Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Imprisoned, the almighty Thor finds himself in a
lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must
fight for survival and race against time to prevent the all-powerful
Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.
Director:
Taika WaititiStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
3 November 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Thor 3 See more »Box Office
Budget:
$180,000,000 (estimated)Opening Weekend:
AUD 10,135,906 (Australia) (29 October 2017)
See more »
Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
Color (ACES)Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1Did You Know?
Trivia
Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe described working on the film as both satisfying and frustrating: "As a Cinematographer, your function is to achieve a technically flawless image, to the service of the Director, and a key character of production, which is the Visual Effects Supervisor. At times, it is difficult to know where you are inside the movie, but I am very happy to have been able to respond to such incredible technical requirement." See more »Quotes
[first lines][Thor is thrown into Muspelheim in chains]
Thor: I know what you're thinking: how did this happen? Well, it's a long story...
See more »
Crazy Credits
The film title appears from the Bifrost. See more »Soundtracks
Immigrant Song
By Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
Performed by Led Zeppelin
Courtesy of Atlantic Recording Group
By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
By Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
Performed by Led Zeppelin
Courtesy of Atlantic Recording Group
By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
I wouldn’t have picked Chris Hemsworth
as Marvel's breakout comedy star when he was first cast as Thor, God of
Thunder, but he turned out to be one of the best things about this
never-ending mega-franchise. He’s tall, brawny and impossibly handsome,
but there’s a self-mocking twinkle in his eye. When Thor is in gung-ho
jock mode, Hemsworth’s wry machismo evokes the young Sean Connery as James Bond, raising an eyebrow at the corniness around him. When he bumbles and stumbles, there’s a touch of Cary Grant
to his embarrassment. And when he’s playing things more or less
straight, there’s an average guyness to his reactions. All this
humanizes an actor who’s perpetually at risk of being treated as a
life-sized action figure.
Hemsworth’s charisma holds “Thor: Ragnarok” together whenever it
threatens to spin apart, which unfortunately is often. Written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost and directed by Taika Waititi (“Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” “What We Do in the Shadows”),
this is almost but not quite a stand-alone picture, tethered to
previous “Avengers” entries only by Thor’s opening search for the
Infinity Stones, which has led him to be imprisoned by the fire demon
Sutur. The demon tells him that his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins)
is no longer on Asgard and that their homeworld will soon be destroyed
in Ragnarok, a prophesied apocalypse. After that, the film splits into a
couple of parallel narratives.
Fully half the film is a court intrigue/war picture, charting the takeover of Asgard by Thor’s long lost sister Hela (Cate Blanchett),
a black-clad force of nature who seems to turn into a demonic
stag-beast when she fights: her head sprouts elegant antlers that might
have been sketched in the air with a brush dipped in India ink. The
other “Thor: Ragnarok” is a largely comedic gladiator movie with prison
thriller accents: Thor is trapped on the planet Sakaar, where he’s
forced to fight the planet’s reigning champion, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). As revealed in trailers, Tom Hiddleston’s
Loki is back, too—and why wouldn’t he be? He’s easily the most
entertaining villain, or antihero, in the franchise, so beguiling that
when Thor inevitably succumbs to his charisma and fights alongside him,
both he and the audience momentarily forget how much death and property
destruction he’s caused in prior chapters.
The overqualified supporting cast does a lot with not-quite enough. Sakaar’s “Grandmaster” is Jeff Goldblum,
who gives exactly the sort of performance you’d want Jeff Goldblum to
give in a project like this: intellectually detached, droll and
smart-alecky, yet also somehow petty, arbitrary and sadistic. Goldblum's
unique genius is his ability to toss off lines that might've seemed as
overripe as week-old avocados on the page, like, "Let's have a hand for
all of our undercard competitors who died so gruesomely." (From the
inventive way he adds "ums" and "ahhs," you can tell that he's also a jazz musician.) The
worst thing I can say about him is that he’s more appealing here than
well-used. Either there should have been a lot more of him—though not at
the expense of Blanchett, who’s a slinky hoot—or his efforts should’ve
been more finely shaped by the filmmakers, so that his brilliance
cohered into a bona fide character or else pushed on towards toward
Dadaist madness, like Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or the late Gene Wilder’s title performance in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
(The latter seems to have been what Waititi and company were going for
in casting Goldblum: when Thor is introduced to Sakaar, “Pure Imagination” plays on the soundtrack.)
