It’s Finally Come! Best Comic Book Movie Of The Year! #ThorRagnarok #recap #review #Marvel

It’s Finally Come! Best Comic Book Movie Of The Year! #ThorRagnarok #recap #review #Marvel

All pictures courtesy of Marvel/Disney Studios 

OK, before people start throwing rocks, let me, once again, reiterate, as I have in practically every other movie and/or Marvel-themed piece of entertainment that has come out this year, I wasn’t able to see Logan yet, so I don’t know if I would’ve liked it or not. But I did see Guardians of the Galaxy, Wonder Woman and Spider-man: Homecoming and can tell you that they were all overrated an—well... OK, I guess Guardians was closer to being properly rated, but it had many flaws that brought the movie down for me. And while, yes, Wonder Woman was great as a statement film for feminism and just having the first female-led superheroine (if we’re forgetting Supergirl, Elektra, and Catwoman) it was hardly worth its 90%+ Rotten Tomatoes score. It showcased some of the same flaws that we so vehemently called out Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad and Man of Steel for and still somehow managed to feature some sexism in it against both women and men. And Spider-man: Homecoming was just... Ugh! I wasn’t even looking forward to the movie and still wound up disappointed.

So, with Justice League only a few days away, and my predictions about DC films so far holding true—I called that Batman v. Superman was a mess before it came out, also said that Suicide Squad wasn’t going to be any good, and that people would praise Wonder Woman as being the “savior” of the DCEU and almost literally quoted article headlines a near year before the film came out about how they would read “Wonder Woman Shows The Boys How To Do It” or “A Wonder Woman’s Work Is Never Done,” and I also said in the same post calling all of these things out that while WW would be a shining beacon for fans even though it would still not be very good in hindsight, the DCEU would return to mediocrity with Justice League and lead to headlines like “Wonder Woman Still Rules, Aquaman No Longer A Joke” or “Is The DCEU Better Without Batman And Superman”—I’d have to declare Thor: Ragnarok as the best superhero/heroine comic book film of 2017. With all that said, let’s dig into the recap review and let me note that outside of the plot of Thor being cast off of Asgard by the evil villain Hela and having to fight his way back, there will be spoilers. There will be spoilers galore.

SPOILERS!

I’d first say that the trailers really don’t tell you much of anything about the plot so much as they show you all of the cool scenes from the film. With my year of “first trailers” coming to an end, I can say that I didn’t see much after watching just the one trailer from a few weeks ago, so I was fairly clean going into it. However, even in that trailer (I think it was technically trailer 2) there was still a lot of stuff that made it into the movie.

As stated, the plot is simple. Thor, after Age of Ultron, set out on a cosmic journey to explore the nine realms and beyond to find this demon, devil-looking thing called Surtur. As was sorta alluded to in Age of Ultron with Scarlet Witch playing in Thor’s mind, there is an ancient prophecy on Asgard that says that one day Surtur will come and bring Ragnarok to the land. Ragnarok, for those not in the know, is essentially the Norse equivalence of the apocalypse. Everything gets destroyed and is rebuilt anew. In fact, I believe the very word Ragnarok means rebirth or restart or something like that. Just know that there’s a ton of destruction that must go on before the restarting part.

Obviously Thor doesn’t want the destruction of Asgard. Who the heck would want that? All that gold would just be... burned and turned to rubble and all sorts of terribleness. So, in the opening scene we find our hero actually captured in some kind of underground fiery lair of Surtur, because he wants to ask him about the evil demon/devil’s plan to destroy Asgard. Surtur tells him something about how much he hates Odin and how the guy is a total liar and an all-around douche. And Thor’s like, what? Dude, chill, that’s my dad. There’s some comedic elements in there where Thor is swiveling around on a hanging chain and at first I thought, oh God this is going to be like Guardians where the jokes were misplaced. But then I actually thought the chain joke sorta worked and I didn’t know if I had adjusted my expectations or the writers just didn’t overdo it like they tend to so often do in comedies as of late.

