Juan Carlos Rivas Diaz

REVIEW:
THE RAGNAROK

The story is an uninteresting thicket of brawls, machinations and useful

coincidences. (Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost wrote the
screenplay.) Soon after Hela appears, she moves back home and Thor
lands elsewhere, allowing her to run amok — kill, strut, repeat — and him
to leisurely settle into his new, more lighthearted mode until it’s serious
hammer time. Much of his great un-Thoring happens on Sakaar, a planetary
garbage dump run by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, comically jiving and
dithering), a psychopath Auntie Mame in flowing gold lamé and blue
fingernail polish who suggests a low-rent version of Stanley Tucci’s host in
“The Hunger Games.”
There’s a nice bit in “Thor: Ragnarok,” the latest Marvel blowout to feature
the god of thunder, where he tries to start a jet using a voice-activated
password. He needs to make a getaway — he’s neck deep in trouble and
plot entanglements — so identifies himself as the “strongest Avenger.” No
dice. Given his earlier stand-alone movies, Thor might have had better luck
cracking the code if he’d copped to being the “most boring Avenger.”
“Ragnarok” tries hard to change that profile, and mostly succeeds by
knocking its big, blond beauty consistently down to size. It makes sense for
all sorts of reasons, including that superheroes can so easily appear to be
on the wrong side of history.
Marvel could have gone grimmer, broodier and sterner, but that isn’t its
onscreen way; so it has made Thor sunnier, sillier and funnier. It’s a good
fit, at least for a while. Like some other superheroes, Thor has been good
for the occasional light, mocking laugh, often hooked to his otherworldly
identity: He’s a god (as he likes to announce), son of Odin (Anthony
Hopkins), and so forth. For much of “Ragnarok,” he’s a playfully sustained
joke.
The Chatty Cathies also include Thor’s sister, Hela (a vamping Cate
Blanchett), an overgrown Goth Girl with smudged eye makeup and killer
dominatrix looks who plays very hard. She lusts for Odin’s realm, which
remains as drearily amorphous and anonymous as before.
here that Thor reunites with the Hulk, who’s been crushing the gladiatorial
competition on an extended incredible bender. After he and Thor engage in
some Steinbeckian George-and-Lennie riffing, the Hulk’s inner mouse,
Bruce Banner, takes over, and Mark Ruffalo eases in to help turn the
temperature from hot to cozy.
Mr. Hemsworth looks happier and far more relaxed in “Ragnarok” than he
did in the previous Thor film, which is perhaps Mr. Waititi’s truest
achievement here. For a guy who looks chiseled by Michelangelo, Mr.
Hemsworth can be a surprisingly agile physical performer, capable of real
bounce, and he clearly likes ricocheting off walls as much as he does ceding
center stage to the other actors. These include Tessa Thompson as
Valkyrie, who, after an unpromising entrance, develops into a real character
with emotion and an all-too-brief flashback filled with fury, beauty, liquid
motion and mythological mystery.
it’s a reminder of the narrative ambition and mythic grandeur that’s often
reduced in this franchise to epic fights, fancy elocution and special effects.
It’s amusing how “Ragnarok” humanizes Thor, yet in doing so it dilutes his
Thorness, the essential qualities that make him more than a dude with a
cool hammer. And the more familiar and less godlike he becomes, the more
evident it is that this series has never figured out how to make his myth fit
with the modern world. So it’s made Thor a fish out of water and a recurrent
punch line. Now, though, with Thor (and Mr. Hemsworth) at last settled in,
what he needs is a myth as mighty as his shtick.