amount of restraint that keeps things safely out of Rita Repulsa territory.  Goldblum is just doing his Goldblum thing like he hasn't done for years as the simultaneously zany and deadpan Grandmaster, and Watiti himself earns a few laughs as one of Thor's fellow gladiators, the rock-skinned Korg, whose CGI-rendered features are unfortunately poorly defined.  Among the new characters, however, I'm a particularly big fan of Tessa Thompson (star of DEAR WHITE PEOPLE and co-star of CREED) as the exceptionally hard-drinking Scrapper 142, a self-exiled Asgardian and bounty hunter with a Jack Sparrow-like drunken efficiency.

While the joke-laugh ratio isn't as successful as Watiti's WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS or HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE, RAGNAROK is often very funny, which, like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, is unexpected for a movie that seems to be emulating THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in a lot of ways (ironically, Marvel's "Phase 2" of movies IRON MAN 3 through ANT-MAN specifically did reference THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK according to producer Kevin Feige, by way of each film, except for ANT-MAN (originally intended as part of Phase 3), depicting a scene in which a character loses a hand, but RAGNAROK and VOL. 2 are part of "Phase 3").  With a thoroughly breezy, fun tone, it's kind of too bad that the movie wound up half an hour longer than the run time had been reported as of this past summer, because it does start to feel a little long by that last half hour.  130 minutes isn't actually unreasonable for most tentpole studio movies, but I really think brevity is an increasingly underappreciated virtue of entertainment.
It's never as weird or avant-garde as it promises to be, but RAGNAROK is always entertaining and frequently amusing, making proper use of the appropriately-themed The Immigrant Song and never afraid to be a lot of silly.  Oh, and the Hulk fights a gigantic wolf, which is awesome.

                                                                                                                                                                        Images via Marvel