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[immigrant song yell]
GOOD MORNING, I HAVE SEEN RAGNAROK, and I have some thoughts.
That was ... both as funny as I was expecting, and A LOT darker than I was expecting! Like, fuck, Hela legitimately murdered Volstagg and Fandral in one hit apiece, and Hogun did have a good last stand, but none of them lived to join Heimdall's resistance?! (I also wish we'd had some in-universe line about where the hell Sif was; I keep thinking about her attempt to make a glorious last stand in the first Thor movie, and I am 100% sure she would have died with the Warriors in this one.) So that was rough! Not to mention LITERALLY DESTROYING ASGARD, although I realize that one was in fact on the tin of a film called Ragnarok.
None of the above is actually a complaint, mind you! But it did make me think, even mid-movie, that it reminded me a lot of the tonal weirdness of the first Thor movie. (Dark World didn't have this tonal weirdness but it also wasn't ... very good.) Except, of course, that the first movie's tonal weirdness was that it kept skipping between Shakespearean levels of Asgardian family drama and Thor's wacky Midgardian fish out of water comedy, whereas this one keeps skipping between the long escape from Jeff Goldblum's weird gladiatorial disco planet and Hela casually MURDERING EVERYONE while Heimdall tries to keep Asgard's citizens alive. I do think this film was better at integrating those two halves, and I did love both of them, and I really loved how firmly it committed to all the amazing comedy bits, but it was incredibly weird to be howling with laughter while also feeling intensely sad.
Also: all the comedy bits were indeed amazing, but possibly some of the tonal weirdness also came from the fact that the movie needed to breathe a little bit more. Having only seen it once I'm not sure how many concrete examples I can come up with, but there were at least half a dozen times over the course of the film that I thought, "Wait, linger on that moment just a little longer! Let it land, let me feel it!" but the story was already racing on to the next joke or plot point. I suspect this is just a function of Waititi being interested in different moments than I was, but still. (We were also interested in lots of the same moments! Have I ever felt as intimately known as I did while Thor was wrecking an entire cave full of fire giants while Immigrant Song played in the background? NO I HAVE NOT, thank you very much Mr. Waititi.)
Maybe I also wanted a little bit more in the way of exposition? Lol this is definitely the first time I've had that complaint about a Thor movie, because every other time we've had a five-minute Lord of the Rings-style "Odin ponderously narrates Asgard's imperialist heroics" piece, and here he's just like "oh yeah you have a secret terrible sister, bye now." Which ... now that I'm writing it out it makes TOTAL SENSE, GODDAMMIT ODIN, and Hela does indeed provide her own exposition in that later AMAZING scene in the throne room where she destroys all the pleasant revisionist family frescos and uncovers the frescos of all Asgard's bloody conquests. (I loved that so, SO much, incidentally -- like, both the previous movies alllllmost engaged with Asgard's terrible imperialism, before sidestepping it either with "but actually Odin is merciful to the Jotun in times of peace" or "well yes Odin is being militant and terrible but also the dark elves literally want to end the universe so it's all cool," and this movie just LEANED IN and fully embraced an Asgardian villain and all these movies' imperialist undertones. "Where do you think all this gold came from," is hands down one of the VERY best lines in the film.)
All of this said, I still have QUESTIONS. Like, how did Thor and Loki literally never know about Hela? If they know about and recognize the symbol of a Valkyrie, how do they not know what happened to all the Valkyries? What in heck is the TIMELINE of any of this? WHO IS HELA'S MOTHER, because I am preeeetty sure it wasn't Frigga, and hey, hey Odin, stop putting your dick in everything, PS ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE TERRIBLE. (I love your terrible children.) Again, I realize that I've spent SIX YEARS caring about this silly universe and I'm probably putting more thought into these questions than anyone on the production thought was relevant, but is there, like, a movie tie-in comic that explains everything? Or a collective headcanon we can build and subscribe to? (I'll probably just make one, see above: my casual assumption that Loki is Odin's bio child with Laufey, what do you mean that isn't actually anywhere in the canon.) Anyway the movie is fine, this is what fandom is for, but I was super distracted trying to figure out logistics.
