By Far the Best Solo Thor Film

Rating: 8/10 (2 November 2017)

X-Men Apocalypse was wrong: the third film in the franchise isn't always the worst.
Thor (2010) was a perfectly doable, if average, origin film and served the purpose of introducing the character in time for The Avengers. Thor: The Dark World (2014) wasn't terrible, but it was very disappointing and bland.
Thor: Ragnarok, on the other hand, is just the kind of film to get audiences to like an Avenger other than Tony Stark or Steve Rogers.
Directed by Taika Waititi, this film gets an injection of the cosmic vibe from James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy films and uses it to go crazy and have some fun showing how bizarre the universe can be.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has had his hammer shattered by Hela, Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett) and been banished to a world where he is enslaved and forced to fight for his survival. Now, he must assemble a team to save the people of Asgard from Hella's evil reign and the oncoming apocalypse, Ragnarok, with a little help from Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, with extra Hulk voice time for Lou Ferrigno).
As a comic book film, this checks all the correct buttons for a conflict that has serious stakes yet with enough levity to balance out the deadly threats the characters face. It genuinely feels like anything can happen, and often unexpected things do happen.
This is obviously a tonally different film from the first two Thor films, looking and feeling more like a Guardians of the Galaxy film. The fact that this is much more of a success than the first two films may mean that more levity may be in store for future Marvel films.
However, with a film with this much humor, while the majority of the jokes land on their feet, it does sometimes tend to inject a funny moment when more seriousness is required, and this can be emotionally confusing and ultimately undermining the stakes set earlier in the film.
Also, there are some major family conflicts that get introduced quickly, brushed aside for large stretches, and then barely brought up again before being forgotten an instant later. Some shattering revelations are not given the proper impact that they are due. Out of the film's weaknesses, this feels like the most disappointing, as these themes could and should have done more to balance out the film's serious-funny dynamic.
Overall, though, this film does a lot for the franchise in that for the length of a film, much like the Guardians films, the audience can largely forget about the overarching MCU timeline and events and focus on the story at hand, and while it has its deficiencies, this is still a fun film and one that will probably be the fun crescendo before the probably overly serious Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War films.