Top 25 Favourite Films: #21 Thor: Ragnarok (Dir. Taika Waititi, 2017)
#21. Thor: Ragnarok. Directed by Taika Waititi, 2017
I was wrong about Thor: Ragnarok when it first came out, rather flippantly describing it as, well, overly flippant. A film that merrily dumped the Shakespearean worded, overly serious universe of the Brannagh Thor and the exorable Dark World out the car window before roaring off into the distance, playing 80s-tinged retrowave out an obnoxiously large sound system, and quipping about childhood encounters with brothers-disguised-as-snakes. I freely admit I didn't quite get what Taika Waititi had done, not just to Thor, but to Marvel in general. The penny started to drop midway through Avengers Infinity War, and fully clunked home in its final third.
He'd made a comic book movie. Not a grim noirish slog through whatever DC calls their universe these days, nor one of the IKEAish "insert witty banter into Slot A, attach CGI fight to finale with attached Allen Key" Marvel films that simply keep the most powerful franchise on earth ticking over. He'd made a fun, goofy, enjoyable film that leans heavily into the aesthetics, feel, and dialogue of Marvel's Golden and Silver Ages. And he'd made it work. In doing so, he'd turned Chris Hemsworth's Thor from a muscleheaded hothead to the comic backbone of the MCU, and opened the door for other directors, new voices from outside Hollywood, to add their own takes on familiar, and not-so-familiar, figures.
At the centre of Ragnarok itself is Thor himself; gone is the slightly odd Shakespearean figure that even the fans of the previous two films would agree was never quite pinned down, and lacked a cohesive identity. In his place, as the entire film went into a soft reboot, turning to a far more 80s fantasy style, and in doing so, homaging the work of the legendary Jack Kirby, is a funnier, less cocky and more likable Thor. This is evident from the very first scene, in which a captured and chained Thor, begins with a deadpan internal "I bet you're wondering how I got here" monologue, utterly upends the villainous monologue from fire demon Surtur, and proceeds to destroy him and his army to the recurring Immigrant song by Led Zeppelin. In less than ten minutes, Waititi has utterly rejuvenated and rebooted Thor's world.
What follows over the next two hours is as fine as any of the Marvel installments, struck through with humour and pathos, a technicolour explosion of a film that takes us across worlds, reunites us with Thor's brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), utterly relishing his return, this time as a impressively nuanced anti hero, together with the return of Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), in a faithful, and crowd-pleasing adaption of the World War Hulk arc of the original comic.
Certainly the comedic back and forth between Banner, Loki, who spends his first scene with the colossal Hulk hiding from the colossal superhero in fear of a repeat of their last bruising encounter at the end of Avengers Assemble, Thor, and newcomer Valkyrie, the last survivor of the imperial guard of Asgard, is second to none, from adlibs to slapstick to a neatly pared back style of the self-referential comedy that has begun to hamstring other Marvel outings.
The plot itself is surprisingly barebones, giving all four of its main protagonists time to breathe both as characters, and as comedic foils to each other, from Valkyrie's past, her lost love-in the one moment that the MCU has come closest to actual LGBT representation-and her subsequent turn to alocholism and redemption, to Thor coming to terms with the loss of his home, powers and identity, to the onward struggle of Banner/Hulk, even as the latter becomes a beloved warrior in the arena that practically dominates the society of intergalactic trash-heap Sakkar, ruled over by Jeff Goldblum's enjoyably camp Grandmaster
And nowhere is this seen better than in the form of Cate Blanchett's Hela; Blanchett is clearly having a whale of a time as one of the MCU's best villains, a sharptongued, practically unstoppable, and most of all fun villainess, that feels fresh and engaging rather than the MCU's typical bland figures. Hela is the centre of this film, destroying Thor's hammer, and thus robbing him of power, and indeed purpose, before essentially banishing both him and Loki to Sakkar, before taking Asgard for herself in what is undoubtedly the film's one truly serious moment.
