Latest Thor epic finds room for humour
Latest Marvel superhero goes for laughs — and succeeds, Chris Knight reviews.
THOR: RAGNAROK ★★★ out of 5 Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson Director: Taika Waititi Duration: 2 h 10 m
In Norse mythology, “Ragnarok” refers to an end-of-days cataclysm, like Armageddon, doomsday or Zac Efron films. But in the Marvel universe it may mean something akin to embarrassment or humiliation. In this movie, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets tied up, locked up, teleported, electric-shocked, captured, dumped, Hulked and forcibly barbered. He even loses his hammer, leaving him looking like a traveller whose Uber app just failed.
But somehow, he comes out of it all with a sense of humour, which is even more amazing when you recall that he didn’t go in with one. In other stand-alone outings, 2011’s Thor and 2013’s The Dark World, as well as various ensemble pictures, he’s the least jolly Avenger. Now he quips like he’s been taking lessons from Iron Man.It’s hard to know which writer to praise for this — Ragnarok has three, as well as the various “based on the comics by” credits — so I’m going to suggest we all hail Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director of such fun low-budget buffoonery as Eagle vs. Shark, What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Not only has Waititi made an impressive leap into the almost giga-dollar budget range (those other movies were made for about $5 million, combined), but he also appears as Korg, the deferential dungeon master on planet Sakaar, where the de-hammered Thor is taken to participate in gladiatorial games. Running the show there is Jeff Goldblum. He calls himself Grandmaster, though I don’t think he has the mental chops for chess. In fact, his greatest skill seems to be that of trailing off in mid-sentence, a talent he takes to new ...
Anyway, Ragnarok is just the latest in 2017’s bumper crop of superhero flicks, which includes Marvel’s Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming; DC’s Wonder Woman and the upcoming Justice League. Not to mention (do we have to?) the underwhelming Dark Universe curtain-raiser that was The Mummy.
And while I know these movies are planned out years in advance, it feels like Thor’s newest has lifted a page from Wonder Woman’s playbook, with the inclusion of Tessa Thompson as SR-142, a hard-drinking Valkyrie from Thor’s home world. Not only that, but Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, used in two separate battle sequences, sounds a lot like a certain Amazonian princess’s theme music.
Ragnarok also introduces that Marvel rarity, a female villain, although Cate Blanchett’s Hela looks to have built her wardrobe and decorating choices on those of Angelina Jolie in Maleficent — same basic costume with a bigger rack of antlers. She’s Thor’s twisted sister, but can’t really compete with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, back from the dead and proving once again that if duplicity were a sport he would somehow both win and lose while cheating, playing by the rules and also making up his own. Hela is the main plot driver, arriving on Thor’s planet and threatening to take over, even as another more computer-generated baddie prepares to destroy the whole place. Thor has to get home and stop them.
All this and I haven’t even gotten to Mark Ruffalo’s turn as Hulk, who like Thor gets to be more loquacious and wittier within Ragnarok’s shambolic buddy-picture framework.
He does not, alas, get to say:
“Hulk more loquacious and wittier!” Waititi snags most of the best lines for his own character, including a naughty joke that will sail over the heads of any youngsters not versed in New Zealand or British sexual slang, and this lovely little axiom: “The only thing here that makes sense is that nothing makes sense.” That’s Ragnarok in a nutshell. Put your brain in neutral and enjoy!
Withnail & I is not the first film you would expect to hear namechecked at a news conference for an all-star, $180-million superhero movie.
But the 1987, jet-black British comedy about the codependent relationship between two broke actors in the 1960s living in a squalid London flat was used as a reference by director Taika Waititi when discussing the tone he wanted for parts of Thor: Ragnarok. He wanted it to inform the key relationship between the Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo, and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor.
“When I first talked to Mark about doing the film, the thing we connected on was (when) I said: ‘This is going to be Withnail & I in space, with you and Chris,’ says Waititi, in Beverly Hills alongside the cast of Thor: Ragnarok.
Waititi is talking about one scene in particular. Thor and the Hulk are both imprisoned on a strange planet named Sakaar, where they are forced to fight each other in a gladiatorial contest overseen by 14-billion-year-old dictator Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum.)
The old Avengers buddies ar- gue, fight and — in the scene in question — eventually make up. Granted, they also go on a dizzying rampage in an attempt to escape their captors.
But Waititi, whose past work includes small and funny independent films in his native New Zealand, such as What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, wanted their relationship to have a down-to-earth, bickering buddy-comedy vibe.
“That’s what grounds the film a little more for the audience,” Waititi says. “Superheroes do have to make up after arguments as well. That’s what I love about being given the opportunity in this film: to show that side of these really crazy, big characters.”
Thor: Ragnarok may not quite hit the dark comedic peaks of Withnail & I, but it’s safe to say that the third outing for the crown prince of Asgard, is the most broadly comedic of the bunch. There are still big themes coursing beneath the plot. Thor’s family, for instance, continues to harbour Shakespearean levels of dysfunction. The title itself is a touch grim, referencing an impending apocalyptic battle that has been prophesied to destroy Thor’s home planet of Asgard.
It’s being brought about by a new villain name Hela, played with scenery-chewing glee by Oscarwinner Cate Blanchett. Thor also gets some new sidekicks, including an ass-kicking warrior named Valkyrie played by Tessa Thompson and a friendly, rock-based warrior named Korg expertly voiced by Waititi himself. All of this is wrapped in the sort of special effects and action sequences that we’ve come to expect from a massive-budgeted superhero film.
What’s surprising is the tone. Waititi encouraged improvisation on set, lending a looseness to the production.
“I think we all had a vision and an idea and a want to do something vastly different than what we’d done before and take it to a different place,” said Hemsworth. “And that meant kind of doing away with what we knew, and just reinventing it, and it all came from (Waititi’s) crazy, wonderful brain, and his inspiration, and him pushing us every day on set and constantly encouraging us to improvise and explore and take risks.”
When Blanchett is asked if she could see Shakespearean elements in Hela, she admits she “didn’t think about Shakespeare very much on this one ... It was hugely enjoyable for me,” she says. “And apart from working with these guys, obviously, the chance to finally, in my deep middle age, to get fit and wear that much Lycra was really exciting for me.”
Thor: Ragnarok also sees the return of Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins as Thor’s father Odin, Emmy nominee and acclaimed stage actor Tom Hiddleston as our hero’s duplicitous brother Loki and Oscar-nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, who shows up as Doctor Strange in an amusing cameo.
There seems ample opportunities to spin off a number of these new characters into films of their own. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige asked Mark Ruffalo what he would do if he had his own Hulk movie.
“I said, ‘I’d like to do this, this, and this and this and this and then this and then this, and this, and this, and then it would end like this,’” Ruffalo says. “And he’s like, ‘I love that. Let’s do that over the next three movies, starting with Thor 3 and carry it on through Avengers 3 and Avengers 4.’ And so that’s my stand-alone Hulk movie.”