Thor: Ragnarok laughs away some of its potential

[Uh, spoilers for everything in the movie, although frankly I think only the Hulk reveal works as a surprise — but marketing has already given that away]

Because of how shared universes work, there are a few ways you can watch Thor: Ragnarok. It’s the third Thor movie. It’s the 17th (!) movie in the MCU. It’s the fifth movie Thor appears in (after Thor, The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron). Or you could watch it completely blind.

The problem with Ragnarok is that it doesn’t entirely work on any of those levels. It’s a comedy that comes at the cost of trivialising its very promising story ideas.

Too many ideas

Taika Waititi has stuffed a lot of ideas into this movie. Prophecy: Asgard will be destroyed! Thor and Loki have a secret evil sister! (Had some really bad Sherlock flashbacks with that one) Odin dies! Odin’s life was the only thing keeping Hela locked up! Hela and Thor ‘draw their power from Asgard’! Odin and Hela built Asgard on colonialist expansionism! Bruce Banner was stuck as the Hulk for years! Valkyrie is a drunk disillusioned ex-elite warrior from Asgard! The Warriors Three die! Loki betrays Thor again! Loki helps Thor again! Thor loses Mjolnir and must learn to channel his real power without a crutch!

…and so on.

Just half of these would make for a really strong movie with meaty things to say. But Ragnarok skates over nearly all of these in favour of setting up its Guardians of the Galaxy-esque, Led Zeppelin-soundtracked, neon-coloured improv comedy (which, to be fair, works well enough for its own purposes).

For all the glowing reviews calling Ragnarok a risky, game-changing laugh riot, the movie still suffers from formulaic Marvel weaknesses. The baddie’s ambitious, world-dominating plans are so big they fail to convince. Hela is fun but lacks the pathos great villains are made of (her powers also feel a little tacked-on). The third act is yet another showdown between the heroes and a cannon fodder army. The comedy threatens to overpower serious story beats.

Which is a shame, because a plot summary of this movie sounds amazing and potentially game-changing. But by the time Asgard was going up in flames I found myself a bit indifferent.

Ragnarok could have done for Odin what Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows did for Dumbledore — deconstruct a relatively static character. Odin has a paternal role in the series, and his position at the head of a supposedly-benevolent empire has been a key anchor in Thor’s identity. Properly engaging with his past as imperialist conqueror, and then his transition to peaceful ruler, would have the double benefit of fleshing out Hela’s motivations and forcing Thor to chart his own moral path independent of Odin.

What we get instead are moving ceiling frescos and some exposition. So Thor’s decision to let Asgard go up in flames to stop Hela feels more like him taking the least bad option, rather than choosing to consciously break from Asgard’s tainted past.

Comedy over characters

The MCU’s penchant for stylish fun underserves its characters too. The token romantic relationships are underwritten and seem deliberately undermined in the series’ continuity.

Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have gone there and back again, from newly recommitted in Iron Man 3 to separated in Civil War to apparently engaged in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Whew — talk about emotional whiplash.

Much the same happens with Thor and Jane. Two movies are spent bringing them together. How are emotionally invested viewers (if any) rewarded? With a throwaway line in Age of Ultron and a reference to an off-screen break-up in Ragnarok. Most viewers probably shrugged it off — which speaks to how token the relationship was. And the less said about Sharon Carter the better.

And yes, scheduling is a bitch and you can’t always hang on to actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman. But were there big plans for them anyway? Getting the characters from point A to B, and having them spin their wheels in between, has always been more important to Marvel than giving them clear, weighty arcs with consequences.

It’s not just the token romantic subplots. Scott Lang’s entire emotional arc in Ant-Man was about his struggle between doing the right thing, staying on the right side of the law, and staying in his daughter’s life. Then in Civil War he happily throws in with Captain America, becomes an outlaw, and gets locked up.

So why should anyone care about what these characters do, think or feel if they fail to stick in some way? By the end of Ragnarok Loki’s done his two-faced bit so many times it’s descended into parody. Thor seems not to care that his best friends were demoted to the Redshirts Three. Valkyrie is a drunk apathetic fighter who stops being drunk and apathetic… because.

When laughs drag

Marvel’s had a recurring problem with comedy undercutting drama. Normally this would manifest as tonal whiplash, but in truth the comedy just ends up dialling back what should be serious, emotional moments.

