Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Plot: Set two years after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor has been traveling through the realms looking for infinity stones. Along the way, he finds out that Ragnarok is coming and he comes back to Asgard to find Loki posing as Odin. He forces Loki to help him find Odin, only for both of them to discover that Odin is dying and that his passing will free his evil firstborn child, Hera to escape her prison. When Odin dies and Hera appears, proving to be a match for them, Thor and Loki attempt to flee from her via the Bifrost but she pursues them and forces them out into space to die. So Thor and Loki must find a way back while Hera begins to rule Asgard with an army of the undead.

When I left the theater with my family after seeing Thor: Ragnarok, we all agreed on one thing; that this was a very fun movie. Is a terrific film? No, but while I have a softer side for Thor: The Dark World because for all its faults, it was still giving us an expansion of Marvel's version of Norse mythology with the dark elves and the Aether and things like that, this is most fun,Thor movie that we have to date.

A lot of the strength into this movie really comes from Marvel just doing what they do best: they mix a good amount of good action, character development and comedy. You have Thor who is appearing to be a bit smarter and more clever than he has been the past, you have Loki who is still as manipulative as ever, you have the Hulk who talks a lot more than he has in any film before which is a little hard to swallow at first but it's still likable, and while Cate Blanchett doesn't appear as much as I personally would have liked, she still has an imitating presence as Hera. We also get some side characters that have their moments here and there like Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Karl Urban as Skurge and even Anthony Hopkins gave us a pretty funny scene early on the movie as Odin. Jane and her scientist companions are never seen in the movie, but as cute as her relationship with Thor is, I think Marvel knew that they would’ve been dead weight for a story as big as Ragnarok. 

The action is still a lot of fun, but like the Guardians of the Galaxy films, the thing that sticks out the most for most people is the comedy. There are a couple of jokes that you can tell a mile away that they're going to happen, but they still deliver the punchlines so well that they still makes you laugh. That's the very admiral thing about Marvel: they seem to have figured out exactly when to make jokes whether you can predict them or not and and almost always hit them at the right moments. I don't know how they keep on doing this, but as long as they are still giving us some memorable, funny moments five years after The Avengers, it's all the more welcoming.

Most of the film takes place in a planet called Sakaar which looks more like it's in a Guardians of the Galaxy location than a Thor location. The majority of the movie takes place in this planet which kind of drags the movie down if you want to see more of just Asgard and Hera causing trouble, but again, they really make it worth your while by making it fun with Thor and Loki interacting with Valkyrie, The Grandmaster, and of course Hulk whose payoff in being in the same scene with Loki for the first time since The Avengers is even better than I expected.

Honestly for me, the best part of the movie is the climax. I won't go into too much detail given that this is spoiler territory, but a lot of what happens is stuff that I didn't expect. It has a couple of good twists that are almost as good as the twists from Captain America: Winter Soldier. But for me, it's not just that it's so exciting that there are so many big twists that makes the third act stand out, what makes it significant is that everything that happens in the movie is permanent. When I came into this movie, I expected that the ending would give us an ending where everything is fixed by the end - somewhat similar to what Doctor Strange does with the Time Stone when he saved Hong Kong in the end of Doctor Strange. But instead, I found myself leaving the theater realizing everything bad that happens to Thor and the Asgardians is there to stay. All the destruction that has been caused, all the characters that are killed off, any physical injury that's been done to one of the main characters; all of them are permanent. So for me the real strength is that his knowing that every terrible thing that happens to Thor and Loki and all of the people of Asgard it's there for good.

If I had any major problem with the movie outside of the fact that we don't get as much attention on Hera as I feel we should have, it would be that the story in terms of its structure felt very recycled. That is to say there are a lot of things that I didn't know what happen like I said when discussing the climax, but the situation that Thor goes into is something we've seen before: he loses some of his power or something very important to him and he finds himself stranded in to a place far away from his home and has to go on this journey to rediscover himself. So in other words, he's basically going on a journey very similar to what Iron man and Batman go through in Iron Man 3 and The Dark Knight Rises respectfully and that kind of hurt the film for me personally. After Marvel just gave us such an astounding superhero threequel with Captain America: Civil War, it's kind of depressing that they decided to give Thor's threequelequal hey story structure that's been done a couple of times already with other superheroes. But this is kind of a nitpick.

And that's my review for Thor: Ragnarok. While I would have liked to see more in terms of story and character development with Hera and Ragnarok itself, what Thor: Ragnarok gives us instead still is a lot of fun, it's very action-packed, it's humorous, and it has some welcoming twists and turns. Personally I still kind of enjoy Thor: The dark World more but this is still an enjoyable threequel. If you haven't seen it yet but want to definitely take a look

Rating: 75%