As a longtime Marvel fan, I can't help but wonder WHAT they were thinking

Rating: 1/10 (27 November 2017)

Pros: Chris Hemsworth is great, finally allowed to be the star of his franchise. His performance brings a sense of continuity to the trilogy that otherwise wouldn't be there. The film also has truly hilarious moments, the best of which take place in the Hulk/Thor Gladiator fight.
Cons: Everything else. The writing is TERRIBLE. Hela is probably the weakest villain the MCU has ever put out, right up there with Malekith and Ronan. There is no character development and the plot only exists as a joke telling mechanism. The whole film feels like a series of SNL skits that someone tried and failed to link together in a feature film. The action sequences are also deeply disappointing, amounting to nothing more than visual noise.
I don't understand how anyone has been able to praise the storytelling in this film. After thinking about it a lot, I can only assume that it's the concept of the film that is being praised, the entire idea of combining Thor: Ragnarok with Planet Hulk and using Hela as the villain in a Thor/Banner buddy cop movie. And I completely agree that this plot is great — it's what had me so excited for this movie.
However, the way it is delivered is awful. A basic concept in writing is show, don't tell (i.e. it's better to show your audience that someone is nervous than simply say "He was nervous"). But from the very beginning, this movie tells the audience everything, spoon feeding us enough of a plot to keep the movie advancing in order to tell more jokes. Every big plot point is told to the audience and then never developed. For instance, the film's big twist is that Hela is Thor's sister. Odin tells us that in the very beginning of the movie and then nothing. It is never developed. We never feel that familial relationship between Hela, Thor and Loki. Compare that to the excellent way that Thor and The Avengers developed Thor and Loki's brotherly bond. It's a definitive attribute of their characters. However, if Hela hadn't been their sister, the movie would have unfolded exactly the same way, it made literally no difference to the film/characters. And there are so many unanswered questions. Was Frigga Hela's mother, or someone else? Would Frigga be okay with Odin locking their daughter away? Ultimately, it was such a random plot point at such a late stage in the Thor mythology and it never ended up paying off or connecting to anything else in the story.
And then there's what this movie does to the Hulk. I could rant for a very long time about this, so I will just leave it at this: Ruffalo's Banner/Hulk under the direction of Joss Whedon has consistently been one of the best characters in the MCU. Both Banner and the Hulk have been used to great effect, showing that they can be both heartbreaking or hilarious in the very same movie. This film's shallow, oversimplified version has NONE of what has made the character so amazing in previous films and I find myself worrying that they've actually ruined the character. No, I don't hate that he talks. He's talked before and it's the natural progression of his character to become more intelligent/aware. But the way that they decided to execute this character progression, all in the name of comedy rather than character development, was terrible.
The action sequences were awful as well. The MCU has shown through properties like Winter Soldier, The Avengers, and Daredevil that they can produce creative action sequences that are unique in tone, execution, or narrative. This movie did none of that. The action was CGI heavy and indistinct. In Daredevil or a Russo Brother's movie, I can feel every punch that is thrown. In this movie it was an unoriginal mess of visual noise that lacked any sense of scale. Every battle sequence, but especially the final one, fell extremely flat. I also thought a lot of the CGI and green screens were really evident, giving the movie a fake quality. However, this could have been purposeful to mimic the 80's feel the movie was striving for, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt on that one.
My final complaint is one I never expected to have. Two Marvel properties came out in November, The Punisher and Thor: Ragnarok. One of those movies featured gratuitous violence and tried to get the audience to laugh at grotesque images. It wasn't The Punisher. Yes, of course The Punisher was far more graphic and emotionally disturbing, but that is for the sake of developing the character and story and dealing with important issues. Thor: Ragnarok featured several scenes that were just so strange in their violence that they literally took me out of the movie. The first was the introduction of Valkyrie, in which she murders a group of people, literally reducing them to dust, without giving them a warning or chance to run. My jaw dropped and I heard someone in front of me say "Wow, they're going there?" Yet, unlike many other violent Marvel properties, we were never supposed to question if this made Valkyrie a hero or a villain. The next scene that stood out was the prolonged shot of Bruce Banner's shattered, grotesque body on the rainbow bridge. The shot was meant to and succeeded in earning laughs, reducing Banner's uncertain fate to a joke. Certain movies, such as Deadpool, demand these kinds of creative choices to do justice to the character's world and experience. Thor was never one of these characters.
As someone who LOVES Marvel, this was the first time I've walked away from an MCU movie feeling completely disappointed. This film didn't seem to respect itself, let alone the rest of the MCU or the people who love these stories. I only hope it won't damage the MCU moving forward.