There is something bracing about Thor: Ragnarok, something fresh and surprising about how much fun a superhero franchise film can be when it isn't too weighted down with metaphor or psychology. Much of the credit for the pleasures of the third Thor film - an installment that no one was asking for - goes to director Taika Waititi, a New Zealander who broke out with this and who in addition to directing turns in a funny performance as an ambulatory pile of rocks named Korg. Waititi has gotten around the challenge of upping the stakes from previous films by refusing to do so here. The script for Thor: Ragnarok written by three of the Marvel house team reflects the franchise back on itself by refusing to invent reasons for what the characters do to matter. Waititi fills the screen up with heavily stylized imagery, and the comedic skills of the actors do the rest. The unusual choices are welcome but they also make this third (Final?) Thor film feel like a curiosity, one that barely connects to the larger Marvel project. I can't recall a film that I've enjoyed as much as Thor: Ragnarok while being less emotionally engaged.
We begin with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in captivity, narrating to himself and to us. I wanted the narration to run throughout the film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off style, but soon enough we get a conversation between Thor and a demon (voiced by Clancy Brown) about the impending fall of Asgard that is really just background for a gag about Thor on a spinning chain. When Thor finally makes it back home, he finds brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) enjoying himself in ways that are too funny to spoil. The existential threat to Asgard comes in the form of Hela (Cate Blanchett), goddess of death and sister of Thor and Loki. Hela's powers have become too strong for Odin (Anthony Hopkins) to control, and she has returned from banishment to claim what is hers. Cate Blanchett as Hela is the best thing about Thor: Ragnarok, and her dry performance is both success in itself and a comment on the tropes of comic book film villains. Hela only wants power, so there is no need for exposition about her plans. (The scene where the villain explains themselves in a film like this is what I call the "Harness the power of the Sun" moment.) The deliberate and very funny boredom of Blanchett's line readings is just the vinegar Waititi needs when he cuts away from Thor and Loki, who have become stranded on a planet run by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, speaking of line readings). The section of the film involving Thor being forced into gladiatorial combat against Hulk (Mark Ruffalo again makes for a neurotic Bruce Banner) is funny but also feels the most functional, as if Waititi and the writers realized they had to get all of the key characters moving towards the next Avengers film. Tessa Thompson adds welcome energy as a boozy Valkyrie, first seen drunkenly falling off her spaceship and eventually appealed to in Thor's plans to save Asgard. Thompson has had one of the oddest careers in current movies, with her first major film credit in a Tyler Perry film no one remembers (For Colored Girls) and her breakthrough coming in another sequel that no one was asking for (Creed). Here Thompson is asked to be alternately funny and a badass, and her performance promises her a steady income in Marvel films to come.
There is, of course, a battle which brings all of the major players together as well as Asgard's gatekeeper Heimdall (Idris Elba), a knight who has fallen under Hela's spell (Karl Urban), and a large group of Asgardian citizens. As much fun as it was getting to this point, why does none of this feel like it matters? Thor: Ragnarok is in its way a sort of glass-fronted box of a film, one that's a pleasure to look at but too insular to linger. (Mark Ruffalo as Banner is as close as we get to a character who isn't an alien or a god.) I didn't know how much I needed a superhero film that contains sequences that look like the cover of a Yes album, or one in which Cate Blanchett is costumed like the Mistress at a Sierra Club dungeon. I'm arguing against myself here, because the heavy-handedness of most films in the genre can feel stultifying. But as pleasurable as Waititi's aesthetics are, they don't point to a new way forward. (I could be proven wrong if Ryan Coogler's Black Panther hits big next year.) Thor: Ragnarok ends with our heroes in space Battlestar Galactica-style. They're headed to Earth, where Avengers: Infinity War comes out in 2018. I'm pretty sure they'll make the release date.
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