When our four heroes, dubbing themselves the Revengers, a name that even they think is impressively dumb, finally return, Hela is a wonderfully acidic foil to Thor and Loki, unveiling the "dirty little secret" of a younger and less wise Odin, and casting scorn on both her younger siblings. She is, in short, a complete delight, revelling in her villainy as few MCU antagonists, save perhaps for Loki himself, does, and here, as with the original Thor, Thor himself discovers his true potential, albeit with a far more complex payoff in her defeat.
At the end of the day, though, this is a comedy, and a bloody good one, and there are too many classic moments to recount here-the fact that this retro-futurist 80s-esque world crashlanded in a series that previously felt like bad Shakespearean improv sci-fi and made it fun and fresh again is a masterpiece of story, tone and character. That this film brings Hulk and Thor back together as a team, the two hot heads of an otherwise efficiently cool group, and made them the emotional centre of this and Infinity War is impressive enough, especially in scenes where Banner, having been the king of the arena as Hulk, reverts to his human form and is taken aback by Hulk masks and souvenirs being available across the planet.
That this film makes Valkyrie feel like an integral part of the team, a woman reeling from loss dealt with maturely, and with tact and care, is equally impressive, even if the finale does somewhat sideline her compared to its other three characters-like them, however, she is able to find closure with the fitting conclusion to her arc at least in this film. This film's masterstroke is, however, bringing Loki back in from the cold at long last, without either neutering him or making him feel at all different from his previous appearances.
This is, after all, Loki as he has always been, albeit now, as with the rest of the Revengers, given a suitably comic bent-certainly he seems to be on the receiving end of much of the slapstick-and a surprising sincerity in later scenes. For lack of a better word, Loki and Thor have never felt more like brothers than this film, in every sense of the word, a bickering competitive duo who squabble among each other, but who seem, at long last to have an understanding between each other, even if anecdotes about snake-transformation-based trickery make it seem a slightly fractious one.
And this is perhaps the masterstroke of Waititi's film; he takes familiar characters, in a section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that had begun to seem tired and stale, and by going back to the comics, by returning them to fun, bright adventures in oddly named places with stunning visuals, charming characters, including his own scene stealing cameo as failed revolutionary Korg, alongside rejuvenated familar ones, and he makes the single best damn film of the lot. Ragnarok may be the death of the gods, the fall of Asgard, but it's the rebirth of Thor in a singularly spectacular film.
I was wrong about Thor: Ragnarok when it first came out, rather flippantly describing it as, well, overly flippant. A film that merrily dumped the Shakespearean worded, overly serious universe of the Brannagh Thor and the exorable Dark World out the car window before roaring off into the distance, playing 80s-tinged retrowave out an obnoxiously large sound system, and quipping about childhood encounters with brothers-disguised-as-snakes. I freely admit I didn't quite get what Taika Waititi had done, not just to Thor, but to Marvel in general. The penny started to drop midway through Avengers Infinity War, and fully clunked home in its final third.
He'd made a comic book movie. Not a grim noirish slog through whatever DC calls their universe these days, nor one of the IKEAish "insert witty banter into Slot A, attach CGI fight to finale with attached Allen Key" Marvel films that simply keep the most powerful franchise on earth ticking over. He'd made a fun, goofy, enjoyable film that leans heavily into the aesthetics, feel, and dialogue of Marvel's Golden and Silver Ages. And he'd made it work. In doing so, he'd turned Chris Hemsworth's Thor from a muscleheaded hothead to the comic backbone of the MCU, and opened the door for other directors, new voices from outside Hollywood, to add their own takes on familiar, and not-so-familiar, figures.
At the centre of Ragnarok itself is Thor himself; gone is the slightly odd Shakespearean figure that even the fans of the previous two films would agree was never quite pinned down, and lacked a cohesive identity. In his place, as the entire film went into a soft reboot, turning to a far more 80s fantasy style, and in doing so, homaging the work of the legendary Jack Kirby, is a funnier, less cocky and more likable Thor. This is evident from the very first scene, in which a captured and chained Thor, begins with a deadpan internal "I bet you're wondering how I got here" monologue, utterly upends the villainous monologue from fire demon Surtur, and proceeds to destroy him and his army to the recurring Immigrant song by Led Zeppelin. In less than ten minutes, Waititi has utterly rejuvenated and rebooted Thor's world.
