I was pretty sure I was going to hate Thor: Ragnarok. Had Marvel stuck to its original formula for the character, I thought there was zero places to go with the story other than repeating itself. Enter Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director from Flight of the Concords and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The director’s hands are all over Thor: Ragnarok, which pivots the character in a much more fun and interesting direction, while maintaining enough bits of the past movies to not go completely off the rails.
The amusing introduction sequence reacquaints us with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as he continues to protect Asgard from attacks from the outside without being the king. He then returns home to find his dad Odin (Anthony Hopkins) has been exiled by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who rules Asgard in his stead. Unbeknownst to the brothers, a storm is coming in the form of Hela (Cate Blanchett), who Odin’s been holding at bay and can no longer. Her power is so great that it bests Thor easily, forcing him to reassess off planet, where he’s being held prisoner by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum). Fortunately, even in his state, he finds some allies in Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and most shockingly, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) who can help save their people from Hela’s appetite for destruction.
So here’s why Marvel is operating leaps and bounds ahead of its rivals. It was as clear to them as it was to me that the Thor Franchise as currently constructed had run out of steam. So they assessed the situation internally and identified their strengths of the franchise and eliminated the weaknesses. So bye bye went Natalie Portman, and the primary storyline about a screwed up Shakespearean family, among other things. In the strength category, Marvel did their homework on Hemsworth and watched Ghostbusters, so they pushed the guy to be much more funny. Loki is a must, being the most interesting character; most importantly, they blow out Thor’s stories to be about the actual universe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: create crazy but interesting worlds to have the characters be a part of. Who’s good at creating weird funny interesting worlds? Taika Waititi; hire that guy and tell him to go nuts with visualization on the world.
And Waititi delivered! Thor: Ragnarok is bonkers. From the beginning, we get the sense that Thor is much more playful, letting Hemsworth essentially carry a scene against a giant CGI monster by wisecracking almost as good as Tony Stark. Then Cate Blanchett saunters into the movie with gigantic deer antlers and leather fetish gear. Who could think that up? Blanchett pitches a tent with how much camping she does in her first 5 minutes, banishes Thor, and then gets to be just a cackling Maleficent like badass until Thor returns to stop her. The movie is then mostly about Thor’s wacky Gladiator like movie within a movie on Sakaar. The movie is a director/visual effects dream: An island of misfit toys with colors, all manner of creatures (the best being a rock gladiator named Korg voiced by Waititi himself), and Jeff Goldblum, doing his best Jeff Goldblum impression he can think of. We also get a bond between Hulk and Thor that works really well, since they are both the strong slightly dumb heroes in the Avengers. Waititi merges this silliness with the Thor character who came before. When it comes time to really battle, Thor loses the jokes and adpots the grandiose verbiage befitting the warrior he is destine to be. However, this time, since the audience has had such a good time, we’re ROOTING for Thor, Valkyrie, and the Hulk to take down Hela, instead of before, where we would root for them both to kill each other and Loki to win in the end.
In the end, the Marvel machine continues to prove itself a powerful force. Previous movies show its ability to really know its characters and what drives them, and connect them to audiences with stories they understand and can think about. With Ant-Man and Thor: Ragnarok, the Marvel team shows that they can take some of their weaker elements and create a decent product out of it and in Thor’s case, push the movie back toward the Iron Man/Captain America franchises. But here’s why I love Marvel most. When thinking about who could play Hela, a psychopathic gothic fetishy war monger, one of their crazy writers/producers took a look at Cate Blanchett and was like: she’ll work. CATE BLANCHETT!!! As regal and stoic an actor as we have. Some crazy producer was like: “I got a feeling that she’ll want to ham it up for a bit, and it will give our movie inherent stakes because of how well respected she is.” Who thinks like that, seriously? Bravo.