Anyway, Thor beats the crap out of this dude and takes his skull/crown, which Surtur said he was going to put into the eternal flame on Asgard that is in Odin’s treasure room, which was supposed to turn him into a giant, indestructible demon thingy. Thor then tries for a quick planetary escape but that’s when we realize that Heimdall (Idris Elba’s character) is not there at the bifrost gate anymore. Instead, there is a new dude there exploiting the hell out of his position. He lollygags about getting Thor back home and only after a few attempts does Thor finally escape.

The first thing Thor realizes is that something isn’t right about Asgard. Again, it’s assumed that he hasn’t been back at least since Age of Ultron, and probably not since The Dark World because he, in all of this time, didn’t realize that his brother Loki was ruling in their dad’s place, magically disguised as Odin, sitting on the throne—something we saw at the end of The Dark World. As he gets to the palace, he sees a bevy of beautiful broads feeding his hedonistic father lounging on a golden divan as he watches a play based on the “heroism” of Loki, who is said to have sacrificed his life to save the kingdom of Asgard. We get a few cameos here by Sam Neil playing Odin, Chris’s older brother Luke playing Thor and Matt Damon playing Loki. It’s mildly humorous.

Thor immediately realizes what’s going on and forces his brother to reveal himself in front of everyone and to show that he exiled Odin to New York City. Together, Thor and Loki go to Shady Acres old-folk’s home only to find it being torn down. We then see a strange magic being used that makes Loki disappear into the ground and leaves a card for Thor. At this point, I was actually surprised but shouldn’t have been. I don’t know if it was the stress of this year with politics and work and all, but it seemed like Doctor Strange came out so long ago that when he made a cameo I was totally surprised by everything. I had forgotten how he did his little magical portals and all of that. Well, he gives Loki back, and shows them where to find their father. He’s in Norway and we’re all supposed to be like, Oh! Duh! Ha!

They step through Strange’s portal to Norway and find Odin sitting on a rock near a cliff, ready to die and talking about how he failed to prevent Ragnarok, even though Thor is convinced he stopped Surtur. He then tells the two boys about how Hela is coming and that she is not only the goddess of death, but she is their older sister (Thor’s blood sister) and she is far more powerful. He dies and disintegrates into orange fairy dust and Hela arrives directly after that, ready to battle on earth. Thor throws his hammer and that’s when we get the trailer scene where she breaks his hammer and Thor is stuck without it for the rest of the movie. In that instance, Loki turns full coward and calls upon the bifrost to open, even though Thor knows this is bad because he thinks Hela will follow them into the bifrost. She does. They battle inside and she first flings Loki out of the rainbow bridge, then she does the same to Thor. She alone arrives in Asgard and kills Thor’s two soldiers of fortune from the first movie (or whatever the hell their names were; also should mention that Lady Sif is neither in this nor mentioned at all. I know Jaimie Alexander is busy with Blindspot, but it’s strange not to even spare a few seconds screentime to mention where she was, dead or alive), then recruits, as a minion, the other idiot bifrost operator who nearly got Thor killed at the beginning of the movie.

Finally home after years of being gone (she’s been gone so long that she never even met her brother Thor, unless, I’m guessing, she met him as a baby), she rips through the palace walls, murals and paintings to show the real stories of how Asgard got to be the “capital” of the nine realms. As opposed to the pictures and stories of Odin in which he brokered peace through treaties and governance, she shows how they ruled with iron fists, slaughtering millions of people across all the realms. But she got greedy and wanted to rule more realms than Odin did and once she overpowered him, he kicked her out and locked her away somewhere, where she remained until today.

Meanwhile, as she’s doing her evil thing and destroying the people while trying to galvanize some of them behind her, Thor lands on a junk planet where tons of stuff falls out of the bifrost and, I’m guessing other mystical cosmic pathways. Here, he meets Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie who serves as a scrap collector under the rule of Jeff Goldblum’s The Grandmaster. She collects the hammerless Thor, sells him to The Grandmaster who has plans to pit him against his greatest champion, and shows herself to be a true lush. As her story goes, she’s been on the junkyard planet since before Thor was born. She and the rest of the Valkyrie group of women (remember that Valkyrie were both the group all-female warriors of which she was part and is how she is referred to) went against Hela under orders of Odin. They were all defeated that day which then caused Odin to use all of his might to banish Hela. Valkyrie barely escaped with her life and wound up on this planet.

