Diet GotG

Rating: 5/10 (4 November 2017)

This move isn't bad, but it isn't one of the best MCU movies. It's a fun, lighthearted romp but if you're looking for a solid theme or even a cohesive story, I think you'll be disappointed like I was.
The two things this movie gets right, for the most part, is the action and comedy. It has good fight scenes, especially in the first half. In the third act the action feels lackluster, but decent.
Some of the jokes land, some don't. I laughed at about half the jokes, smiled at a couple, and stared blankly at the rest. The (clearly) improvised conversations have the best jokes. I wasn't as much of a fan of the physical gags. The comedic timing overall feels natural akin to Iron Man or GotG, however I do think the overload of jokes ended up hurting this movie, whereas they were smartly spaced out in IM, GotG, Avengers, and the first Thor movie (I liked its fish out of water humor).
The flaws in this movie are largely tied to emotions, stakes, and story. Having a rote, classic story is fine as long as there's some connection and depth to the characters. I didn't feel as much as I wanted for these protagonists because the actors, aside from Ruffalo, Elba, and Urban, seemed more focused on being funny and cool rather than focusing on the conflict. Anthony Hopkins looked like he was just there to collect his check and Cate Blanchett was underused as the villain. The other actors were OK to good, but the focus on comedy decreased the level of stakes and emotional weight. This is where Guardians Vol. 2 far surpasses Ragnarok's quality to me, because I cared about all the Guardians and despised Vol. 2's villain despite the film's weaker jokes, and I felt like nearly all the protags had arcs that were developed by Gunn, and the actors thought about them and put a lot of effort into their dramatic scenes. In this movie it was more like everyone on set was like, "Let's run through the scene a few times and keep the funniest take," resulting in good times and good direction by Waititi, but also resulting in my lack of genuine connection to the characters. There were a couple sincere, dramatic moments scattered here and there that featured Skurge, Valkyrie and Hulk, and I wish those scenes lasted a bit longer or there had been more of them, especially with Thor.
Then there's Asgard itself. There's very little emotion spared for it and its citizens losing their home, instead the phrase "Asgard is people not a place," is repeated but instead of me feeling inspired by that or sad at the fall of Asgard, there are a few jokes lobbed about the foundation and I am wondering why I should feel sad or hopeful. I think Vol. 2's ending was a thousand times better and more poignant, even with Drax's jokey last line which was well-timed. Ragnarok made me feel like everyone at Marvel went "Ok everyone hates the first two Thor films therefore we need to get rid of everything in them aside from the brothers and Heimdall," so now it's like the first two movies and its secondary/side characters never mattered. This makes the Thor franchise feel disjointed to me, and I'm probably in the minority on this but I'm not interested in a Ragnarok trilogy, or shoving its characters into GotG Vol. 3 to take screen time away from characters I care about.
Speaking of which, it seemed like Ragnarok was trying way too hard to copy GotG. Like it kept poking me saying, "Hey do you remember the funny part in the movie when Quill got electrocuted? Now we're doing it, so we're cool right?" I love both GotG movies so I should've enjoyed Ragnarok. I did on a surface level way, and while it was fun and funny I wished it would have followed its own themes and style from its first two movies (which, unpopular opinion, but I liked them). I wish the writers had crafted a better story for this movie, focusing more on the destruction of Asgard and the character arcs while giving Thor interesting development and more moments with Loki and Asgardians, instead of turning Thor into Star-Lord 2.0 but he falls over and hits himself in the head. And after having been emotionally wrecked by the true father-son arc in Vol. 2 despite those characters only interacting for 5 minutes, it was a big disappointment for me to feel zero emotion about Odin, who has spent much more screeentime with his sons. Thor Ragnarok copied things from Guardians without digging into the emotional core of the main characters, or following through on their arcs at the end. Sure, this movie looks like a masterpiece next to "Suicide Squad" which also tried copying GotG only to fall flat on its face, but to me there's a very specific, sincere vibe to the Guardians which can't be truly replicated by anyone else, nor should it be.
In the end, I'll take Guardians (yes, also Vol. 2) over Revengers any day. I'll still give Ragnarok 5 stars because it's not horrible, it has good action and good jokes but otherwise it's forgettable fluff to me. The first Thor movie is better.