Movie Reaction: Thor Ragnarok

Formula: Thor + Guardians of the Galaxy + Gladiator

We are 17 movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one thing has become clear, for better and for worse: the MCU is not a single thing. Every installment isn't the same. Audiences aren't used to that. I think we are all comfortable with the idea that a franchise is one thing. When you see a Fast and Furious movie, you are getting something that's pretty much the same as the last movie, with enough different to keep them honest. To an extent, that's what you get from an MCU movie as well. They all fit into PG13 parameters. They mix action and humor more evenly than DC Comics movies. There's still superheroes in costumes, familiar structural elements, and all the things that the people who hate these tentpoles love to bemoan about. The 17 movies in the MCU are pretty different though. Think about it. The first Captain America is nostalgic pulp and a romance movie. Ant-Man is a heist film. Iron Man 3 is a darker movie and a quest for redemption. Guardians of the Galaxy is slick fun. The Winter Soldier is a conspiracy thriller. Spider-Man Homecoming is a coming of age story. This is a diverse group of movies with filmmakers who actually do bring different things to the projects (within accepted parameters, of course). What I'm trying to say is that it's about time we stop thinking of Marvel Studios as a monolith that reproduces an identical product and start thinking of them as a production studio, like Pixar (except not as good). We can recognize a Pixar movie and see similarities, but we expect some variance from movie to movie. Marvel is doing something similar, except the movies share characters.

Which brings me to Thor: Ragnarok.

Ragnarok refers to a prophecy about the destruction of Thor's (Chris Hemsworth's) homeworld of Asgard. Thor is told about this in a silly opening scene that really sets the tone for the rest of the film. Soon after, Thor's father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) dies, and a woman known as Hela, the Godess of Death (Cate Blanchett) is freed. She takes over Asgard, and sends Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to a far away planet. On this planet called Sakaar, Thor is captured by a bounty hunter (Tessa Thompson) working for a guy literally called the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) and forced to become a gladiator. Loki fares a lot better. There, Thor assembles a team, including - as the trailers have fully revealed - the Hulk, to escape back to Asgard and save it from Hela. It's probably more story than the movie can handle, especially because the filmmaker's interest wavers at pionts. Everyone involved seems to be more interested in what's going on on Sakaar than back in Asgard.

Thor has always been the wing of the MCU with the least clear direction. Quite literally, in fact, when you considered that all three installments have had different directors. Ragnarok's director, Taika Waititi is arguably the most obscure choice the MCU has made yet to direct. He's a New Zealand director, best known for offbeat comedies like What We Do in the Shadows and has never worked on anything even a fraction of the size of Thor. As a result, Ragnarok is exactly what I expected. It is very funny and silly, clearly using the success of Guardians of the Galaxy for the go-ahead to go hard at the comedy. If you go into Ragnarok thinking of it as a comedy movie with action in it, it's much less likely that you'll be disappointed. Waititi isn't as great with the action. The fights aren't very slick. The geography is hard to keep track of. Waititi spends so much of the movie undercutting everything, that's it's hard to buy into any of the stakes when the movie tries to get serious. I had almost that identical issue with Guardians 2, but I didn't mind it as much in Ragnarok, mainly because Ragnarok didn't pretend it was serious as much. Guardians 2 repeatedly went for emotional moments and undercut them with jokes at the last second. Ragnarok virtually rolls its eyes as the serious moments are happening, which works a lot better. It was required sincerity, not force sincerity.

It really helps that Ragnarok has a stealthy good cast for a comedy. Chris Hemsworth is so damn handsome and ripped that I tend to forget that he's great with physical comedy and always willing to play the fool. As a result, he's pretty spectacular throughout this. Tom Hiddleston and Mark Ruffalo are good a getting a laugh when needed. Tessa Thompson does a great Han Solo impression (I mean that as high praise). Jeff Goldblum is playing a role that could only be played by Jeff Goldblum, and no one knows how to land a Jeff Goldblum line better than Jeff Goldblum. That kind of leaves Cate Blanchett as the odd woman out. She's literally off in her own little world for most of the movie and doesn't play anything for laughs. Here's the thing though: she's Cate fucking Blanchett. There's a joke from an episode of Modern Family about how Meryl Streep could be cast as Batman and be right for the role. Blanchett proves that she's in the same category as Streep with this movie. Hela only works at all because Cate Blanchett is playing the role, and she's not just collecting a paycheck either. She actually seems to be having fun with it. Talent matters more than fit in this case.

I'm a well documented Marvel movie apologist. That's a little surprising, because I've never read a comic book in my life and you won't find a Marvel movie anywhere near my top 100 movie list*. I'm fascinated with this extended universe experiment though. I guess what that means is that on a 10 point scale, everything in the MCU I'm going to put in the 4-8 range. Thor: Ragnarok is in the upper-end because of the ease and effectiveness of the humor. As a detour in the larger Marvel narrative, I quite enjoyed it, although I'm not sure I need more installments like this (especially if Waititi doesn't return to direct). The good parts work really well. The weak parts are mostly just forgettable rather than outright bad. Normally, I say that a franchise movie isn't going to appeal to anyone who isn't already a fan. I think Ragnarok is different. I could see people saying "I don't normally like Marvel movies, but I liked this one". Granted we are talking about the very small Venn diagram overlap of Taika Waititi fans and people who aren't normally fans of Marvel movies.

*I think Spider-Man came the closest in the 150 range. The closest MCU movie was The Winter Soldier a little further back, but after 100, I wasn't all that thorough.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend