Thor: Ragnarok

This was a safe year for Marvel. You had Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Spider-man in one year. How were any of those at all at risk of failing? The closest thing to a risk Marvel took this year was the possibility that Sony was gonna try and take too much of the reigns and ruin Spider-man. Everything else about this year just spells assured success. Does that mean I've loved everything that has come out of Marvel this year? No. Does that mean Thor Ragnarok is good? Well...

Thor Ragnarok takes place two years after the events of Age of Ultron (apparently the timeline has been a huge thing this year so don't read too much into that timeframe). Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) is having dreams about the destruction of Asgard known as Ragnarok. Last time we heard from him he was going off to find some of the Infinity Stones.

Eventually Hella, the goddess of death (played by Cate Blanchett) returns to Asgard and claims she is the rightful ruler of the world. Thor and Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) are stranded on a strange new world called Sakaar. To show how powerful she is, before Thor is stranded, Hella destroys his hammer, his weapon almost quintessential to his identity.

Thor is taken as a prisoner by a mercenary named Scraper 142 (played by Tessa Thompson) and he is sold to the ruler of Sakaar, the Grand Master (played by Jeff Goldblum).

While under his captivity, Thor is forced to take part in a gladiatorial competition where he can only win his freedom by beating the Grand Master's Champion.

And if you've watched the trailers, you know who that Champion is.

That is one thing about this movie. It's not really a movie where a lot depends on how much is secret, but a lot of the film was revealed by the trailers. Not enough to really affect the movie going experience (it's not like there's a Shyamalan twist in this film), but there were a couple of parts in the film that would have been kind of fun to realize on my own and not see in the trailer before hand.

Anyways, the Champion is The Hulk/Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo).

Pitted against his former Avenger friend, Thor must recruit Banner to help him along with some other new and old friends to go back to Asgard and defeat Hella before the destruction of Asgard occurs.

So as safe as making a Thor sequel was, the Thor movies have probably gone down as people's least favorites. I don't knock you if you weren't a fan of Thor the Dark World or even the first Thor, they're not that great of films. I personally really enjoyed them but I've only watched Thor 1 more than once. I haven't seen The Dark World since the first time I saw it.

Thor is not an easy character to spend an entire movie focusing on. He contributes to Avengers movies as a great over powered character, kind of like Legolas from Lord of the Rings, but you would never want to see a Legolas standalone film, at least not the Legolas from the movie. He's much cooler just being a badass.

Thor is a little bit like the Legolas of the Avengers. While I totally expected this movie, I didn't totally expect to to be as fun and enjoyable as it came out as.

The movie is directed by a gentleman by the name of Taika Waititi. If you don't know who he is, he was the pointless friend from Green Lantern and he directed a comedy I still need to watch fully and review (because what I saw from it was really hilarious), What We Do In the Shadows.

Waititi does take a bit of a different approach to the character and makes him a little bit more humorous. If you've watched the small videos of Thor rooming with a guy named Jeff and joking about Civil War, you've seen the new Thor. If you haven't seen those videos, I linked on at the bottom. He's a little bit more of a little dim witted jock. Still interesting, just a little bit more humor throughout and that is very apparent from the beginning.

My point is Thor is not exactly a really deep character. I think he had a couple of good moments in the last movie with Loki as that movie was about brothers and family. And while that's kind of here in that film, that motiff has kind of been put on the back burner for an overall weird and incredibly 80s sci fi adventure.

And no matter what I say, no matter what criticism I pull up here, I will just say this. I had a lot of fun with this movie. I have felt pretty lukewarm about Marvel movies in general recently that and I've been very hyper aware of the repetitiveness and the formula that has actually gotten a little old after a while.

The great thing about Thor is that it feels like they're shaking things up. It actually feels like characters are changing because of what happens in this film and I really like that. In past films it has felt like instead of a standalone film, Marvel films have felt like just the next sequel and have not given much closure. While there isn't a lot of closure in this film and it still feels apart of the giant machine Marvel has created, I did feel like things are going to change from this film. The characters have gone through something new and when they show up in Infinity War, they are going to be different.

Waititi has mentioned in interviews that he is kind of ignoring some of the continuity in this film so if you're wondering why it doesn't exactly feel like the other Thor movies, it's meant to do that on purpose. This allows for some new characters like Tessa Thompson's character who I really liked, a new-ish Hulk, and of course the Goddess of Death Hella.

One thing you should know is that Hella is not the Marvel villain we've all be waiting for. There is a lot we don't know about her and while she's probably better than most just due to who she is and the fact she's played by Cate Blanchett, she is still pretty paper thin and not really given a lot of time to develop as a character as the heroes are.

In fact I actually kind of liked thought The Grand Master was a little bit better of a villain than Hella was. Maybe it's the fact that it's Jeff Goldblum but I just hope this isn't the last time we see Hella. By the end it's a little unclear. I could see her getting more development and I can't imagine Marvel is just going to bring on a great actress like Cate Blanchett and not use her for more than one film... then again they have done that before...

Someone always worth mentioning is Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner. While I liked his character in this film, one thing I will mention is that Bruce Banner is a little bit more of a "cowardly" dweeb in this movie. You can tell the distinct difference between him and Hulk and for some reason they decided to have Bruce Banner be a little more weaselly in this film. Again, I don't not like it, I think Bruce Banner was always a little white bread in previous films, but it just adds into the fact that not everything is going to add up in this film and they seem to be totally fine with it.

One thing I'll say without giving too much spoilers away, it's more of an observation.

I think Marvel's biggest regret has to be the fact that they casted Idris Elba as a minor character like Hemdall. They try really hard to beef up his importance in this film like they tried in The Dark World, but I can't imagine Marvel is patting themselves on the back too much for having a solid actor like Elba play a guy who can just see really far.

Like I said, Thor Ragnarok is fun. I have been pretty lukewarm on Marvel films recently and while this definitely is far from the best Marvel movie out there, I just had fun in this film. It felt self contained (for the most part, this is a Marvel film we're talking about) and I was thoroughly entertained.

I recently answered a question online on what were my Top 5 favorite Marvel films.

Earlier today it was:

1) Winter Soldier
2) Avengers
3) Spider-man Homecoming
4) Civil War
5) Age of Ultron

I honestly feel like I tacked on Age of Ultron just because and now I feel like on entertainment value alone, Thor Ragnarok might take that fifth place spot. I haven't decided on that so I would say this list is far from "cannon" but it does illustrate a point on how entertaining this movie was. Again, no where near the top spot, but definitely not a bad time at the movies.

But those are my thoughts on Thor Ragnarok. I realize I haven't been doing spoiler reviews for any of the Marvel films I've seen this year. Here's my plan. I'm going to write a spoiler recap for all the Marvel movies of 2017. This will serve as both my overview of moments I thought were cool from Marvel films that edge on spoiler territory, but I can also talk about Marvel's performance as a whole and talk about where the franchise is going. What do you think of that? What did you think of Thor Ragnarok? Where does it fall on your top list of Marvel films? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. In case you haven't seen it, here's the Team Thor video they made for Civil War. If you're wondering what Thor is like in this movie, this is a pretty good representation. Enjoy!