As Valkyrie, an alcoholic bounty hunter who once fought against Hela and now works for The Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson
more than holds her own in scenes opposite Hiddleston, Hemsworth and
Ruffalo. She's hard-boiled, like a tough dame in a 1940s detective film
spitting wisecracks. As Skurge, a warrior who survives Hela’s
destructive takeover of Asgard and joins her in order to survive, “Lord
of the Rings” star Karl Urban
captures the unhappiness of a sellout who knows he’s better than the
life he’s expediently chosen; but so much of his performance is reduced
to anguished reaction shots that you may wonder—as you might with
Thompson—whether the best bits got cut for pacing.
In the
run-up to release, much was made of the allegedly drastic shift in tone
that would make this project unique. It was sold as a light, funky,
largely comedic effort—practically a spoof of Marvel’s usual, with Thor
and the Hulk serving as the anchor of, basically, a buddy movie, like
the kind Bob Hope
and Bing Crosby used to churn out. There are times when it gets close
to that promised film, and when it hits pay dirt, it is
delightful—particularly during very broad slapstick moments, as when
Hulk enters the arena and Thor laughs with relief and announces, “I know
him—he's a friend from work!”; and in moments of relatively subdued
character development, as when Thor and Hulk commiserate in private and
we learn that the big green guy loves it on Sakaar because the people
treat him as an athletic superstar and folk hero, in contrast to the
pariah treatment he gets back on Earth. (When you’re mainly good at Hulk
Smash, it’s a relief to land a job that asks you to do nothing but.)
When Hulk turns back into Bruce Banner, Ruffalo reminds us
that he’s giving two performances here, both superb. He revels in the
looming physicality of Hulk—a motion capture performance on par with Andy Serkis’
best—but when he turns back into a regular man, he seems to shrink
within himself. He’s unafraid to use his shortness for laughs, appearing
side-by-side against the towering Hemsworth in wide shots like the
superhero answer to Laurel and Hardy. Banner’s complaints are small,
too—and yet they aren’t, because of their recognizable humanity: “You’re
just using me to get to Hulk,” he whines. “It’s gross. You’re a bad
friend.”
Unfortunately, as is often the case with Marvel films, the
adventurous aspects aren’t adventurous enough, and the more predictable
aspects—the CGI-saturated fight scenes, with bodies whirling through the
air; the wide shots of cities burning and giant creatures on the
rampage; the images of whooshing, twisting star gates and bodies falling
from the sky like meteors—are more frenzied and loud than inspired, and
eventually become monotonous. The movie's final third, yet another
Marvel Big Battle, is as tedious as the first two-thirds are endearing.
Only the comic chemistry of the main quadrangle—Hemsworth, Hiddleston,
Thompson and Ruffalo—prevents “Thor: Ragnarok” from devolving into
another standard-issue superhero crash-and-bash fest, and a climactic
twist, which I won’t reveal here, is presented in such a tonally
inappropriate way that it calls the film’s entire approach into
question. (“Ant-Man”’s status as the best off-brand MCU film remains unchallenged.)
Still, there’s plenty to like here. Waititi, his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (“Blue Jasmine”), and his production designer Dan Hennah take their cues from pop art-influenced comic book adaptations of the ‘60s and ‘70s like TV’s “Batman,” “Logan’s Run,” “Flash Gordon” and “The Black Hole,”
filling the screen with kitschy costumes, furniture, artifacts and
machinery envisioned in the tiled, knobby style of the late, great
illustrator Jack Kirby,
and presenting it all in oversaturated color. The disco-drug-trip
gaudiness is a welcome change of pace from superhero cinema’s default
bled-by-leeches look. At one point, Thor even gripes about the
red-and-white patterning of the capital city's interiors, as well he
should: they’re hideous. Mark Mothersbaugh, the onetime Devo co-founder and composer who scored four Wes Anderson
films, creates a retro-synth soundtrack suited to the era of science
fiction cinema in which characters wore jumpsuits. This is a
close-but-no-cigar movie, but so enjoyable for the most part, and so
modest in its aims, that its disappointments aren’t devastating. I’d
watch the first 90 minutes again anytime.
FINAL RATING: 9/10 FOR THE GENRE AND ALSO 9/10 OVERALL.What a movie, and an adventure, as always stay seated until the very last second.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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