Amazing scene in the throne room included, everything about Hela was GREAT. It was absolutely a good call to cast someone like Cate Blanchett, because Hela is kind of a stock villain but she ran with it. I especially loved her one scene talking with Thor, both for how siblings-y it was -- DRAMATIC SPEECH "now get out of my chair" -- and for the amaaaazing exchange where she says something about how Odin lies about or hides away his children, and without missing a beat Thor says "Or casts them out." Like, daaaaaaamn.
Speaking of Odin, I unexpectedly loved him?! By which I mean, I am fairly sure Anthony Hopkins phoned in his previous performances pretty hard, excepting the five glorious seconds where he got to be Loki pretending to be Odin at the end of Dark World, but he actually committed here! His turn as disguised Loki, putting on the world's most cringey play, was FUCKING AMAZING (as was the horrible play; I had my fist pressed to my mouth while I literally cried with laughter) and honestly his one scene as himself was really nice too. Give Anthony Hopkins some comfy non-Asgardian clothes and a few minutes to rest inside an emotion and he'll deliver! (Also, THAT SCENE, the way he kept addressing both of them as "my sons" while Loki's face did absolutely awful wrenching things in the background, AHHHHHHHH.)
Other characters I loved: HULK, BRUCE, VALKYRIE. I loved that Hulk and Valkyrie had such a cute friendship! I felt SO BAD for poor panicked Bruce, and also really interested in the way this movie did the "Hulk and Bruce are the worst copilots" plot. (I loved Thor nearly succeeding at Nat's "sun's going down, big guy" routine, and then his continued murmured attempts to say it until Bruce was like STOP THAT'S WEIRD AND DISTRACTING.) I loved literally everything about Valkyrie!! Though now I'm wondering what her name is -- like, she's from the ORDER of Valkyries, and she has a merc/scavenger number the Grandmaster's people refer to her by, and I thiiiink she's credited as Valkyrie but surely that can't be her name, even if it is in the comics! Anyway: I loved her mix of total competence and total trashfire; I love how she IMPRESSED THOR chugging a bottle of some weird alcohol; I looooove that they gave her the "ran from a tragic backstory to become a hard-bitten mercenary who needs to be recalled to heroics" plot, which she absolutely nailed.
I also absolutely adored that there was no romance in this movie -- like, narratively it makes sense that Thor wouldn't rebound from Jane on the nearest available woman, but I like that the movie didn't do any reflexive compulsive het. Instead: four total disasters on a road trip to save Asgard! (Not Midgard! There was NO EARTH PERIL in this movie, just spaaaaace, which dovetails nicely with the overt criticism of Asgard's imperialism -- if you're going to be critical of Asgard's conquests/paternalistic safeguarding of the other realms, you'd BETTER not have the ultimate showdown be about protecting Earth from the baaaad colonies or other mean imperialists, and this movie KNEW THAT.) Gosh, the movie was also so committed to what disasters they all were, and also had investment in all their relationships -- like, aforementioned Hulk/Valkyrie friendship, Thor's occasionally-irritated coworker friendship with both Hulk and Bruce, Thor and Valkyrie slowly connecting to the moment she decides to come with them, Loki's HILARIOUS TERROR of Hulk (and "NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS" when Hulk whips Thor around, oh my god I was howling), even Loki and Valkyrie getting to interact and have a knife fight! I know I said a lot of this film needed more room to breathe, but the thing is, it understood that we already knew most of these characters and it could just settle in with them and give good interactions, and I LOVE that.