It bares mentioning that this junkyard planet has no concept of time. So even though Hela’s defeat was years ago, and Loki fell out of the bifrost just a few seconds before Thor did, Valkyrie looks the same age as Thor and Loki has been getting chummy with The Grandmaster for weeks by the time Thor arrives.

Ladies and gentlemen, uh... uh... Jeff Goldblum

And here’s where things get tricky and sticky, because Jeff Goldblum is gonna Jeff Goldblum, and he totally Jeff Goldblums here. And it’s actually quite good. The entire planet is over-the-top madness. Think of a mix of The Gladiator with Mad Max: Fury Road but with a Monty Python-esque humor behind it all. With most other actors, this could play out as entirely cheesy and stupid, but Jeff Goldblum brings so much Jeff Goldbluminess into not just his role but the entirety of this world that it doesn’t come off as a parody of a comic book. He geniunely made me laugh with his quirkiness, his facade of some kind of 80s/new-age DJ that’s in love with dubstep and strange crunchy, video game-sounding music. He felt like a slightly younger, hipper Hugh Hefner if Hef was more into fighting and music and Daft Punk cover bands rather than softcore porn. The eclecticness of his character fit in perfectly with the electicness of the junkyard world. Even the line where he explains how time doesn’t work there and talks about his age without ever giving a number is so bizarre, so eccentric and so fundamentally Jeff Goldblum that it made me laugh. It felt akin to those moments on SNL where one of the cast breaks due to something another cast member did, and the other cast member doing the funny thing just keeps making more and more jokes because they want to see their fellow SNL member crack up with laughter. Yes, that’s a long explanation but totally apt.

Anyway, as you can guess, the grand champion is the Incredible Hulk like in the commercials and they fight. There’s some pretty good comedy with Loki finally seeing this grand champion and realizing who it is, and then Hulk doing to Thor what he did to Loki at the end of the first Avengers film. There’s a bit of lull time in the movie in which they are trying and actually succeeding to build plot, character and tension to lead into the final act. It’s some pretty solid screenwriting, even if it’s a bit uninspired.

After some back and forth, Banner finally emerges from his Hulk cocoon and realizes that he’s been the Hulk for two years, ever since leaving earth in the Quinnjet. He went high into space and somehow jumped through a wormhole and ended up on the junk planet. He’s since, as Hulk, learned to talk a lot more than what we’ve seen in the other movies. The people on the planet love him as their champion. We also get Valkyrie’s story and how she felt ashamed that everyone else in her group died fighting Hela, save for her. They get Loki back on their side even after he tricks his brother one last time. It seems almost like he has to make a decision once and for all to be good or bad and he chooses good (I reserve the right to withhold final judgment until Infinity War because it looks like he’ll be right back to his treacherous ways again).

Thor, Hulk, Loki, Valkyrie and a prison full of other misfits escape back to Asgard where they discover that Hela has raised an army of the dead to either slaughter or bring to heel the rest of the Asgardians that have been hiding, and eventually conquer the rest of the realms. These rebels, led by Heimdall who has the sword to control the bifrost gate, plan to escape from Asgard but are bridge-blocked by Hela’s direwolf. And Thor and his team come in the nick of time to save the day.

While the rest of the team fights off the undead army on the bridge and get the Asgardian peoples onto this new huge spaceship, Thor fights Hela to try to defeat her or at least stall her long enough to empty the city. He has a come-to-Odin moment and realizes that he never needed the hammer but that the electricity, the power is within him. He channels it to strike Hela with a huge lightning bolt which wounds her but is still unable to defeat her. So he finally realizes that his father’s prediction was right and so was the prophecy, but it wasn’t a prophecy of doom but of salvation. Asgard was never the city but the people that lived there. The city is just a structure that could be rebuilt somewhere.

