Great on its own, but also a crafty prelude to Avengers 3 and 4

Rating: 8/10 (10 May 2018)

Clever guys, these Marvel Cinematic Universe planners -- Kevin Fiege and the rest. Like it or not I have to give them credit for thinking way down the path, which they have the confidence to do now that they've established a mega-successful franchise. Every MCU movie is linked not just to the next one but to the entire set. Now that I've seen Avengers Infinity War, a reasonable way to look at Thor Ragnarok is as a prelude to that and to Avengers 4 coming next year.
I liked Thor Ragnarok quite a lot -- it covers an amazing amount of ground in its 2:10 run time, has a great cast list with impressively excellent actors (Anthony Hopkins, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Cumberbatch -- wow.) And Chris Hemsworth really owns this role as Thor now: he can be serious, relaxed, funny, whatever the scene calls for and he puts it across comfortably. And of course the visuals, sets, production values are all as expertly crafted as Marvel has ever done up to this point. In short, it's great to look at and easy to settle into for a fun ride. We start with a great segment between Thor, Loki, and Dr. Strange, move from there to reconnect with Odin and introduce Hela, then (zip!) on to the Grandmaster's planet and join up with the Hulk, then finally the return to Asgard. With all these disparate pieces and drastic changes of tone the whole thing could easily have fallen apart, but director Taiki Waititi pulls it off with energy and humor. Kudos to him. Also, kudos for his great voice acting as Korg, the rock creature on Planet Hulk. He's utterly charming and actually does steal all his scenes.
But I still rank the first Thor (2011) as one of the half-dozen best superhero movies ever. Thanks to director Kenneth Branagh it beautifully straddled the mythological Asgardian world with "everyday Earth" and made it work. Most crucially of all, it gave us a classic, meaningful storyline with emotional resonance: it didn't skimp on action but the action itself was not the heart of the film. Thor: The Dark World (2013) gave us more of the same Asgard-centered setting and action, it wasn't bad at all, but just not put across with the same conviction, and it kind of led to a dead end for the characters.
But now Ragnarok: yes it's great but there were nevertheless things about it that bothered me -- for example, in Thor I and II, Asgard is clearly just one of the Nine Realms, in line with Norse mythology. It's essentially in a different dimension than Earth (= Midgard) and to travel between them you had to go via the magical Bifrost. But now MCU seems to have decided that Asgard is just another place in space that you can travel to or from via regular old spaceship -- as we see at the end of the film. This is a BIG change of direction -- it brings the Asgardian 'gods' down to the normal superhero level like Iron Man and Falcon and all the rest. And the Asgardians themselves, who looked terrifically noble and impressive in Thor I and II, here look like just what they are, which is a bunch of casting extras off the street. I'd rather have Thor still be special and I'd rather have Asgard be Asgard.
And his hammer -- broken up by Evil Sister Hela almost at the beginning of the story. ??? This is an equally dramatic step away from Thor's Norse mythological roots. In fact there are lots of versions of Thor in the stories, including a period in the Marvel comics where Thor was even a woman, Jane Foster -- but there is NO version of Thor without the hammer. I came out of the theater thinking "Hey, bring that back! No fair!" Yes, I know -- the dramatic purpose was to make Thor realize that his trademark self-confidence needs to rest within himself and not Mjolnir.
This film is also the first serious indication that as the MCU develops, they are willing to start playing real hardball. Trashing the hammer, putting out one of Thor's eyes (ow! gee thanks, Sis), and even Ragnarok itself where all of Asgard is brought down, are messages that they are not just going to continue their movies with the same-old types of stories. As we know by now, Infinity War goes one step further. But I also draw some hope from AIW, because Thor gets an eye back and also the newer and better hammer, Stormbreaker. It was a setup all along. So the MCU writers might seem bloody-minded but they still need to make it all good in the end -- now it's just taking a series of films to do it, not just one standalone story at a time.