Thor Ragnarok – Movie Review

Thor – what do you think of when someone mentions this particular superhero?

Perhaps a good analogy will be what the kind of weather we associated with him?

Brooding, powerful, slightly unpredictable, prone to flashes of anger and quick to act, with more brawn than brain?

The past two installments of Thor as well as his character in the previous Avenger movies have only reinforced this stereotype, and a third outing with the same sort of outlook will probably draw less of the ticket buying public than a re-issue of some old show like Superman from 1979.

So Marvel takes a chance with a new director, who takes a totally new turn, and viola, you basically get a bit of Alice in Wonderland, mixed in with some Guardians of the Galaxy, and a bit of the Brothers and Sisters TV series thrown in too. Mix that up with a mega dose of humor and plenty of slapstick, and not forgetting to add the prerequisite amount of over the top action sequences, and now you have Thor Ragnarok.

That might be an oversimplification, but you get it. It’s a reboot of the character, with the same actor, but with a lighter footing, a massive tickle of the funny bone and an almost insane pace, that even the MTV crowd may have trouble following. It adheres to the YouTube rule..

That no scene should be loiter for longer than five minutes and you are constantly moving from one twist to the next, and in lesser hands, you could drown in the manifold subplots but here, the director does very well, and Chris H does well to swop out the brooding style for a much lighter almost Spiderman like gaiety.

And it works well. Although I cannot stand that a Valkyrie is now not a blonde Scandinavian statuesque Amazon like warrier, the casting is pretty good.

There is good chemistry, although Anthony Hopkins doesn’t really get to do much, Loki aka Tommy does go from bad to good and back in his many turns, and of course Chris gets to do more than just pout. You do miss Jane Foster the love interest, but a warrior lady like Tessa Thomson might be the more appropriate love interest.. Jeff Goldblum is way over the top for me, and he reminds me of Jack Sparrow actually. Cate does Hela in a very diabolical way, but there’s too much of her Lord of the Rings channeling going on here.. 

So great plot, with plenty of potential for a new Thor IV, lovely babe factor, and of course, a whole lot of laughs.

4/5 for me, and I didn’t like the deafening bass, but it should make a good demo disc. Earplugs are advised..