Every week, a group of friends and I are rewatching a Marvel movie in preparation for the Avengers: Endgame. Might as well talk about them on the way, right?
After a mediocre first entry and probably the worst movie in the franchise, Marvel finally switched up the Thormula by… doing a good job? Who would have thought?
Before I dig any deeper into Ragnarok, I wanted to mention that the movie plays “Immigrant Song” twice, and I can no longer hear that song without reliving the best 14 seconds of my life:
You’re welcome.
Okay so, Thor is probably the most difficult character to write as far as this series of films goes. He’s stoic, humorless, and completely unrelatable. He works in the Avengers films because he’s playing off of Iron Man’s constant quipping, but on his own… they haven’t made it work yet.
So they stopped trying to! The Thor we know in Ragnarok is not a Thor we’ve seen before. He’s funny. He’s not so god damn serious all the time. He’s not… as much… of a bully as he has been in the past. And he’s funny. Did I already say that? Turns out Hemsworth has some serious comedic chops. Who knew? (The cast and crew of the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot knew, actually)
Thor is a clown now, but it’s more complicated than it appears. At the start of the movie, he’s experiencing recurring nightmares, and it becomes clear early on that all the joking is masking the pain of Asgard being destroyed, Odin dying, Mjolnir being destroyed by his long-lost sister, and then being trapped on an alien planet for the majority of the runtime. Rangarok strips Thor of everything that once made him Thor, and forces our hero to be introspective.
Ragrarok just fucking works, and I think it’s safe to say we’re grateful for that. There are times where the humor cuts into the genuine emotion of this surprisingly heartfelt movie(this scene is the worst offender), but honestly, I’d rather that than get a spiritual sequel to The Dark World. God, I hate that movie so much.
And Ragnarok is heartfelt. For the first time, we see Thor grow. He’s been completely static for (at the time of Ragnarok’s 2017 release) 6 years, and now we actually get to feel his journey as a person. It’s wonderfully cathartic and fulfilling to see- If you can stop laughing long enough to actually notice what’s going on.
Loki, too. I loved his arc in the original Thor (it was the best part of a so-so movie), but ever since then he hasn’t been much more than “bad guy for bad guy’s sake”. Here, we get to see him reflect.
And then there’s Hela. I’m glad she was so awesome in terms of her powers or whatever, but I really think Taika Waititi could have done better than “mlahh!! I’m an imperialist bad guy!!” Cate Blanchett did a great job with what she was given, but she wasn’t given much.
What was the deal with Eomer being Hela’s little lackey? He didn’t do anything for her except be someone to dump exposition- ohhhhhh, now I get it. Why in the world did you spend all that money on Karl Urban just for an infodump session? He’s a great actor!
And while Hela wasn’t awesomely written… the lore behind what happened with her and Asgard and Odin is is actually incredible. It’s an honest critique of imperialism and how Asgard (the stand-in for all of Western Civilization) have kind of just been pretending it never happened, or that it’s somehow over. I think I would have liked a deeper look into the subject, but I’m happy with what we got.
I think I heard a rumor that Jeff Goldblum improvised most of his lines. I refuse to google it, because I want to believe it’s true. Every scene with him is just magical, and I want to adopt him as my dad. Sorry, real Dad. We had a good run!
My biggest gripe with this movie, though? The part that really grinds my gears? It’s not actually anything in the movie itself- it’s this fucking trailer:
Waititi did a phenomenal job setting up the major plot twist that the Hulk is a gladiator on Sakaar. It’s one of the best reveals in recent years- spoiled on the poster and in the trailer. I was lucky enough to show this movie to Jilly who didn’t see the trailer or any marketing, and I got to see her genuine surprise when the Hulk jumped out into the big arena.
I did not get to have that experience for myself, and I’m really goddamn salty about it. I would have loved that surprise. Maybe someday I’ll experience a TBI and someone kind will show this to me without spoiling it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Best adaptation we’ve seen of the Hulk so far, though. I think mainstream audiences think the Hulk is nothing more than a brainless smashing machine, but here we get to see that Hulk has complex feelings- he’s upset from that fight he and Tony had in Ultron and how it wrecked a civilian population, and he’s running from that. The conversation he has with Thor in the changing/training/whatever room after the big gladiator fight is really touching… again, if you look past all the jokes and read the subtext.
Music’s great, too! Loved every minute of the soundtrack and its weird, electronic sci-fi-but-also-kind-of-fantasy goodness. And at the very end, when Thor is finally King of Asgard, a triumphant return to the Thor theme from waaaaaay back in the first movie, which really hammered in the catharsis of Thor finally getting what he wanted back in that first 2011 film.
By stripping away everything about Thor and making him think and feel like an actual person, Ragnarok functions as a soft reboot of the character. This means we could have a whole new Thor series, only this time it could actually be good! Oh. There’s a good chance that Endgame will be his final appearance? Well, shit.