Thor: Ragnarok

The Thunder Emperor has a special place in my viewer's heart and his first adventure remains one of the best experiences not only within the universe but also in comic book adaptations in general. While the critical community has issues with all the parts, Thor's trilogy remains the most balanced series in the MCU for me. No matter who took it on and genre-wise, from romance to drama to fantasy, it always amazed me. And I am amazed for the third time because it moves away from the leading love story, isn't afraid to eliminate familiar characters, yet still walks regally towards the highest rating. It breathes all the ingredients of the fantasy genre, adding unquestionably the best action in the series. Not a few minutes pass without me bursting into laughter, and Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston clearly embody their characters. Something tells me that Thor: Ragnarok is the end for the classic Thor, but I'm glad the story ends so triumphantly. (26/10/2017)

I loved Marvel a couple of years ago, but lately I've gotten tired of it and am becoming allergic to infantile, colorful CGI mess for elementary school kids. After Doctor Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Thor isn't much different and it's basically the same old same old with just different heroes. I can praise the opening action sequence and the final very brief bridge carnage accompanied by Led Zeppelin, which was perfect, but the rest went over my head. I didn't laugh even once, there is a lack of jokes and the humour consists more of scenes where someone falls on the ground or breaks something – I guess I'm too old for this – plus there are a lot of annoying characters. Loki got on my nerves, Karl Urban was completely useless, Jeff Goldblum gave the worst performance of his career, Hela lacked space and I didn't even enjoy the character of Thor himself. The action is mostly okay, but there wasn't enough of it to keep me sufficiently entertained. I couldn't even avoid the deaf passages, so for me one of the weakest, most confusing and most infantile Marvel movie. A mix of Star Wars and Power Rangers. I hope Avengers gets darker, otherwise I can't take it anymore. 60% (30/10/2017)

Thor: Ragnarok is an absolutely mainstream movie that brings the child-like elements of Star Wars into Thor’s world, while its costumes and makeup make it more colorful than The Fifth Element. But I didn’t really want Thor to go in this direction, as 70% of its runtime is filled with situational, slightly infantile humor that doesn’t address any plot points. Which doesn’t mean that the masses who adore Guardians of the Galaxy are not going to have a great time. And that seems to be the whole point of the movie. (13/11/2017)

Never mind the destruction of the soul, never mind the darkness. Let's enjoy the ride. After the amazing second Guardians of the Galaxy, New Zealand joker Taika Waititi arrives in a garbage spaceship to transform Thor’s theatrical woodenness and mythological sculpture into a highly human portrait of a ripped daffodil that has daddy issues and is morbidly dependent on its phallic pride - a giant hammer. Marvel tried out this seriously unserious style in the third Iron Man, and thanks to the Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel already knows that people want escape, retro, and nonsensical alien worlds inhabited by eccentric piles of rocks and other strange homuncules. The third Thor thus resembles a euphoric 8-bit arcade, which uses only the X and Y axes to move, but you can also enjoy a lot of gags, shooters and action escapades. It's not without its flaws. Hemsworth sometimes tries so hard that he distorts his face, and the joke-a-minute syndrome does lead to dead spots. Moreover, Thor does not have much of an elegant plot, where the traditional world-destroying motif is transformed into a moving statement about family relationships like the second Guardians of the Galaxy. The fashionable hooker Hela it's quite amusing, but everything around her is rather desperately generic, so the accumulated eruption of energy at the end eventually leads to clichés. Fortunately, Taika almost always accompanies them with some full-fledged ironic gags that will restore balance to the universe. Did you want an empty, badass, yet confidently biting spectacle? Here's your stuffed portion. (27/10/2017)

“Darling, you have no idea what's possible.” I hope Waititi's next film is an adaptation of the Robot Unicorn Attack flash game, because this wasn’t far from it. Though the New Zealander with a fondness for pineapple-print shirts didn't write the screenplay, I think he deserves credit for how colourful, nutty and stylistically diverse the whole film is. In just the first few minutes, we become witnesses to the protagonist’s self-ironic conversation with a skeleton, a variation on the “Look at my shit” scene from Spring Breakers and a parody of the theatrical, statuesque nature of Thor’s first solo movie. I actually found it regrettable that Waititi had to stick to the Marvel canon and expand the MCU (the scene with Strange was a bit superfluous) and couldn’t construct the whole film as a laid-back buddy movie in which Thor’s patience is gradually tested by Loki, a talking pile of rocks who wants to start a revolution, a perpetually plastered Valkyrie, and an egghead with seven doctorates and a problem with self-control. The characters and their sparkling dialogue draw more attention to themselves than another generic plot with a goddess of death who wants to unleash hell because she has daddy issues. Fortunately, the narrative structure is partially adapted to this. After the main storyline gets rolling, the protagonist is plunged into a world where he has to deal with completely different concerns, so rectifying the situation on Asgard, of which Thor is informed only through hearsay, has to be delayed. On top of that, the protagonist is merely pulled along by fate (or by the Hulk) more than once and cannot freely make decisions; things happen without his input. The subversiveness of this approach, which turns the whole superhero concept on its head, culminates in the climax, when the problem is resolved differently (and by someone else) than you would expect. When you add the actors enjoying their roles (Tessa Thompson and Jeff Goldblum are particularly superb), the arcade-inspired action scenes and the cleverly dumb humour to the methodical rejection (or, as the case may be, commenting on and mocking) of the rules of the game, you get a movie that will either irritate you with its refusal to take anything seriously or thrill you as the most entertaining Marvel movie ever. For me, it was the latter. 85% (29/10/2017)