On Ragnarok: The End of Days for Originality in Hollywood
Was the third standalone Thor movie good? Yes. Great? Meh. Here’s one take on the past and future of the Cinematic Universe experiment
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
That’s right baby, it’s Oscar season. And as the resident high-culture movie critic on my little brother’s internet blog, I’m here to share my thoughts about one of my most anticipated prestige films of the year.
I remember being intrigued from the moment I first heard about this art-house flick a year ago. Per IMDB, the premise follows:
Two-time Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett plays a troubled woman who, after learning about the death of her father, returns home from a long exodus to rekindle her relationship with her estranged brothers. Sibling drama ensues, and soon a dangerous game develops that will decide the direction the family will follow as it transitions to a new generation.
Strangely, the site forgets to mention the movie also features the Norse god of thunder fighting a giant green guy in a gladiatorial society ruled by Jeff Goldblum.
Anyway, as you can probably guess, I saw Thor: Ragnarok recently. And I have a lot to say.
Ever since the first Guardians of the Galaxy teaser proved a good trailer song alone could generate hype for a movie (ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga), the industry took notice. To re-purpose a favorite Will Ferrell quote of mine, “The music, just accents the trailer in such a way…” And to quote the funnyman yet again, good music “gets the people going.”
So when the Thor teaser trailer dropped in April, blaring Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” over images of Loki flipping some knives while slo-mo-walking through a massive brawl, I will admit, I got just a little bit hype.
This new Thor looked weird. It looked zany. It looked colorful. And above all else, it just looked like a fun time at the movies. And critics seemed to agree.
I will say, I’m a big Rotten Tomatoes guy. There’s just something so immensely satisfying about grading a movie’s subjective quality so objectively. And upon seeing the stellar initial reviews for Marvel’s latest tentpole, I got pumped up. 92 percent of movie critics think this movie is at least above average. Wow!
When I finally got into an English-language showing of the movie (who knew movie tickets were so hard to come by in Madrid?) I was dying with anticipation for the movie to start.
And then it started. And not even the bright CGI spacescapes could distract me from one insidious thought.
This movie is so stupid.
Did I hate it? Not at all (it’s no Suicide Squad). Did I hate what it stood for? Let me explain.
We’re at a crossroads in movies right now, and I think the trajectory of the MCU provides a tidy little microcosm for the evolution of blockbuster Hollywood. After Disney bought into the now 13.4-billion-dollar money-printing machine that is Marvel Studios, they introduced a formula that no one else has replicated successfully — the Cinematic Universe.
It’s 2008, and Tony Stark enters a dark room. A man stands brooding at the window. He turns around, revealing the eye-patch-toting face of the most charismatic actor in history. And with ten words, Samuel (M.F.) L. Jackson made me scream with excitement: “I’m here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative.”
It seemed unfathomable at the time, but we, the good citizens of the world, were soon going to see multiple superheroes grace the silver-screen together, making lots of witty quips and fighting off armies of faceless aliens and robots along the way.
I hyped up the first Avengers for months before its May 2012 release, probably to the great annoyance of my 9th-grade classmates. But sure enough, it blew my mind. “Yo, but what about when Hawkeye no-look shot that alien? Oh wait, but what about when Hawkeye jumped off the building? Man, wanna grab some Shawarma?”
Suffice it to say, I was bored by the time Ultron rolled out, which felt more like a preview to Phase 3 than a standalone story. Time will tell if I get excited for Infinity War. Maybe Marvel will hit me with that good trailer stuff again.
Rinse. Dry. Repeat. The formula works. Marvel movies are fun, light-hearted, and don’t take themselves too seriously. But will they age well? Probably not, and to a fault of their own. The industry is over-saturated with team-ups and sky-beams and super-villains-of-the-week, Marvel and non-Marvel movies alike. Give me something new! After being bombarded by its progeny for the past half-decade, I don’t think I could sit through Avengers anymore. I wish Marvel would return to its money-grubbing avant-garde roots, pushing the boundaries of the blockbuster, gleefully leaping off the tight-rope line studio execs seem to force it to walk along.
It all comes down to risk. In my head, I can picture Kevin Feige asking himself, If we make a movie that is a little too far out there, will our loyal fans still come out in droves to see it? To not insult one of the most brilliant minds in Hollywood too much, Feige did put his neck on the line with both GOTG films. But with Ragnarok, the Marvel mastermind seemed to ask himself a much different, Dr. Stranger question: If we make one movie that is half a little too far out there and half a standard fluff piece, will our loyal fans still come out in droves to see it?
