Review: Thor Ragnarok

My issues:

The film everyone loves. Yay, it's fun. Yay it's funny. Yay, it no longer takes the character of Thor seriously. Yay, he throws a basketball and it bounces back off the wall and knocks over the God of Thunder who can withstand all manner of things usually. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... so funny! Yay, we haven't had this much slap stick humour in a comic book movie since the highly respected Superman III.

My biggest gripe with all this, is that this film is the continuation of the move away from treating these characters and these stories with the respect that made films such as The Dark Knight, or the early X-Men films such a big change in Superhero movies. Remember when Superman, and the audience, was treated with respect by Richard Donner? And then what happened when Richard Lester took over? What about Batman? What happened when Joel Schumacher took over? Comicbook movie universes have a habbit of going off the rails when they start to get jokey.

This film treats many characters in the Thor movies very poorly. Several of his companions from previous films are killed off. Does this matter to anyone, including Thor? No.

For those who think that it's just a comic book movie and so its not meant to be a work of art, then fine. You win. This is what we are going to get from now on.

May the quips be plentiful. May the vilains stop in the middle of important moments to also crack a joke. Because that's what we've come to.

The Film:

Some good visuals throughout the film, but the over use of colour gets a bit tiring. Many of the characters are annoying, especially Jeff Goldblum, with the whole planet Hulk storyline pointless and taking up far to much of the film. The Hulk is a frustrating version, lacking the look of previous movies and talking way too much, which was just frustrating.

The tone of the film is so focused on comedy that it's all amped to 11, leaving very little room to cover big moments such as the death of Odin, the destruction of Thor's hammer, the death of support characters, the destruction of Asgard. All of this is dealt with in a movie directed by someone who said to himself, what would it be like if a 6 year old directed this movie?