...of course I especially adored Thor and Loki's relationship. I think when Dark World came out I said something about enjoying that Thor and Loki have both settled enough into themselves to mostly understand one another, even if they aren't up to talking about it; here they TALK ABOUT IT. There's that great scene in the elevator, of course, and the way throughout the movie they sort of push and pull and nearly abandon or betray one another but never really commit because, okay, it's a mess but it's sort of their mess now, and also LOOK AT THE REST OF THE FAMILY. (On the drive home from the theater last night my friends and I were talking about some of Loki's dumber moves in this film -- namely, calling the Bifrost right after Hela appears, and trying to betray Thor to the Grandmaster -- but when we talked it through we realized that 1. Hela had just destroyed Mjolnir, and he likely could've gotten out on his own but probably he was trying to take Thor out of danger with him; 2. his betrayal of Thor to the Grandmaster was SO REFLEXIVE that Thor anticipated it, lol try harder Loki.) Some of my very fave scenes, though, were quiet moments: Loki saying a prayer along with Thor before the gladiatorial match, and Thor desultorily throwing pebbles at his projection; Loki in Thor's cabin on the spaceship at the end, when Thor says he wishes Loki were really here so he could give him a hug, and Loki catches what Thor throws at him and says "I'm here." God, I just, these terrible disasters who hate and adore each other.
I also REALLY loved Thor in this. Ahead of time I was worried, after hearing that so much of the script was ad-libbed, that Hemsworth's brand of humor would mean he'd end up being a little less Thor and a little more Kevin-from-Ghostbusters maybe. But I need not have feared! He IS hilarious, but in a way that's really grounded in Thor's character: lots of physical comedy, sometimes kind of a trash jock, but earnest and upright and angry and smart. I love the scene where he calls upon Heimdall to let him see through Heimdall's eyes and get appraised of the situation in Asgard: it's clever and responsible and Thor is gonna be such a good refugee king ;_; I'm also just ... absolutely fascinated by the idea of Mjolnir as a conduit and focus for Thor's power, but the lightning itself being Thor's. Like, it does bear out! And I love it as a concept! But I am also retroactively like "SO WHAT DID ODIN TAKE FROM YOU IN THE FIRST MOVIE THEN," like did you ... take Thor's godhood and store it in the hammer?! Your dad is real fucked up, Thor!
(Speaking of Odin again: hey, Hela takes Thor's eye! The first two films definitely took a lot of Norse mythology visuals without caring about context, so Odin's missing eye is a war wound without taking much time to be a metaphor about sacrifice of self for knowledge, but this film knew its Ragnarok in a way that felt at least mildly interested in the substance of the mythology as well as its aesthetic, so ... I sort of like the idea that Thor having his eye taken is, idk, either the last thing he needs to embrace his power without a prop -- "are you the god of hammers?" -- or a sacrifice that, like the giving up of Asgard the land for Asgard the people, will help him be a king who is unweighted from their awful past even while he carries it with him. OR MAYBE THIS IS A FUN ACTION FLICK AND I HAVE TOO MANY EMOTIONS.)
Haha I haven't even touched on some of the other things in this movie! Like: Heimdall was SO GREAT, thank yoooou for letting Idris Elba lead the resistance instead of just standing in a room looking wise! Or: I am forever sad that we had Skurge without my girl Amora, but Karl Urban breathed some excellent life and humor into what was essentially a thankless minion role, and I will happily imagine him in the role of Skurge if I ever write any Skurge and Amora fic. Or: lol how dare you waste ten minutes of my time on Dr. Stephen fucking Strange, literally the only thing that made the Earth sequence forgivable was how much I loved both Thor and Loki's Midgardian disguises. Or: the Grandmaster was so? weird?? I'm delighted to see that Jeff Goldblum was having a blast, and I'm glad that everyone just leaned in real hard on the section of this movie that was "Thor is sad and mostly naked in my gladiatorial slavefic" but also that was ... maybe slightly more of the movie than it needed to be.
Anyway this film didn't care about all the same things I did but it cared about MANY of the same things I did, and ... like I said, Taika Waititi stared deep into my soul and then had Thor wreck shit to Immigrant Song, which was A GIFT TO ME. I need to see it at LEAST once if not twice more in theaters immediately. And I already have several hundred words of Thor/Loki fic I wrote in a fit of emotions at 1am so, y'know, more in this space soon.