So, he instructs Loki to go and throw the Surtur skull/crown into the eternal flame and resurrect the hellbeast. Dude comes back ten times bigger and badder, and destroys Asgard with Hela on it, who fights to the very bitter end because she derives most of her power from Asgard and doesn’t want to see it destroyed. The place is destroyed as Thor, Loki, Hulk, Valkyrie and the other Asgardians stand on the spaceship looking out to the destruction. Now, they must find a new home on earth. Norway, maybe?

What’s my grade? I give it a solid B+. OK, so one of the things that we have learned this year is that yes, there is such a thing as comic book movie/tv oversaturation. At least I’ve learned that. It comes when you start seeing plots constantly recycled and very seldom improved upon, rather than something new and inventive or innovative. If we’re being honest, FOX’s The Gifted TV show is quite the same as every other X-men film: mutants are hated for being different, they run, they get caught, they break free, they run some more, they eventually end up doing something heroic. But what is worse is that The Gifted is practically the same as ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans which saw Inhumans (the non-copyright-infringing mutants of the MCU) be stripped of their cool costumes, run around in a world they don’t know but where they are hated for existing, get caught by some bad guys, get caught by some other bad Inhumans, break free, run some more, then eventually do some hero stuff. It’s practically the same plot, just with different powers. Again, The Gifted is/was better (Inhumans is off now) because it showed more use of powers even if we’ve seen those powers a thousand times. But the worst is when you just end one of your shows only to have a movie premiere which is a carbon copy of that failed show.

In Thor we have a kingdom in peril from a jilted sibling who thinks they should be the rightful heir to the throne and rule it all themselves. They somehow get the current ruling sibling off of the entire world, let alone out of the city. That hero sibling ends up in a strange land they don’t know where they are forced to fight semi-familiar enemies only for some of those enemies to become allies later. They must then depend on the kindness of some locals to help them escape back to their planet where they then must defeat their sibling only to realize that the place they hold so dear, the city they lived in their whole lives, is not actually all that important. To be a hero they must let it be destroyed and then migrate to earth.

I started that last paragraph by saying “In Thor” only because most fans actually watched that movie as opposed to Inhumans. The problem is that it is an exact carbon copy of the entire first season’s plot of Inhumans. Maximus, Black Bolt’s younger brother, tried to overthrow him. Maximus and a few other Inhumans of the royal family were cast down to earth (hell, they even had Gorgon, the black guy, as one of the royal guards. What is Valkyrie, the black woman, if not some aspect of a royal guard to Odin?) where Black Bolt ended up in a prison for a while. They are forced to fight some locals (Karnak and the drug farmers), forced to fight some old familiars (Maximus loyalists sent after them), manage to team up and get back to the moon, only to realize that it is time to let the city of Attlan be destroyed with Maximus inside while they all escape back to earth. It’s the same exact plot. THE. SAME. EXACT. PLOT! Hell, they didn’t even bother to change the names enough to at least start one city’s name with a different letter. Attlan? Asgard? One of these cities couldn’t start with a B?

Granted, I know, almost nobody watched Inhumans, but the fact that this show and the Thor movie came from the same studio and that this show, which is an ABC show, is supposed to be connected to the broader MCU (unlike the Netflix stuff) is troubling because it shows that either no one saw these similarities in story or they did and really didn’t care. If you have fatigue at an executive level, that’s when you know that saturation has set in and that apathy will soon follow.

As far as dislikes, I also didn’t like how Thor had almost no bite. It’s strange the way a lot of these films are made today. I remember going to the movies really down and depressed last year thinking, man, maybe I’ve gotten too old to enjoy movies anymore because none of them really give me that spark of magic where I feel it deeper than just the back of my eyeballs. The dialogue seems cheap and yadda, yadda, yadda. I was actually nearly ready to give up on most films and then I saw La La Land and I actually felt something again. Was it a new plot? Hell no. It’s as old and played as every other plot in Hollywood, but the way it was made had an effect on me, stayed with me, inspired me.

