It’s interesting to watch something as lucrative and culturally far-reaching as the Marvel movie shared universe evolve. In the near decade since the first Iron Man movie proved that comic book-based films could be successful (wildly successful, in fact), the entertainment juggernaut has tweaked and evolved as each film has come out. Standalone movies like Iron Man did well but team-up films like The Avengers did better. So standalone movies became backdoor team-up movies. Serious-minded films like Captain America: Winter Soldier did well, but funny ones like Guardians of the Galaxy did better. So franchises that started out very serious and even dark, like Thor, have evolved and started to include punchlines, pratfalls, and absurdism. So what we have now is Thor: Ragnarok, the latest model in Marvel’s effort to create the perfect money-making machine. And so far, it’s going pretty well. Ragnarok is Marvel’s 17th film in a row to open at number one, clearing a tidy 121 million dollars last weekend.
Rather than the
glossy Shakespeare lite of the first film or the darker, much more boring
mythology of the second one, the third Thor film goes full Guardians of the Galaxy, embracing color, childish bickering, and a
winking “Isn’t this funny” tone throughout. And generally, the film is better
for it. Thor as a character isn’t that interesting and never really has been.
And the long, flowing hair, Viking accoutrements, and family of gods and
demigods have always been a bit of a hard sell. But now, thanks to the direction
of Taika Waititi and his team of screenwriters led by Eric Pearson, Thor
becomes a winking, smirking blowhard whose heart is in the right place but
whose brain is sometimes a little on the slower side. The opening sequence with
Thor dangling from a chain before Sutur, a fiery Satanic figure destined to
destroy Thor’s homeland, is actually really funny. Any time Surtur really
starts monologuing, he’s interrupted by Thor inadvertently turning his back on
him as the chain he’s dangling from keeps twisting him around. It’s absurd and
knowing and pretty funny. Not something that would have happened in the first
two iterations of this character but it’s an approach that I suspect will be
used pretty frequently going forward.
As I mentioned, Ragnarok
is also a team-up movie. So it’s really Thor and Hulk’s outer space adventures.
As the trailers made obvious, Thor and Hulk face off in an arena and pound the
crud out of each other. The trials of Bruce Banner and his monstrous, green
alter ego are almost as important in the film as Thor’s own. So Marvel finally
found a way to make a successful Hulk movie – and that was to not make a Hulk
movie at all and to just let him ride the cape tails of someone else. In this
case, it works. Hulk provides some of the films funniest lines and situations,
again, many of which were given away in numerous trailers.
Kate Blanchett makes for a more entertaining and memorable
villain than Marvel movies usually get, and the production design is a really
lovely tribute to the great Jack Kirby, the artist who designed so much of what
we see in this shared universe these days. Kirby was the creator or co-creator
of Thor, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Agent Carter, the Inhumans, and a
raft of others. His sense of design was so distinct and influential, it’s a
real treat to see it get the big budget treatment it receives here.
Even though it features the end of the world (kind of) and
gods and monsters clashing, Thor:
Ragnarok feels pretty lightweight. That’s not necessarily a criticism.
There’s enough heaviness in the world right now, and sometimes a funny movie
featuring a god of thunder plowing into an army of zombie soldiers to the tune
of Led Zepplin’s “Immigrant Song” is exactly the thing you need.
Don’t doubt that Marvel Studios knows it too.
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