Some people out there are deserving of a medal, parade, cake, party hat and participation certificate for their dedication to cinema. Either that or they deserve our absolute and unfaltering pity, I'm not sure which it is yet, I'll keep you posted. We all have them on our social media feeds, taking a break from sharing the latest art nouveau snap of their Tesco Tuna and Sweetcorn sandwich lovingly arranged and filtered to make it look like it was hand crafted by an elective mute chef from a rundown suburb of Paris who used cooking as a way to pay off his father's gambling debts so they wouldn't tear off his fingers and now charges £47 for a sandwich because he's an auteur. You got it in a meal deal for three quid you mug, settle down. Yes, it is these people who you generally find ramming it down your neck that they've seen whichever movie it is this week four times already, but not at a multiplex, at some hipster art house cinema because the ambience is so much more real. They're also about a million times more likely to drop massive spoilers or subscribe to fan theories. Doing the rounds of late is the old "What if Batman was really in Arkham and the criminals of Gotham are his perceptions of the staff and inmates?" chestnut. Don't share that stuff about, it makes you look like a cretin. What if a kid found it and accidentally absorbed some of the stupid? It's reckless and irresponsible and you should know better. My point is that I haven't actively wanted to go watch a movie for a second time at the cinema in an age. The last time might have been Return of the King in fact, up until now.
Thor Ragnarok is an absolute belter of a movie. I'll forgive you for being sceptical because I was too. You'd have to be some sort of monstrously deluded fan boy to claim that the first two Thor movies were anything more than fair-to-middling. The first served as a half decent set up for him appearing in the Avengers and I've heard the sequel described variously as everything from feeling like an extended Dr. Who halloween special to just plain shit so the character doesn't really have the greatest pedigree, cinematically at least.
On top of that, Marvel came right out of left field with their choice of director. Taika Waititi isn't really known for his action blockbuster credentials, but What We Do In The Shadows is a great movie and his other features have been well received critically. I'll admit alarm bells started ringing when it came out he intended to make a sort of buddy road movie comedy with Thor and the Hulk, but he also teased the whole Planet Hulk thing and that was always going to be a cheap pop. The trailer was about as day-glo as Marvel would probably allow; it looked good, but I've been burned by trailers before. Happily, it is far from a disappointment.
The comedy route was always going to be a risk for a series as dour as Thor has been, but clearly a cleverly calculated one. We're no more than about two minutes in before the first guffaw erupts and it steadily gets weirder, funnier and more psychedelic as things progress. There's a noticeable air of Guardians of the Galaxy to proceedings which makes perfect sense now that we're away from Earth and firmly in the realm cosmic. What it does so well is take the spectacle you're expecting and quietly turn it on its head. You get your heroic entrances, but they're punctuated by prat-falls. You get your showstopper fight scenes but not without some measure of goofiness to balance things out. There's plenty of family drama involved of course, this being one of history and Marvel's longest standing dysfunctional families and is nicely handled with a knowing smirk that stops it becoming schmaltzy, daytime-soap drivel.
Chris Hemsworth does a bang-up job with his new found freedom to be a bit less dull, Tessa Thompson provides a decent foil in Valkyrie and once you come to terms with the jittery, skittish Bruce Banner (which makes sense; if you'd been trapped inside a 12 foot tall, irradiated, organic murder machine you might feel a touch out of it once you get back to daylight) it all works really well. The key thing is that everybody seems to be genuinely having fun; according to legend about 80% of all the dialogue was improvised and although some of it doesn't quite hit the mark, that imperfect and unpolished feel really sits well in the world they're trying to create.
Arguably the best bits are the smaller roles. Jeff Goldblum is in typical scenery-chewing and scene-stealing form as The Grandmaster, Karl Urban clearly has a blast as a slightly type-cast conflicted henchman with a kleptomaniac's penchant for tat and weaponry and Doctor Strange might very well be little more than a plot device here, but everything gels and nothing feels superfluous at the time. All this pales into insignificance when compared to Korg, the softly spoken rock giant who failed to get a revolution off the ground because he didn't print enough pamphlets. It will be an absolute travesty if we don't get to see more of him in Infinity War; he's the absolute best comic relief in any Marvel movie to date, bar none. Is it a coincidence that he gets all the best lines and is voiced by the director? I'm inclined to let him have that one.
At this point it doesn't even seem fair to bring up the whole DC/Marvel rivalry, but Thor Ragnarok is a fantastic example of how Marvel are getting it right and if you compare it to the Justice League trailer how potentially wrong DC are getting it by going grimmer, darker, grittier. Marvel took a fairly decent sized risk on this movie by cracking out the glowsticks and it really paid off. Hats off.
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