Here, while Thor was a really good movie, it was actually difficult to talk about the movie three hours after it. There weren’t these parts that really had me emotionally invested. Even as Odin died I didn’t quite get to that feeling of, “Oh man, this character that I’ve been seeing since, 2011 is finally going to be no more.” I saw another reviewer say it was a fun, wholly forgettable ride and that’s so true. For me, it was like Chinese takeout: good while you’re eating it but hardly fulfilling and memorable. In the end, even with the good acting, the mostly well-timed jokes and the serviceable plot not full of holes, it couldn’t push into that realm of greatness. I think this is partially because this movie had little expectations, and thus little buildup like, say, Wonder Woman, Black Panther or Spider-man: Homecoming do/did. It was easier to either love or hate those films and feel passion about the projects because of the long waits for them and debates and excitement that surrounded them. Here, I just had the feeling of, “Oh, yeah! That was pretty enjoyable.”

Let’s see, uh... the directing was pretty good. With some of the scenes in the trailer like Valkyrie storming Hela, I thought it would look too polished and, thus, too comic bookish like the Justice League film looks, but I was pleasantly surprised that the film was filled with inhabitable environments rather than celluloid comic panels. Here’s a strange note: I actually really enjoyed the music. Outside of Immigrant Song (love that song), I thought the original music was actually good this time and, if not memorable, at least wasn’t as cookie-cutter as most of Marvel’s music is. Yes, some fans have argued that Marvel and the Avengers have great music but they either don’t have great taste in music or just don’t like music. Lift one track of the original score from any of the other movies (exception of Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: Winter Soldier) and put it onto any of the other films and you’ll hardly be able to tell any difference. Each superhero, to me, should have his or her own unique music that is identifiable by ear. If you used some of this crunchy, video-game-esque music in the next Avengers film to herald Thor’s and/or Valkyrie’s arrival, you would make the scene two times better at least, I guarantee you. It fit perfectly with this film and with the character’s laughably strong video-game-esque invincibility.

Going forward, what do I predict? Hm? OK, now that we’ve covered most of the movie and revealed tons of spoilers, we can also talk about the fact that Thor no longer has both of his eyes. This could stick and we have the character look like a younger Odin for the rest of his time in the Avengers. Or it could be quickly healed by Dr. Strange once Thor gets back to earth. We know that the huge ship we saw in the first post-credits scene is actually Thanos’ ship, so we could be in for a huge opening battle scene between Thor and his posse, and Thanos and his goons, with an assist from the Guardians of the Galaxy in there somewhere. A big brawl is how both of the Avengers films have started so far.

Then there is the question of the hammer. Is it possible for Thor to get his hammer back? I think the better question is does he need a hammer? I think maybe he could get a new one on earth possibly from some spell by Dr. Strange or some forging of vibranium by Black Panther or Tony Stark, but who knows if he will do that or if the character will even be around long enough to do that. Remember, as contracts are ending for all of the first Avengers and all of their movie franchises have come to their trilogy conclusions, we could see some big deaths in Infinity War; in fact, I’m hoping for some big deaths.

Ragnarok or “reset” could be alluding to more than just this one film but could spill over into Infinity War where the entire team is reset and Thor is dead. Also, we don’t now if Loki is actually good for... well, good, or if he will betray Thor yet again. We saw him stop and gaze at the tesseract briefly before he threw that skull/crown into the eternal flame. Does that mean he stole it? If he didn’t take it with him, then how would Thanos get it to complete his infinity gauntlet because Asgard is destroyed. And also, this is for those who have tried to watch as much Marvel MCU stuff as they could, but will we see the shows finally re-blend into the films? With Agents of SHIELD off-world for their next season, will we see remnants of Asgard or the beginnings of a fight between Thor and Thanos or the Guardians? What of the fact that we now have two peoples in the moon-Inhumans and the Asgardians now displaced and seeking home and asylum on earth? We know that Inhumans are part of the movies and not just the TV shows, so will there be some mention of them somewhere in Infinity War?