That was ... both as funny as I was expecting, and A LOT darker than I was expecting! Like, fuck, Hela legitimately murdered Volstagg and Fandral in one hit apiece, and Hogun did have a good last stand, but none of them lived to join Heimdall's resistance?! (I also wish we'd had some in-universe line about where the hell Sif was; I keep thinking about her attempt to make a glorious last stand in the first Thor movie, and I am 100% sure she would have died with the Warriors in this one.) So that was rough! Not to mention LITERALLY DESTROYING ASGARD, although I realize that one was in fact on the tin of a film called Ragnarok.
None of the above is actually a complaint, mind you! But it did make me think, even mid-movie, that it reminded me a lot of the tonal weirdness of the first Thor movie. (Dark World didn't have this tonal weirdness but it also wasn't ... very good.) Except, of course, that the first movie's tonal weirdness was that it kept skipping between Shakespearean levels of Asgardian family drama and Thor's wacky Midgardian fish out of water comedy, whereas this one keeps skipping between the long escape from Jeff Goldblum's weird gladiatorial disco planet and Hela casually MURDERING EVERYONE while Heimdall tries to keep Asgard's citizens alive. I do think this film was better at integrating those two halves, and I did love both of them, and I really loved how firmly it committed to all the amazing comedy bits, but it was incredibly weird to be howling with laughter while also feeling intensely sad.
Also: all the comedy bits were indeed amazing, but possibly some of the tonal weirdness also came from the fact that the movie needed to breathe a little bit more. Having only seen it once I'm not sure how many concrete examples I can come up with, but there were at least half a dozen times over the course of the film that I thought, "Wait, linger on that moment just a little longer! Let it land, let me feel it!" but the story was already racing on to the next joke or plot point. I suspect this is just a function of Waititi being interested in different moments than I was, but still. (We were also interested in lots of the same moments! Have I ever felt as intimately known as I did while Thor was wrecking an entire cave full of fire giants while Immigrant Song played in the background? NO I HAVE NOT, thank you very much Mr. Waititi.)
Maybe I also wanted a little bit more in the way of exposition? Lol this is definitely the first time I've had that complaint about a Thor movie, because every other time we've had a five-minute Lord of the Rings-style "Odin ponderously narrates Asgard's imperialist heroics" piece, and here he's just like "oh yeah you have a secret terrible sister, bye now." Which ... now that I'm writing it out it makes TOTAL SENSE, GODDAMMIT ODIN, and Hela does indeed provide her own exposition in that later AMAZING scene in the throne room where she destroys all the pleasant revisionist family frescos and uncovers the frescos of all Asgard's bloody conquests. (I loved that so, SO much, incidentally -- like, both the previous movies alllllmost engaged with Asgard's terrible imperialism, before sidestepping it either with "but actually Odin is merciful to the Jotun in times of peace" or "well yes Odin is being militant and terrible but also the dark elves literally want to end the universe so it's all cool," and this movie just LEANED IN and fully embraced an Asgardian villain and all these movies' imperialist undertones. "Where do you think all this gold came from," is hands down one of the VERY best lines in the film.)
All of this said, I still have QUESTIONS. Like, how did Thor and Loki literally never know about Hela? If they know about and recognize the symbol of a Valkyrie, how do they not know what happened to all the Valkyries? What in heck is the TIMELINE of any of this? WHO IS HELA'S MOTHER, because I am preeeetty sure it wasn't Frigga, and hey, hey Odin, stop putting your dick in everything, PS ALL YOUR CHILDREN ARE TERRIBLE. (I love your terrible children.) Again, I realize that I've spent SIX YEARS caring about this silly universe and I'm probably putting more thought into these questions than anyone on the production thought was relevant, but is there, like, a movie tie-in comic that explains everything? Or a collective headcanon we can build and subscribe to? (I'll probably just make one, see above: my casual assumption that Loki is Odin's bio child with Laufey, what do you mean that isn't actually anywhere in the canon.) Anyway the movie is fine, this is what fandom is for, but I was super distracted trying to figure out logistics.
