Movie Review : Thor Ragnarok

Every year Marvel likes to give us sequels, new projects and after last year Dr. Strange, this year Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and Spider-man Homecoming, you can't say they haven't been busy.

Thor Ragnarok is according to Thor himself,  "the destruction of everything" and especially Asgard.
In between he has to deal with new villain Hela and a new planet straight out of the Guardians of the Galaxy universe : Sakar. 

The main reason why I was excited about Thor Ragnarok is mostly the director : Taika Waititi. I enjoyed both previous Thor movies but I think it's fair to say that the Thor saga always felt a bit less than most of the Marvel Movies and Waititi has some excellent movies like 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople', and my ultimate favorite 'What we do in the shadows' under his belt so, what could go wrong ?

I'll start with what I liked with the movie : the humour. It was nice to have Thor be what he always seemed to be : a dumb golden retriever. Here Hemsworth is having a great time making the character even more of his own and the humour clearly makes his performance resonate a lot more as you can tell that the actor is having a great time.Even Hiddleston's Loki became a lot more likable this time around, Hiddleston always bringing a Shakespearean approach to the character that compliments and sometimes ridiculises the character in a charming way.

Unfortunately living in France,I had to see the movie with French voice actors and as always it took 70% of the jokes out and made the movie seem less funny than I believe it actually is. ( Crazy how the actors' performances are altered when the only french accent you get is a typical Parisian one. 

But hey, at least Korg and Miek were still awesome. )

A character that I truly loved and welcomed was Valkyrie (played incredibly well by Tessa Thompson) , her strength and vulnerability made her stand on her own just as much as her males counterparts and that felt refreshing, especially in the MCU which cruelly lacks any really interesting females on the big screen.(Where's our Black Widow movie at ??? )

And of course what about the villain you may ask ? Hela played by Cate Blanchett was sufficient I suppose,she did lack a lot of screen time that was strangely taken away by Skurge (played by Karl Urban who is still always a welcome sight ) and her own story felt dull and seen again and again many times before. (and made me think of S4 of Sherlock, a lot.)

The CGI also felt somewhat uneven at times, and not at the top of the game like previous MCU installments (especially in comparison to Guardians) which was surprising. But I also need to point out that some of the shots in the movie are stunning, Waititi clearly a fan of Baroque paintings , it definitively added a lot to the visual aesthetic of the movie.

Some moments in the movie were meant to induce emotions (I assume) and felt not as quite reaching enough, but that may be more due to the MCU itself, especially when it comes to deaths, I now feel always very unbothered by most of them in that universe,and I wonder how Avengers 4 is going to handle that. 

I was also surprised by the amount of references to Avengers : Age of Ultron. There are a lot of them and considering how that movie ended up being quite dull and full of promises never fulfilled, it's a bit weird to hear Thor and Banner talk about it like it happened yesterday. (but still,I guess it makes sense considering both have been out of the MCU for 2 years now) 

The soundtrack carried by Immigrant Song was great,I liked the fact that it kept elements of the 1st Thor movie while having a very 70s/80s vibe to it.(my ultimate weakness!) . 

And finally, the post-credits scenes were...disappointing. The 1st one being obvious, and the 2nd one cashing on Goldblum being ...well Goldblum. And while I love the grand master and Goldblum's performance , it felt still coming out of nowhere and made me miss the time where post credits scenes in the MCU actually meant something.

Don't get me wrong,I had fun watching Thor Ragnarok, but it seems that this one and Guardians are a type of the MCU I just can't fully get into as the grittier ones like Captain America : Civil War and the lovely Spider-man Homecoming were the most recent ones that I truly fully enjoyed.

I'll wait for the DVD to be out to actually watch it again in original version but for now I give the movie...

Thanks for reading my review! What MCU movie got your attention this year ? Let me know in the comments !