It’s a strategic oversight that’s only become more apparent in the latter parts of Phase Two and Three. The comedy used to emerge organically — from Tony Stark’s deflectory asshole charisma, or from the juxtaposition of Shakespearian Thor in decidedly un-Shakespearian modern-day Earth. Now it seems characters must always have a quip handy.

Not that funny Chris Hemsworth doesn’t work. It actually works remarkably well, and is probably the best part of the movie. And Waititi cultivates a lot of excellent comedic beats here: his own cameo as the Kiwi-accented Korg, every scene with Dr Strange, great Thor-Loki banter… and the Grandmaster, I guess, if you’re a fan of how he Goldblums up every scene. (I found it distracting and a little lazy, sorry)

If it feels a little improvisational at times, it was probably deliberate. Some of the more juvenile bits must have been (how did ‘Devil’s Anus’ get past Disney?). The result is some fun back-and-forth, even if some of the jokes feel facile and amateur (like a lot of the Thor and Hulk interactions).

But when a large chunk of the movie gets devoted to the long sidetrip that is Sakaar to the detriment of fleshing out Asgard’s history and its implications for Thor, it’s no wonder that the heavy themes don’t feel justified.

Another example: Karl Urban feels a bit wasted as Skurge, an ‘Asgardian redneck’ who’s meant to be a sympathetic character in a moral dilemma, but who plays out as a cheap excuse to set up the (admittedly fun) AR-15-wielding blaze of glory moment.

Many of the moments the movie skates over are major comic book touchstones, yeah. But why fans should be satisfied with superficial recreations of famous comic panels, or half-assed adaptations of beloved comic book stories, is beyond me. Sure, a Planet Hulk movie isn’t realistically on the cards for legal and finacial reasons, but that doesn’t make ‘put Hulk on a planet and give him one arena fight’ a meaningful adaptation.

The movie we deserve

Is Thor: Ragnarok a lot of fun? Sure. It’s worth a casual watch and, after the relative blandness of The Dark World, a welcome shot of colour in the arm at the time in a franchise where movies become redundant. But maybe it’s a little guilty of fighting the last war — overcorrecting from its Game of Thrones-lite ambitions just as it introduces concepts actually worthy of that approach.

Critically rewriting movies is never really advisable, but the success of The Winter Soldier demonstrates that moviegoers aren’t allergic to serious storytelling laced with humour. It’s hard not to think that the real worthy risk would have been to bake Ragnarok’s big Asgardian twists more prominently into its DNA — rather than go for the more pop-factory stylings of Guardians. Or to cut out superfluous characters like Skurge, instead of erasing Valkyrie’s bisexual characterisation.

For all the praise Marvel gets for supposedly taking risks and trying new things, they’ve been curiously slow to give viewers more diverse representation on screen. We’re only now getting a movie with a black lead character (Black Panther) and we’ve got til 2019 to wait for a woman-led story in Captain Marvel. When might we get an LGBT-led film? No idea — Kevin Feige’s own forecast for even having an LGBT character, back in 2015, was that it would happen with a decade — not the highest of bars, there.

As it is, Ragnarok is a threequel that casually tosses aside The Dark World in its first act. It’s a post-Ultron Thor story that’s really only an excuse to get Thor off Earth and back into space. It’s the 17th entry in a franchise that hasn’t really taken the opportunity to say anything new or interesting. And it’s a funny, rock ’n’ roll standalone that never really makes you feel much else.

Also, it wastes Heimdall and Idris Elba. Again.

Ragnarok’s best bits:

• It’s cool to see how Thor speaks with a much more casual tone and register now. Obviously it fits the movie’s tone, but it also lines up with Thor spending more time on Earth post-Dark World.
• Mark Ruffalo brings out a few new interesting edges to a Banner who’s been trapped for two years.
• Immigrant Song, with its references to Norse mythology, is an inspired bit of soundtracking for this sort of Thor movie.
• Thor vs Hulk is just the sort of big comic book-y dust-up you want to contrive a story around. So much fun.
• The Mark Mothersbaugh score has a great space rock opera sound that really helps make the film’s tone.
• “I have been falling for thirty minutes!” <- favourite joke, I think.
• Thor and Loki’s ‘Get Help’ bit is why that pairing will always work.
• The Valkyries vs Hela flashback was an amazing-looking scene with a cool bit of tech behind it (but no Wagner?).