Amazing scene in the throne room included, everything about Hela was GREAT. It was absolutely a good call to cast someone like Cate Blanchett, because Hela is kind of a stock villain but she ran with it. I especially loved her one scene talking with Thor, both for how siblings-y it was -- DRAMATIC SPEECH "now get out of my chair" -- and for the amaaaazing exchange where she says something about how Odin lies about or hides away his children, and without missing a beat Thor says "Or casts them out." Like, daaaaaaamn.
Speaking of Odin, I unexpectedly loved him?! By which I mean, I am fairly sure Anthony Hopkins phoned in his previous performances pretty hard, excepting the five glorious seconds where he got to be Loki pretending to be Odin at the end of Dark World, but he actually committed here! His turn as disguised Loki, putting on the world's most cringey play, was FUCKING AMAZING (as was the horrible play; I had my fist pressed to my mouth while I literally cried with laughter) and honestly his one scene as himself was really nice too. Give Anthony Hopkins some comfy non-Asgardian clothes and a few minutes to rest inside an emotion and he'll deliver! (Also, THAT SCENE, the way he kept addressing both of them as "my sons" while Loki's face did absolutely awful wrenching things in the background, AHHHHHHHH.)
Other characters I loved: HULK, BRUCE, VALKYRIE. I loved that Hulk and Valkyrie had such a cute friendship! I felt SO BAD for poor panicked Bruce, and also really interested in the way this movie did the "Hulk and Bruce are the worst copilots" plot. (I loved Thor nearly succeeding at Nat's "sun's going down, big guy" routine, and then his continued murmured attempts to say it until Bruce was like STOP THAT'S WEIRD AND DISTRACTING.) I loved literally everything about Valkyrie!! Though now I'm wondering what her name is -- like, she's from the ORDER of Valkyries, and she has a merc/scavenger number the Grandmaster's people refer to her by, and I thiiiink she's credited as Valkyrie but surely that can't be her name, even if it is in the comics! Anyway: I loved her mix of total competence and total trashfire; I love how she IMPRESSED THOR chugging a bottle of some weird alcohol; I looooove that they gave her the "ran from a tragic backstory to become a hard-bitten mercenary who needs to be recalled to heroics" plot, which she absolutely nailed.
I also absolutely adored that there was no romance in this movie -- like, narratively it makes sense that Thor wouldn't rebound from Jane on the nearest available woman, but I like that the movie didn't do any reflexive compulsive het. Instead: four total disasters on a road trip to save Asgard! (Not Midgard! There was NO EARTH PERIL in this movie, just spaaaaace, which dovetails nicely with the overt criticism of Asgard's imperialism -- if you're going to be critical of Asgard's conquests/paternalistic safeguarding of the other realms, you'd BETTER not have the ultimate showdown be about protecting Earth from the baaaad colonies or other mean imperialists, and this movie KNEW THAT.) Gosh, the movie was also so committed to what disasters they all were, and also had investment in all their relationships -- like, aforementioned Hulk/Valkyrie friendship, Thor's occasionally-irritated coworker friendship with both Hulk and Bruce, Thor and Valkyrie slowly connecting to the moment she decides to come with them, Loki's HILARIOUS TERROR of Hulk (and "NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS" when Hulk whips Thor around, oh my god I was howling), even Loki and Valkyrie getting to interact and have a knife fight! I know I said a lot of this film needed more room to breathe, but the thing is, it understood that we already knew most of these characters and it could just settle in with them and give good interactions, and I LOVE that.
