My head is Thor

Rating: 7/10 (27 October 2017)

I went in to this film maybe a little too expectant, I love Marvel, love the Thor comic character, and love the way Chris Hemsworth portrays him on the screen. However, this film is COMPLETELY different to every other portrayal of Thor and it doesn't work. Thor's comedy has generally stemmed from his failure to integrate with humans on earth, when he was on Asgard he was this regal, well versed, humble, albeit slightly cocky character, yet from his first scene you can tell the film is taking a completely different route with him. And this is where the main problem of the film lies. For a film called "Ragnarok", which is basically about the death & destruction of Asgard, there is too much of a light tone throughout this film and WAY TOO much "comic" dialogue - I put that in speech marks as a lot of the one liners do not work and fall flat, and this is purely because of the sheer volume of them in the film. Comedy only works when there is a straight man to work off, yet nearly every character in the film is written the same and thus loses their individuality. This is such a shame as it causes the film to lose all impact on the sad or serious moments. Within the first 30 minutes Thor discovers the Loki is posing as Odin and, instead of being A: amazed he's still alive, and B: He's somehow banished his all powerful father, he simply laughs this off as a little joke Loki has played, then when they find Odin and he subsequently "dies" just before they meet Hela, who then goes on to destroy Mjolnir, there is no mourning period and before you know it we're on Sakaar being treated to no end of electrocution jokes.(Though isn't Thor the god of Thunder and can summon lightning?? Why would he be incapacitated by an electric shock?)It's such a shame that, as Thor has just lost 2 of the most important things to him, this isn't given time to sink in or be dealt with and is just glazed over with a quick childish argument with the Hulk.
It's not all bad though, I found once on Sakaar the film picked up somewhat. The Hulk/Thor fight doesn't disappoint, and there were a couple of nice character additions here, the Grandmaster was better than I thought he would be and wasn't too "Goldblum", Korg is probably the funniest part of this film and his comic lines do work well, I would like to see him return again. Hulk is fleshed out a bit more as well and we continue to see the internal struggle between him and Banner during the film. Another addition is Skurge who, the less said about him, the better..! Pointless, waste of time being in the film. Valkyrie is a strange character, I know she was completely changed from the comic books, but I don't think that the character is particularly well developed and thus I wasn't really invested in her at all during the movie. I also think the part quite easily could have been portrayed by Lady Sif, (who is strangely absent in the film despite the warriors 3 appearing??) And would have had more impact in the plot than the reasoning behind Valkyrie's self imposed exile. But the main plus point from the film, which is music to Marvel fan's ears, is Hela is a success as a villain, it has been a long time since we've had a villain to rival Loki (who FYI is wasted in the film and is getting a bit annoying now) but Hela is great, we got some development in to her character, albeit a little small, but I very much look forward to her appearing in Infinity War so we can hopefully develop her further.
So whilst it's not the best Marvel film, it's certainly not the worst by a long shot. I did enjoy it, it was just the constant barrage of jokes wore very thin very quickly and definitely detracted from the overall story.
But with all this said, my non fan boy friend loved the film....!