You could go the cinema twice a day, every day, for the next 50 years without seeing a movie that declares its intent to correct a prequel’s mistake with the speed and assurance of Thor: Ragnarok.
In the muscle-bulging, metal rocker-haired shape of Aussie prime rib Chris Hemsworth, the God of Thunder from Down Under is back — and this time, as he casually lets on in the first few seconds, he’s playing it for laughs.
If you were bored to the edge of hallucinating by Thor: The Dark World, the pompous and ponderous second film in this Marvelfranchise, the lightness and sustained comic power of the third will make you think you’ve died and gone to Valhalla.
It opens with Thor trapped in a gently gyrating metal box, apparently at the mercy of one of those regulation demons whose innards are illuminated the lurid orange-red of volcanic lava.
“Oh no, Thor’s in a cage! How did that happen?” he says to himself with weary mock amazement. He then politely asks the demon (voiced by Clancy Brown, and almost as sadistic as Brown’s prison guard in The Shawshank Redemption) to wait for the cage to complete its slo-mo spin so he can look it in the eyes as it rants about the oncoming cataclysm. Ragnarok, according to my trusty Asgardian-English dictionary, translates to The End of Days.
Thor doesn’t need his hammer Mjölnir to break the fourth wall, à la Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. To communicate that the film means to embrace the absurdity of the superhero genre, rather than disguise it in the leaden cape of ersatz emotional depth, all it takes is that one nugget of self-parodic wit.
He does need Mjölnir to escape, however, and the sight of the mighty weapon/building utensil flying to his outstretched hand will be a relief to fellow owners of the plastic version. I was enough of a fan of the Kenneth Branagh-directed original to receive one of those as a Father Day’s present. This third in the series, a startlingly confident blockbuster debut from New Zealand director Taika Waititi, is better.
This has little to do with the cast, though even by superhero movie standards it is so stellar that Matt Damon contents himself with the weeniest of cameos.
Anthony Hopkins, among others, is back. Made a widower by Christopher Eccleston’s elf king in The Dark World, his Odin has retired to Norway, where he gazes grievingly to sea while clad in a linen-jacket-and-slacks ensemble possibly better suited to a Miami condo geezer than the All Father.
Also returning is Tom Hiddleston as Thor’s warring brother Loki, the trickster god with the hideous Cavalier coiffe, who is briefly ruler of Asgard. If you thought Loki was the worst sibling in all the Nine Realms, brace yourself for Cate Blanchett’s Hela.
When a tearful Odin referred to Thor as “my first born” in the original Thor, it emerges, he was telling what’s known in the mystical argot of Norse mythology as “a pörkie pie”. One shouldn’t be too harsh. Anyone saddled with the onerous title “god of death” will feel the pressure to conform to type. But the antler-helmeted, punk-goth, fetish gear-wearing Hela is a right rotter, and now she has escaped the prison in which Odin locked her up with every ambition of fulfilling the Ragnarok prophecy.
Thor’s journey home from that cage on the other side of the universe to battle her for the Realm Eternal is meandering, action-packed and hilarious. It brings in Benedict Cumberbatch, reprising Dr Stephen Strange for a droll battle of wits with Hiddleston’s Loki that might have begun 25 years ago in an Eton vs Harrow chess match. Still, better late than never.
Source: standard
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