‘Thor: Ragnarok’ blends action and comedy perfectly

Whether you are in the mood for CGI action or witty chatter, the wildly enjoyable “Thor: Ragnarok” justifies your hard-earned money, your two hours-plus and, indeed, its very existence right up front.

Within five minutes, our briefly imperiled hero chats with a skeleton (it doesn’t reply), blasts out of his chains and hurls himself, slow motion, at an enormous fire demon out of Norse mythology while Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” blasts on the soundtrack.

We are officially in “(Expletive) yeah!” territory, complete with the (occasional h a rd - g u f f aw ) c o m e d i c touches we all hoped New Zealand director Taika Waititi (“What We Do in the Shad- ows”) would bring to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The MCU movies are generally lighter on their feet than the funereal DC Universe stuff, but “Thor: Ragnarok” is a genuine, no-kidding comedy, with Thor and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) playing out a road movie/buddy pic- ture the likes of which neither of them has ever done and that feels mighty unusual for a superhero tentpole picture. Word has it that Waititi added a good half-hour of jokes (many of which were improvised, Judd Apatowstyle) back into the 100-minute, majority-action version that screened at Comic Con.

This was an incredibly good idea. Plot-wise, “Ragnarok” is a bit all over the place both literally and figuratively — it moves back and forth between Earth, Asgard and the cosmos, as if Waititi and screenwriters Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christo- pher Yost are trying on new contexts for the character.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth, flexing the comedy muscles he displayed brilliantly in the “Ghostbusters” remake) has been wandering the cosmos looking for more Infinity Stones, and, man, the second he gets back to Asgard, it’s clear things are just a mess.

The leadership has gone to seed, Odin seems to be having a very off-day and oh, yeah, his long-banished older sister Hela, god of the dead (Cate Blanchett going full Gloria Swanson in spots) has busted out of her realm and is looking to rule Asgard or destroy it trying, hence the Ragnarok (aka Norse mythology’s end times) of the title.

A few fight scenes (and a