- UK release: October 2017
- Director: Taika Waititi · Writers: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher L. Yost
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Superhero fantasy comedy / cosmic adventure · Runtime: 130 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Rush) as Thor; Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) as Loki; Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, The Lord of the Rings) as Hela; Tessa Thompson (Creed) as Valkyrie
- Rotten Tomatoes: 93% critics / 87% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
The first two Thor films were the part of the Marvel run nobody got excited about. Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 opener had a certain Shakespearean stateliness, and The Dark World two years later was so forgettable that even people who liked it struggle to recall a scene. Hand the keys to Taika Waititi, the New Zealander behind Hunt for the Wilderpeople and the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, and the brief seems to have been simple: stop taking the God of Thunder so seriously. The result is the loosest, funniest and most colourful thing the franchise has produced, and it works because Waititi treats the solemnity of the earlier films as the joke.
The setup
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) comes home to Asgard to find his father gone and a sister he never knew he had standing at the gates. Hela, the goddess of death, has been locked away for centuries, and she means to take the throne and everything beyond it. Within minutes Thor is flung to the far side of the cosmos, stripped of his hammer and dumped on Sakaar, a junkyard planet ruled by a preening showman who feeds prisoners to a champion in the arena. To get home and stop Hela razing his people, Thor has to win a fight he did not choose, talk round a brother who has betrayed him more than once, and recruit a hard-drinking exile who would rather not be found. The title gives away the stakes: Ragnarok is the Norse end of the world, and this time the prophecy is not a metaphor.
The cast
Hemsworth is the revelation, which is an odd thing to say about an actor four films into a role. Given permission to be funny, he turns Thor into a big, sincere, slightly dim optimist, and the comic timing he showed in Rush and in the Ghostbusters reboot finally gets a proper home. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is as slippery as ever, though the film is smart enough to play the brothers as a double act rather than a grudge. Cate Blanchett, all antlers and eyeliner, clearly relishes a straightforwardly wicked turn after the grandeur of Elizabeth and The Lord of the Rings; Hela is more vamp than menace, but Blanchett sells the relish. Tessa Thompson, fresh from Creed, gives Valkyrie the bruised, boozy swagger of someone running from a defeat, and she holds the screen against the leads. Jeff Goldblum, doing his loosest Goldblum as the Grandmaster, is essentially improvising in a gold robe, and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk gets more dialogue and more personality than in any previous outing. Waititi himself voices Korg, a rock gladiator whose gentle deadpan steals most of the scenes he is in.
The craft
This is the first Marvel film that looks like it was made by someone who grew up loving the comics as objects. Waititi and his designers reach back to the lurid, candy-coloured worlds of Jack Kirby and to the high camp of Flash Gordon, and Mark Mothersbaugh scores it with thick analogue synths that make Sakaar feel like a lost early-eighties fantasy. The action is staged for clarity and for fun rather than scale, with one arena set piece and a final battle set to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song that lands exactly the hit it is reaching for. The tone is the gamble. Waititi keeps undercutting his own grand moments with a joke, and the looseness occasionally bleeds the threat out of a scene that ought to frighten. It is a price worth paying. The film moves, it never sags across its two hours, and it looks like nothing else Marvel has put out.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is Guardians of the Galaxy, which three years ago proved Marvel could do oddball cosmic comedy and get away with it. Ragnarok is cut from similar cloth, a needle-drop space adventure that would rather make you laugh than make you worry, though Waititi’s humour is drier and stranger than James Gunn’s. Against the two earlier Thor films it is barely the same series; the closest the franchise had come to this kind of energy was Loki’s scenes in The Avengers. And the spirit of Flash Gordon runs all the way through it, from the throwaway pulp design to the willingness to be silly without apology. It is the rare third entry that justifies itself by ripping up the template rather than repeating it.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are close to unanimous, sitting around 93%, with audiences a little cooler at 87%. The praise is for the colour, the comedy and the rescue of a character nobody much cared about. The one persistent complaint, and it is a fair one, is that the relentless joking undercuts the apocalyptic stakes; when the destruction of a world keeps pausing for a punchline, the world stops feeling quite real. I take the point and I do not much mind. The audience gap probably reflects a few longtime fans who wanted their thunder god to stay solemn. They are entitled to it, but I think they are wrong about what this character was ever good for.
Verdict
I came to the Thor films expecting the least of them, and this is the one that won me over. It is funny, it is gorgeous to look at, the soundtrack is a pleasure, and it gives four good actors room to play instead of pose. The cost of the comedy is a villain who never truly terrifies and an ending whose weight is slightly undercut by the gags, and that is what keeps it just short of the top tier. But on the things I value most, sheer enjoyment, world-building and the certainty that I would happily watch it again, it scores high. The most rewatchable Marvel film since Guardians, and comfortably the best Thor. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: In UK cinemas now, in 2D, 3D and IMAX. Worth the bigger screen for the Sakaar colours and that Immigrant Song set piece.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Waititi returned to direct Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), which pushed the comic register further and divided opinion, with several critics arguing it confirmed the worry that the jokes could swamp the drama. Ragnarok has held up as the high point of Thor’s solo run and is widely seen as the film that turned the character around. It now streams on Disney+ and is available on 4K Blu-ray and digital.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate fantasy violence. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Ratings info: Frequent scenes of fantasy violence include fistfights, aerial dogfights, and use of lasers and bladed weapons. There are brief impalings, but with minimal blood and injury detail. In one comic sequence an alien is melted into liquid, but the scene does not dwell on detail. There are occasional mild sex references and innuendo, and occasional use of mild bad language.
The BBFC publishes its classification note for this film as a single “Ratings info” summary rather than a category-by-category breakdown. Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
