Thor: Ragnarok Review

Rating of this movie: 10/10. A+

Thor: Ragnarok is the third Thor movie in the Marvel franchise and the seventeenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Non-Spoiler Review

This movie was amazing! Now that I got that out of the way, let’s get into details. This movie really worked. I know a lot of people were worried about this movie when it was first announced. Thor and its sequel, Thor: The Dark World, didn’t do as well as a typical Marvel movie. (Not to say they weren’t good or didn’t do good in the box office.) So, when a third Thor film was announced, fans were skeptical. But, when the first trailer dropped most people’s opinions changed. The trailer promised a new and thrilling Thor movie that would stand out against its predecessors.

The film showed great humor, which is something that last Thor movies lacked. Sure, the others had jokes here and there, but compared to the amount of laughs I got from Ragnarok, they were nothing. The movie immediately throws in a joke with Thor giving some background of what happened to him in between Avengers: Age of Ultron and now. The funny bit being that this explanation is given to a skeleton in Thor’s prison birdcage. The jokes keep coming as the movie continues. With Loki and Thor discussing Loki’s predictably unpredictable double-crosses and references to past movies, this movie gives you at least one laugh per scene. New characters brought in new laughs and new faces. As with each Marvel movie, Thor: Ragnarok gives fans plenty of new names to memorize for the MCU.

However, there is a dark aspect to the movie as well as a humorous one. This movie has a death of a major character along with the deaths of a few minor characters. All of them were (semi) unexpected. With the main villain being Hela, the goddess of death, one would expect there to be a few dark scenes and one would be right. Many things happen that shock the viewer. Hela is a worthy opponent in Ragnarok and immediately shows that she is not to be challenged. As the trailers show us, Hela destroys Mjolnir (Thor’s hammer) in her first appearance of the movie.

The fight between Thor and Hulk was a highly anticipated scene for most Marvel fans, and they were not disappointed. This scene was very cool. We finally get to see the two Avengers not in Captain America: Civil War fight! Thor’s attempt to calm the Hulk down using Black Widow’s technique was hilarious as, apparently, only Black Widow can do it. I was very excited to see the Hulk again. He is one of my favorite characters and he, like Thor, hasn’t appeared since the 2015 Avengers movie. The Hulk has learned a lot more control since his last appearance as he can now speak more fluently and expresses more ideas (still with his “destroy everything” attitude.)

Thor’s haircut was a topic of discussion after the release of the first trailer and the movie also made a point of dramatically revealing the god of thunder’s new style and fitting a Stan Lee cameo in at the same time. Personally, I think it looks fine, but other people were a little sad over the loss of Thor’s flowing locks.

As for actors and actresses, everyone did a fine job. One of the people who stood out the most was Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster. His personality worked perfectly for his role and almost all of his lines made me laugh while watching the movie. Tessa Thompson was very good as Valkyrie. She did a good job portraying Valkyrie’s attitude and warrior skills in the film.

Doctor Strange had a (unsurprising if you watched the end credits of Doctor Strange) surprise appearance. The character appeared briefly in the middle of the beginning of the movie. Strange has certainly gotten better at his powers after his first movie. He messes around with the world and building around him much to Thor’s annoyance and the audience’s enjoyment. I  think the appearance of Strange was funny and moved the plot along faster, but it just seemed a little out of place for him to appear.

Favorite line:

Grandmaster: Scrapper 142, you are the best! (Turns to Topaz) I mean, whenever I talk about her, what do I call her? Starts with a “B”?

Topaz: Trash.

Grandmaster: Trash? That’s not at all what I say. You said that so quickly, were you just waiting for an excuse to say that? It doesn’t even start with a “B”. I was going for “best”.

Overall, this movie was great and well worth the price of admittance. It provided a lot of humor and action in its 2 hour 10 minute runtime. If you missed the movie, I would highly recommend buying it when it comes out.

Spoiler Review

This movie took a lot of risks that actually worked out in the end. One of the biggest things I can imagine they did was having Thor lose an eye in a battle with Hela. Some movies have main characters lose appendages, but (like in Star Wars with Anakin and Luke) the loss can be covered up with robotics or a bandage. Thor’s eye is different. He will have this eye patch for the rest of his movies, looking a lot like his father, Odin.

Another risk the movie took was the destruction of Asgard. The movie ends with Ragnarok finally finishing and Asgard (the place, not the people) getting destroyed. Surtur becomes giant, as he prophesized in the beginning of the movie, and shoots his flaming destruction down upon the city.  The scene was surprising, but it worked as Thor was able to defeat his sister by destroying the place she wanted to rule.

The risks this movie used really paid off and I think the movie became much better with them. This movie surprised many fans and I think it is one of the reasons this movie is so good.