What follows over the next two hours is as fine as any of the Marvel installments, struck through with humour and pathos, a technicolour explosion of a film that takes us across worlds, reunites us with Thor's brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), utterly relishing his return, this time as a impressively nuanced anti hero, together with the return of Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), in a faithful, and crowd-pleasing adaption of the World War Hulk arc of the original comic.
Certainly the comedic back and forth between Banner, Loki, who spends his first scene with the colossal Hulk hiding from the colossal superhero in fear of a repeat of their last bruising encounter at the end of Avengers Assemble, Thor, and newcomer Valkyrie, the last survivor of the imperial guard of Asgard, is second to none, from adlibs to slapstick to a neatly pared back style of the self-referential comedy that has begun to hamstring other Marvel outings.
The plot itself is surprisingly barebones, giving all four of its main protagonists time to breathe both as characters, and as comedic foils to each other, from Valkyrie's past, her lost love-in the one moment that the MCU has come closest to actual LGBT representation-and her subsequent turn to alocholism and redemption, to Thor coming to terms with the loss of his home, powers and identity, to the onward struggle of Banner/Hulk, even as the latter becomes a beloved warrior in the arena that practically dominates the society of intergalactic trash-heap Sakkar, ruled over by Jeff Goldblum's enjoyably camp Grandmaster
And nowhere is this seen better than in the form of Cate Blanchett's Hela; Blanchett is clearly having a whale of a time as one of the MCU's best villains, a sharptongued, practically unstoppable, and most of all fun villainess, that feels fresh and engaging rather than the MCU's typical bland figures. Hela is the centre of this film, destroying Thor's hammer, and thus robbing him of power, and indeed purpose, before essentially banishing both him and Loki to Sakkar, before taking Asgard for herself in what is undoubtedly the film's one truly serious moment.
When our four heroes, dubbing themselves the Revengers, a name that even they think is impressively dumb, finally return, Hela is a wonderfully acidic foil to Thor and Loki, unveiling the "dirty little secret" of a younger and less wise Odin, and casting scorn on both her younger siblings. She is, in short, a complete delight, revelling in her villainy as few MCU antagonists, save perhaps for Loki himself, does, and here, as with the original Thor, Thor himself discovers his true potential, albeit with a far more complex payoff in her defeat.
At the end of the day, though, this is a comedy, and a bloody good one, and there are too many classic moments to recount here-the fact that this retro-futurist 80s-esque world crashlanded in a series that previously felt like bad Shakespearean improv sci-fi and made it fun and fresh again is a masterpiece of story, tone and character. That this film brings Hulk and Thor back together as a team, the two hot heads of an otherwise efficiently cool group, and made them the emotional centre of this and Infinity War is impressive enough, especially in scenes where Banner, having been the king of the arena as Hulk, reverts to his human form and is taken aback by Hulk masks and souvenirs being available across the planet.
That this film makes Valkyrie feel like an integral part of the team, a woman reeling from loss dealt with maturely, and with tact and care, is equally impressive, even if the finale does somewhat sideline her compared to its other three characters-like them, however, she is able to find closure with the fitting conclusion to her arc at least in this film. This film's masterstroke is, however, bringing Loki back in from the cold at long last, without either neutering him or making him feel at all different from his previous appearances.
This is, after all, Loki as he has always been, albeit now, as with the rest of the Revengers, given a suitably comic bent-certainly he seems to be on the receiving end of much of the slapstick-and a surprising sincerity in later scenes. For lack of a better word, Loki and Thor have never felt more like brothers than this film, in every sense of the word, a bickering competitive duo who squabble among each other, but who seem, at long last to have an understanding between each other, even if anecdotes about snake-transformation-based trickery make it seem a slightly fractious one.
And this is perhaps the masterstroke of Waititi's film; he takes familiar characters, in a section of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that had begun to seem tired and stale, and by going back to the comics, by returning them to fun, bright adventures in oddly named places with stunning visuals, charming characters, including his own scene stealing cameo as failed revolutionary Korg, alongside rejuvenated familar ones, and he makes the single best damn film of the lot. Ragnarok may be the death of the gods, the fall of Asgard, but it's the rebirth of Thor in a singularly spectacular film.
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