Review: Thor Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok is easily the best of Marvel's Thor movies which may seem like damning with faint praise, but its achievement is not to be undervalued or overlooked. Compared to Robert Downey Jr's wisecracking Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Evans' magnetically decent Steve Rogers/Captain America, and Mark Ruffalo's conflicted but smash-happy Bruce Banner/The Hulk, the God of Thunder seemed the blandest of the main Avengers and the character's stand-alone films a bit too serious for their own good.

Yet Thor: Ragnarok is a complete about-face - never taking itself too seriously, rarely lapsing into sombreness for very long, forever taking the piss, and concerned only with having one hell of a good time. Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher L. Yost are listed as the screenwriters, but credit where credit is due - Thor: Ragnarok has Taika Waititi's fingerprints all over it. The New Zealand actor-writer-director, best known for the romantic comedy Eagle vs Shark and the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, possesses a comic sensibility that is rooted in both the offbeat and the juvenile, mining laughs from both the unexpected and the familiar. As a result, Thor: Ragnarok, for all the portend of its titular narrative thread, is a rollicking, loosey-goosey and infectiously silly but in no way imbecilic affair.

It's been two years since the Battle of Sokovia and our Norse god is introduced chained and dangling before the fire demon Surtur, whose attempts to taunt Thor about the prophesied destruction of his home planet of Asgard are interrupted by Thor as he spins around on his chains: "Hang on a minute...coming around again." Thor inevitably summons his hammer, defeating Surtur and his horde of fire demons before returning to Asgard to discover that 1) Bifrost Bridge sentinel Heimdall (Idris Elba) has been charged with negligence of duty and gone into exile, 2) adopted brother and thorn in his side Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is very much alive and well, and, most importantly, 3) he and Loki have an older sister named Hela (Cate Blanchett, mesmerisingly villainous), whose voracious appetite for destruction is equaled only by her immense power and determination in reclaiming her birthright.

Hela immediately displays her love for her baby brother by crushing his hammer to bits and discarding him to the distant planet of Sakaar, where Loki has managed to get into the good graces of its chichi and blithely dangerous leader, Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, perfectly cast). Thor, captured by hard-drinking bounty hunter Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, indelible), becomes the latest contender to go up against Grandmaster's prized gladiator who turns out to be none other than the Hulk. Even if one has seen the trailer multiple times, watching Thor run the gamut of relieved joy, throat-gulping panic and desperate bonhomie as he brawls with his "friend from work" is still ridiculously entertaining.

Just as pleasurable is the post-battle interaction between the two Avengers as Thor entreats the Hulk to help him escape from the trash heap of a planet. After all, Thor appeals, don't they like many of the same things like fire? "But Hulk like real fire. Hulk like raging fire, Thor like smoldering fire," replies the Hulk, who has taken quite well to wearing love beads and indulging in warm baths in his spacious red-and-white room, which offends Thor's aesthetic tastes ("Pick a colour!"). Yet it's not too long before the Hulk mellows into Bruce Banner and he, Valkyrie and Thor band together as the Revengers to break out of Sakaar with the help of Loki and other waylaid gladiators such as Korg, a hilariously soft-spoken rock man, and Miek, an insect with knives for hands, to escape through the Devil's Anus (don't ask) so they can prevent Hela from laying waste to the good people of Asgard who refuse to bow down to their new queen.

Overflowing with infinite delights, Thor: Ragnarok very much harks back to the campiness of Eighties sci-fi films like Flash Gordon and Ice Pirates. Sakaar is a retro-kitsch wonderland where tackiness rules and sophistication has been gleefully thrown out the window. Hemsworth, whose Thor has only been allowed intermittent comic moments and almost all of them in the Avengers films, finally gets to unleash some self-deprecating humour, indulge in physical slapstick (one of the main tenets of this installment is the constant deflation of Thor's invincibility), and essentially be childish in the best way possible. In fact, Thor, Loki, the Hulk, Grandmaster, and even the cameo-ing Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) all often behave like six-year-olds and that guileless irreverence buoys the film.

Majestic in spectacle and endlessly winning, Thor: Ragnarok proves itself to be the most satisfying party of the year.

Thor: Ragnarok

Directed by: Taika Waititi

Written by: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher L. Yost; based on the comics created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Clancy Brown, Sam Neill, Taika Waititi