HERO WORSHIP
Taika’s Thor strikes the spot
Thor: Ragnarok (M, 130 mins) Directed by Taika Waititi ★★★★1⁄2
The day may yet come when someone writes a better ditty than Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song to stage a fight scene to. But that day, clearly, is not today. Although, by the time Robert Plant’s strangulated ‘‘Ahhhh Ah, Ah!’’ came ripping out of the speakers at the multiplex the second time around, about midway through the frankly delirious third act of Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok ,Iwas almost ready for a different tune.
If AC/DC’s Thunderstruck had kicked in right then, just as Chris Hemsworth’s Thor finally got his freak on and showed Cate Blanchett’s Hela, Goddess of Death exactly why he never really needed that hammer, I do declare I would have damned near jumped out of my seat and whooped.
It only would have been right, in a film stuffed to bursting with in-jokes, local references and gags that might only ever work fully down here beneath the Southern Cross, to have chucked Aussie’s biggest rock-pig export ever on the soundtrack and be done with it.
By that point in Thor I’d already seen references to Star Wars’ Tuscan Raiders, something that looked very much like a spaceship from Blake’s 7, a Duran Duran T-shirt worn without so much as a comment, a massive bloke, made of rocks and played by Taika himself, who speaks with a voice straight out of an East Coast shearing shed, and a shameless Gladiator sight gag that made me laugh harder than just about anything else I’ve seen in a cinema in months.
Taika’s take on Thor is just that kind of film. It’s got Taika’s (Boy, Hunt For The Wilder-people) trademark way with a gag all over it, from a studio that knew enough to let him get on with what he is best at.
Thor: Ragnarok, as that way-too-informative trailer has already told you, is set partly in another alien world. Thor and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) are imprisoned as gladiators at the pleasure of the ‘‘Grand Master’’ (Jeff Goldblum, doing everything but twirling a moustache and lisping).
Back on Thor’s homeworld of Asgard, the aforementioned Blanchett is laying waste and threatening to take the Asgard throne forever.
The film basically breaks down into two parts: how Thor, Hulk, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and a few others make it back home and the almighty scrap they have when they get there.
Intermixed are some surprisingly downbeat and thoughtful moments featuring Idris Elba’s warrior Heimdall trying to save a civilian population who have become refugees within their own land.
It adds up to a dense, extraordinarily funny and moreor-less non-stop great time.
There’s a looseness and irreverence about this Marvel instalment that will remind you more of that first, terrific, Guardians of the Galaxy episode than it does any of the films that Thor and his associates have appeared in before.
With the Captain America/Iron Man and co storylines becoming more martial and seemingly serious-minded with every passing film, this Thor reboot is a blast of fresh storytelling and a welcome embrace of the whole shooting match’s comic book origins.
Not that Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t hang together as a story. It does, and better than many more po-faced entries. But there’s a joy and daffy exuberance about this film that is impossible not to like.
In New Zealand, with Taika already a local hero, it’s just about inconceivable to walk into Thor: Ragnarok without your hopes soaring. I’m so happy to be able to report it doesn’t let us down. – Graeme Tuckett
In New Zealand, with Taika already a local hero, it's just about inconceivable to walk into Thor: Ragnarok without your hopes soaring.