My prediction is that Infinity War will feature the death of Loki within the opening minutes of the film to bring his Avengers and Thor movie arcs all the way full circle. I also think that we’ll get a brief cameo appearance from Hela, goddess of death, only this time she may or may not be played by Cate Blanchett because I think she will come back as a skeletal being similar to the Mistress of Death’s design in the comics. That will be courtesy of her face having been burned off by Surtur during Asgard’s destruction. I think that somehow Thanos will use one of the stones to bring her back (he seemed to be near that general area of the galaxy because he ran into Thor’s ship so fast) but will only be able to bring her back to a certain extent, which is why she won’t have skin. Together, the two of them will be able to control dead superheroes and crush tons of enemies—as if Thanos wasn’t already enough. And I also think that Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD will finally join the movie team in some capacity and either make it back to earth at the same time as the Guardians and Thor, or help in the initial space battle with Thanos or something like that. I think this because the premiere date for the next season—December 1st—is such a strange time to premiere a season of something on a Friday unless they have some kind of timing element that needs to happen before Black Panther and/or Infinity War. Otherwise, why not just start the new season in the new year where you won’t get disruptions from holiday specials? Makes no sense unless they plan some kind of tie-in. And that especially goes for if one of the big three (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America) are to die in the film because I can’t see them getting rid of any of them without first letting Coulson fanboy over them again.

As far as the character melee goes, I think that there will be even more characters in Infinity War than we expect and that are listed on the cast sheet. So, who from Thor’s film do you expect to be in Infinity War? Because they did see Thanos’ ship right there at the end, it does make me think there’s going to be a little bit of a slaughter of some characters that we maybe just started to love. But I also find it an interesting concept to have Valkyrie and Heimdall make it to earth and end up in Wakanda in the next Black Panther film. Both are warriors and seem like they would fit well into that society. Granted, I haven’t seen the film yet, but from the trailers it looks like they could fit.

Should you go see it? Yes. I mean... if you’re over the entire comic book movies-thing, then don’t go see it. And if you’re only a DC fan, then I guess you shouldn’t see this. But know that I am not a super fanboy for either (although, I’ve always dreamed of writing a Justice League/Superfriends movie and am hugely disappointed by the entirety of the DCEU) but I think that this is an outright good movie regardless of its comic book source material. It’s good. Go see it.

What do you think? Have you seen Thor: Ragnarok? If you haven’t, are you planning on seeing it? If you have, did you like it as the end of a trilogy? What do you expect from Infinity War? Do you have comic book movie fatigue yet, or no? Were you satisfied with the rendition of Planet Hulk they did, or do you still want more? And which characters from this film would you like to see stay around longer in the MCU in some capacity? Let me know in the comments below.

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If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “I’m not gonna say that I’m winning, I’m just saying that if we were keeping score and handing out trophies, I’d get the big gold one and you’d get the participation trophy.”

P.S. Yes, I have made plenty of scathing reviews about DCEU films but I’m honestly not trying to hate. I grew up watching and reading DC comics and cartoons that have filled our airwaves back since TV became popular. I hate this whole taking sides thing. I’m not diehard Marvel and actually didn’t like either of the Avengers films, but like the individual hero movies. As films, most of the DC films are not that good. But even more to the point, I feel like the one that was good was overrated in Wonder Woman. I guess it comes down to what you want out of a comic book film. Everyone throws around the word fun, but how about we have it be more than just fun? Because fun doesn’t always translated to good. To me Return of the Living Dead is fun, but that doesn’t make it good. So I hope that Justice League will be both fun and good even if it doesn’t rise to the level I know it could be. I want to write a Superman and Justice League trilogy so bad that maybe a little of that sorrow that I haven’t done it yet is spilling into my reviews, but still, these films can be better. Let’s hope I’m wrong on my previous predictions.

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