...of course I especially adored Thor and Loki's relationship. I think when Dark World came out I said something about enjoying that Thor and Loki have both settled enough into themselves to mostly understand one another, even if they aren't up to talking about it; here they TALK ABOUT IT. There's that great scene in the elevator, of course, and the way throughout the movie they sort of push and pull and nearly abandon or betray one another but never really commit because, okay, it's a mess but it's sort of their mess now, and also LOOK AT THE REST OF THE FAMILY. (On the drive home from the theater last night my friends and I were talking about some of Loki's dumber moves in this film -- namely, calling the Bifrost right after Hela appears, and trying to betray Thor to the Grandmaster -- but when we talked it through we realized that 1. Hela had just destroyed Mjolnir, and he likely could've gotten out on his own but probably he was trying to take Thor out of danger with him; 2. his betrayal of Thor to the Grandmaster was SO REFLEXIVE that Thor anticipated it, lol try harder Loki.) Some of my very fave scenes, though, were quiet moments: Loki saying a prayer along with Thor before the gladiatorial match, and Thor desultorily throwing pebbles at his projection; Loki in Thor's cabin on the spaceship at the end, when Thor says he wishes Loki were really here so he could give him a hug, and Loki catches what Thor throws at him and says "I'm here." God, I just, these terrible disasters who hate and adore each other.
I also REALLY loved Thor in this. Ahead of time I was worried, after hearing that so much of the script was ad-libbed, that Hemsworth's brand of humor would mean he'd end up being a little less Thor and a little more Kevin-from-Ghostbusters maybe. But I need not have feared! He IS hilarious, but in a way that's really grounded in Thor's character: lots of physical comedy, sometimes kind of a trash jock, but earnest and upright and angry and smart. I love the scene where he calls upon Heimdall to let him see through Heimdall's eyes and get appraised of the situation in Asgard: it's clever and responsible and Thor is gonna be such a good refugee king ;_; I'm also just ... absolutely fascinated by the idea of Mjolnir as a conduit and focus for Thor's power, but the lightning itself being Thor's. Like, it does bear out! And I love it as a concept! But I am also retroactively like "SO WHAT DID ODIN TAKE FROM YOU IN THE FIRST MOVIE THEN," like did you ... take Thor's godhood and store it in the hammer?! Your dad is real fucked up, Thor!
(Speaking of Odin again: hey, Hela takes Thor's eye! The first two films definitely took a lot of Norse mythology visuals without caring about context, so Odin's missing eye is a war wound without taking much time to be a metaphor about sacrifice of self for knowledge, but this film knew its Ragnarok in a way that felt at least mildly interested in the substance of the mythology as well as its aesthetic, so ... I sort of like the idea that Thor having his eye taken is, idk, either the last thing he needs to embrace his power without a prop -- "are you the god of hammers?" -- or a sacrifice that, like the giving up of Asgard the land for Asgard the people, will help him be a king who is unweighted from their awful past even while he carries it with him. OR MAYBE THIS IS A FUN ACTION FLICK AND I HAVE TOO MANY EMOTIONS.)
Haha I haven't even touched on some of the other things in this movie! Like: Heimdall was SO GREAT, thank yoooou for letting Idris Elba lead the resistance instead of just standing in a room looking wise! Or: I am forever sad that we had Skurge without my girl Amora, but Karl Urban breathed some excellent life and humor into what was essentially a thankless minion role, and I will happily imagine him in the role of Skurge if I ever write any Skurge and Amora fic. Or: lol how dare you waste ten minutes of my time on Dr. Stephen fucking Strange, literally the only thing that made the Earth sequence forgivable was how much I loved both Thor and Loki's Midgardian disguises. Or: the Grandmaster was so? weird?? I'm delighted to see that Jeff Goldblum was having a blast, and I'm glad that everyone just leaned in real hard on the section of this movie that was "Thor is sad and mostly naked in my gladiatorial slavefic" but also that was ... maybe slightly more of the movie than it needed to be.
Anyway this film didn't care about all the same things I did but it cared about MANY of the same things I did, and ... like I said, Taika Waititi stared deep into my soul and then had Thor wreck shit to Immigrant Song, which was A GIFT TO ME. I need to see it at LEAST once if not twice more in theaters immediately. And I already have several hundred words of Thor/Loki fic I wrote in a fit of emotions at 1am so, y'know, more in this space soon.