Review- Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok is a little confusing if you've never seen a Thor film and very confusing if you don't know anything about Marvel (I'm only in the first category) but has a fairly standalone story. Essentially, a goddess by the name of Hela turns up, threatening to lay waste to all of Asgard but Thor and Loki are sent away to a junk planet and are unable to help. While on this planet, Thor is enrolled in gladatorial combat with the Hulk and fun legitimately ensues. Due to the fairly separate nature of the plot, there aren't always a huge amount of stakes so even when the literal goddess of death is promising the downfall of all those who live, you never really get too worried. As its own film, it works well enough, similar to how the original Guardians of the Galaxy did. No one will exactly praise the plot but it is coherent, takes you fun places and I don't think needs to do anything else.

Different to many of the other superhero films, acting here is basically just going to consist of comedic prowess and screen presence, which is fortunately something that is not a stretch to find here. Chris Hemsworth leads with shocking comedic talent, getting to play a much goofier version of Thor than we've ever seen and landing many a great line. Tom Hiddleston is great in everything so his greatness here isn't really a surprise. Idris Elba is fairly serviceable but the rest of the cast all do great work. There's Jeff Goldblum being very Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson with a charismatic swagger, Mark Ruffalo gets plenty of great moments and Anthony Hopkins is also there for a little bit. In the villain role is Cate Blanchet and she is completely chewing the scenery here which for some, may feel a little much. Contextually though, it works, she just isn't given enough to do. Slightly ironically though, the person who really stole every scene they were in for me was Taika Waititi as the rock man Korg. Not a single line he had failed to make me laugh. Not one. The biggest complaint I have about him is that he wasn't in it enough. So essentially, while not perfect all round from everyone, there's plenty of fantastic performances to enjoy.

What most reviews focus on is the tone that the film has taken, being much more overtly comical than even the light hearted library Marvel is known for. Waititi is a comedic director and it really shows, apparently giving the cast countless opportunities for improvisation on set. That tone is felt strongly and I feel pretty confident saying that this is the funniest movie Marvel have ever made. It's not all good though. With the favouring of this comedic tone in a series of films that can probably be most accurately categorised as action, many of the dramatic moments are lost. Admittedly, I was worried the action would take a hit but that comes out well, instead most of the damage done is to the moments that are pivotal to the ongoing plot. Without going into spoilers, there are some pretty major events in this film that are definitely going to impact the MCU moving forward but they're often shrugged away with a joke. Much as I was laughing the whole way through, it made me wish the film either wasn't tethered by such large stakes or went deeper into the drama, sacrificing some of that comedy. After all, everyone remembers Guardians of the Galaxy but the film legitimately opened with a woman dying of cancer, it was a film unafraid to go there if needed and respect the situation. It's easily the biggest fault in Ragnarok and it brought the movie down for me.

That paragraph probably came across pretty negative so don't let it detract from the fact that I really did enjoy this film. It's a great time and most audiences are going to walk out grinning, very happy with the film they saw. Perhaps why I didn't enjoy it so much is that I know Waititi can balance tones from the underappreciated Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it just seems a shame that he didn't bring quite that level here. So while there are flaws for sure, it's a fun movie and one I can pretty comfortably recommend, earning Thor: Ragnarok an