The Unexpectedly Refreshing "Thor: Ragnarok"

Let's face it:  Thor has never been the most noteworthy or particularly popular Avenger.  I have no problem with Thor, and he is actually a whole lot of fun, but we all know that the majority of super hero and Marvel "fans" were unaware of his existence prior to his first movie or the first Avengers.  He's always been in that middle-ground between the iconic and the underwhelming--falling in the middle of the pack behind Iron Man and Hulk, but certainly being more useful and fun than Hawkeye or Black Widow.  Additionally, if his first couple movies had been pizza, they'd have been Domino's.  Far from the best places you'd only find in New York or Chicago, but not falling in the bottom of the pack next to Little Caesar's.  I know that most of you, if you had even seen the first two Thor movies, left with an review sounding something like, "I mean, it definitely wasn't terrible...but not all that great, either.  A strong 'decent.'"  When you think about it, though, they probably did the best they could with what they had to work with.  I realize I'm a little behind in releasing this review; but Marvel clearly has no courtesy for college students, as this was released in the middle of midterms.  By the time I recovered, Justice League was nearly out, and I wanted to jump on that.  So excuse my tardiness.  Anyway, I heard reviews for Ragnarok were generally favorable, which I initially found surprising, but now?...I get it.

Particularly after my disappointment with Justice League, I was definitely in need of a well-done super hero flick.  And--surprise!--Marvel pulled it off, yet again.  What I found most enjoyable about Ragnarok was the amount of fun I had watching it.  Again, I'm not sure what the deal is with DC movies lately, but apparently it's against their production requirements for super hero movies to be any damn fun for anybody.  Sure, Ragnarok had some issues I'll discuss later, but even the parts that did take a (necessarily) dark turn were still fun.  So many fight scenes in action movies (yes, even Marvel ones), are an incoherent mess, but all the fight scenes in Ragnarok were coherent, fun, and stunning.  I was never overly impressed with Thor's fighting sequences in either Avengers movie, but his amount of kick-butt-ness has since been amplified tremendously and beautifully.  Additionally, I loved the choreography of Ragnarok's fight scenes.  Simply fantastic.

Again, I don't know what it is about Marvel movies, but they know how to write a freaking good script.  Ragnarok is hilarious through-and-through, no question about it.  Instead of annoying and juvenile humor at inopportune times, hilarious one-liners and a surprising amount of physical comedy in action sequences were delightfully peppered throughout the film's duration.  Comedy is like horror in the sense that it's either really well done or simply awful, but can really pay off when it's done well.  What was also nice is that one character wasn't set as the "comedic relief" character, either.  Whether it was Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, or even Jeff Goldblum, many characters were successfully funny and timely.  The only issue with this, I suppose, is that many sub-par movies will make a similar humorous attempt; which, statistically speaking, won't be good for anybody.

I did love this movie.  But for those of you who know who you're dealing with, you know I can't not talk about the flaws with in this movie--because all movies have them.  Thankfully, though, my criticisms are limited.  At certain times throughout the film, I was thinking that a few particular scenes seemed unnecessarily long.  I'm pretty sure if several scenes were skipped over--or simply shortened--the movie would lose about 25 minutes of screen time without losing a step.  Additionally, the sequence of events felt somewhat jumbled.  I know it's a super hero movie, and the amount of randomness didn't nearly match that of many action movies, but the plot definitely didn't feel smooth.  Is that somewhat nitpicky?  Maybe.  But if we can't succumb to our need for pattern and flow, then we're simply agents of chaos.

Last thing:  The ending wasn't quite what I hoped it would be.  Everything was going along beautifully, but the ultimate final battle with the most destruction felt uncharacteristically rushed.  It's almost like the filmmakers felt they had a time cap they had to abide to and ran out of time doing everything else, leaving almost no room for the ultimate battle.  I loved where everything was going, but the ending was almost as abrupt (but not nearly as disappointing) as the closing scene of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  I just felt that it was weird the filmmakers deemed it necessary to spend inordinate amounts of time on previous scenes but kept a final scene that appeared underdeveloped.  As a means of redemption, though, everything about the closing battle was wildly impressive.  Just...brief.

This movie was fun, entertaining, smart, and one of the best (dark horse) super hero movies of the 2010s.  I'm not going to fully jump on the Thor band wagon (because nobody is cooler than Deadpool), but I wouldn't look down upon anyone who has as a result of Ragnarok.  I'll be giving this a solid 77%, making this another movie that is 

Theater Worthy