Poor Thor. Even in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he has been a fish-out-of-water.
The two previous movies are viewed as the oddly behaving stepchildren to the box-office grand-daddies like Iron Man and Captain America, and despite the increasingly evident perfect casting of Chris Hemsworth in the lead role, and having the MCU's best villain always on hand to liven up proceedings, for whatever reason, the Thor branch has always seemed like it has been wilting in comparison.
Kenneth Branagh directed the first one, and gave it an appropriate level of visual lushness and OTT pomp, while Game Of Thrones' veteran Alan Taylor was hired to replace a fired Patty Jenkins (who would eventually go on to direct Wonder Woman for DC and Warner), and his workmanlike film was perfectly fine, but also perfectly flat.
Thor: The Dark World is still the worst reviewed movie of the MCU to date (54% on Metacritic), and the first is still joint second worst (57%, same as Iron Man 2), and due to the inherent nature of plots involving an intergalactic God Of Thunder, you can imagine that the budgets need to be generally higher than the likes of, say, Ant-Man.
With Thor: Ragnarok, it felt like Marvel and Disney had nothing left to lose. The direction they had taken so far with the character just wasn't quite working out, so they decided to go elsewhere. Enter director Taika Watiti.
Having previously brought the same indie-comedy gems What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople, his warped sense of humour was a perfect match for Thor's not-quite-understood sensibilties. The screenwriters also came up with the genius idea of essentially making it a buddy-cop movie, with the buddies being Thor and The Hulk, and instead of the buddies solving a crime, they had to solve the matter of the Goddess Of Death wanting to destroy Asgard.
Another issue with the previous Thor movies were the villains. Actually, that has been an issue with Marvel movies in general (which we won't get into fully here), but the MCU bad-guys and bad-gals just don't stand out in general. Sure, Loki is great fun, but he's fighting for the good guys almost as much as he is the bad guys. And Thor has previously had to deal with the instantly forgettable likes of the Frost Giant King (Colm Feore) and Malekith (Christopher Eccleston). This time around, they sorted that problem out immediately by giving us Cate Blanchett, having the time of her life playing an oil-slick destroyer who looks like she was dressed by a particularly artistic drag queen.
Clip via Marvel
The plot is, thankfully, quite simple. Hela, the Goddess Of Death, wants to take over Asgard and use it as her base to conquer the rest of the known galaxies. Thor, no match for her by himself, must put together a team to battle her.
That is your lot, but as the old saying goes, it isn't the destination, but the journey involving Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson, Idris Elba, Karl Urban and an out-of-this-world Jeff Goldblum that matters.
Again, Watiti skews expectations by getting these fantastic actors to turn in some incredible, unexpected performances. Ruffalo as Banner/The Hulk plays the entire thing hilariously, constantly on the verge of a panic attack, the dichotomy of being the strongest thing on the planet constantly on the verge of tears once he realises he's actually not on Earth anymore being played for the maximum amount of laughs.
Thompson (who wowed us so completely in Creed) arrives out of nowhere as contender to the Wonder Woman crown, all ass-kicking and no apologies, but instead of being a paragon of virtue, she hits the sauce so hard she can barely walk straight. Elba, as always, is an Elba-level of great, and Urban lays on a thick cockney accent and really helps set the tone for the entire movie when we get a random cut-away of him using a shakeweight.
And last, but by no means least, there is Jeff Goldblum. He isn't playing a character in Thor: Ragnarok. No, by our estimates, Watiti asked Goldblum to deliver his most Goldblum-y performance to date, and in the process, Goldblum burns a little comedic hole in the screen, with every word, syllable, hand-movement, sudden flourish and exaggerated smile and arched eyebrow destined to send the entire audience into knots of laughter.
Combined, it results in what is perhaps the most purely entertaining MCU entry since the first Guardians Of The Galaxy, and even outside of the performances and the comedy, there is a fantastic look to the movie, quite unique within the Marvel Universe, with some sequences sure to go down as some of the best looking scenes in any comic book movie to date.
It isn't perfect - there are one too many CGI space-ship fights, it does feel like the least "real" MCU movie to date as it too often looks like an impressive video-game cut-scene, and even with Blanchett playing her, Hella doesn't live up to her full potential as an axis-altering villain - but it does feel like Marvel swinging for the fences, and with Thor: Ragnarok, they haven't missed.
More risks like this will make sure comic book movie fatigue will be staved off for another few years yet.
Thor: Ragnarok is in Irish cinemas from Tuesday 24 October.