As a part of the MCU, I think the movie suffers from a major case of identity crisis. From the opening scene, Waititi and his Kiwi wit shows us how entertaining the irreverent side of Thor can be. When the movie strays away from this, however, the glaring holes in the screenplay flare wider than the devil’s anus (movie reference, in case my mom’s reading). Thus, the grand fault of Thor 3 is the existence of the Hela storyline occurring back on Asgaard, which in its entirety felt like a string of overtly serious PETA commercials interrupting a blissfully silly movie.
Don’t get me wrong, Blanchett is a cinematic force. The Aussie lends gravitas and menace to the leather-clad Goddess of Death, laying waste to everything in her path while hamming it up with every over-the-top line of dialogue she delivers. Blanchett chews up each scene she’s in and spits out a presumably massive paycheck.
Yet every time she walked on screen, I wished the movie would return to that weird trash planet and the wacky hijinks of the aptly-dubbed “Revengers.” Maybe Hela would have worked as a more captivating villain than Santa’s Little Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World, back when I still had the capacity to tolerate a generic save-the-world tale.
So why the Muspelheim was she in a movie that felt as buddy comedy as a Shane Black script? My theory: Hela will play an important role as Death in the upcoming Infinity War. And for the sake of the Cinematic Universe, Asgard forbid Feige give us a film that doesn’t somehow fit into his evil plans.
Alright, spiel over. Let’s move onto some more positive and constructive criticism of Ragnarok.
Man, how fun were all those sequences on Sakaar? I wish I hadn’t known the Hulk would bust out of the gate in the gladiator ring, or that Thor would hilariously bellow “YES!” to the befuddlement of the Grandmaster. My friends, who watched the movie without knowing anything beforehand, told me all about their minds imploding during the Hulk reveal. Trailers, stop ruining movies!
The hot tub scene with Hulk and Thor was hilarious and heartfelt. Tessa Thompson’s troubled warrior with frat-star levels of alcoholism revealed herself to be an endearing and badass character. Heck, we even got to see Thor fight with a laser gun because, well, Mjolnir is overrated.
The excellent escape from Sakaar sequence evokes a lot of the same fast-paced excitement from the scenes in the original Star Wars of our heroes running around the Death Star hallways. Action, humor, banter, the satisfying feeling when the oafish Thor finally outsmarts Loki. Mark Mothersbaugh’s techno score playing over Mark Ruffalo struggling to steer Jeff Goldblum’s orgy-space-yacht (yes, I wrote those words). My heart was beating and my sides were sore from laughing the whole time. Good work Taika.
Likewise, I wish Marvel had the huevos to simply make Thor: Trash Planet Adventure instead of the larger story we got. The power struggle between Waititi’s unique and humorous vision and Marvel’s cold corporate grip within Ragnarok creates a distracting tonal clash which often removed me from what could have been the most stupidly-fun movie ever. Most prominently, these two contrasting styles come to an awkward face-to-face when Waititi’s Korg jokes around while witnessing the fiery destruction of a planet.
What if Marvel released a movie where the fate of the world didn’t hang in the balance and gave us something we haven’t seen before? Like a happy marriage of the small-scale Homecoming and the oddball GOTG, two of the strongest MCU films to date. To answer this question, I’m going to embrace my 20:20 hindsight and offer my simplified pitch for how Thor 3 should have gone down:
Disguised as Odin, Loki tricks Thor and strands him on Sakaar. To survive, Thor must fight his way through the Grandmaster’s gladiator ring, where he reunites with the Hulk. Together, with the help of Valkyrie and Jimmy Page’s guitar, our heroes stir up a revolution to escape.
Notice the resemblance to the movie we already saw in theaters, just with the absence of the whole Ragnarok thing and probably a lot more Goldblum. In these dark times, I think everyone could use a little more Goldblum.
In conclusion, here’s to hoping the future of the MCU embraces the silly, reels back the stakes with some inconsequential adventures, drives its ships to new lands, to fight the horde, sing and cry … Sorry, Led Zeppelin’s still stuck in my head.
So there you have it folks. I, Jacob Harris Graber-Lipperman, have solved the problem of superhero fatigue problem with my wholly original take on this movie. I await my check Mr. Iger.
Final Score: 3.42 Infinity Stones (At least it’s not DC)
