Movie Review: Thor: Ragnarok (Rating: 3/5)

The movie starts with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) looking for their father - Odin (Anthony Hopkins) on Earth with the help of another Marvel superhero - Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). After Odin introduces the new powerful villain - Hela (Cate Blanchett) to Thor and Loki, the two brothers end up in another planet with the gladiator-type arena which really gets the movie started. As shown in the movie trailer, they bump into Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in the arena, and meet another new character Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) along the way. And finally, the four of them teamed up to try save Asgard (i.e.: Thor’s home planet) from Hela’s evil invasion.

Frankly, before I saw the movie, I thought it was just another Marvel movie with spectacular computer graphics, but less interesting story and mediocre performance from the cast. And the fact is, the computer graphics are awesome as expected, especially on the IMAX version. But to my surprise, the cast performance is also fantastic. The dialogues are funny and there are real chemistry between the main characters (Thor, Loki and even Hulk). 

Chris Hemsworth did an excellent job playing Thor in this movie. He is no more the arrogant muscular God-like character in the previous two movies, who is always single-handedly beating his way out in every battle. This time, he is trying to get together a team to fight the all-too-powerful Hela, so he is using all his soft skills to persuade or trick other characters to get on board. For the other existing characters, Loki is slick but somehow wicked as usual. Hulk is still short-tempered but sometimes silly, I almost laughed my head off during the scene he jumps off the plane to save the Asgard people on the bridge.

Onto the new characters, Cate Blanchett was good playing Hela given her screen time was not as much as the other characters. All her eye contacts and body languages really depicted her hatred against Odin and the desire to rule over Asgard. However, the other new character Valkyrie played by Tessa Thompson leaves a lot to be desired. IMHO, she has more than enough screen time to really show us how the character changes her attitude, from totally giving herself up because of her past, to suddenly joining Thor’s team to fight Hela. And Valkyrie is described to have a drinking problem, but honestly I cannot see her as a convincing alcoholic person throughout the movie.

Moreover, to fully enjoy this movie and to understand all the gags, you need to watch the previous Avengers movies and to recall some of the story line or scenes. For instance, do you understand why Loki wanted to leave the planet right away when seeing Hulk? Or why Loki was so excited when Hulk was throwing Thor like a sponge doll in the arena? There are quite a bit of the story line here referring to the Avengers.

The movie ending also has a little twist, which I think is both logical and reasonable, from the cliche of saving the world or planet in all the superhero movies. By the way, there are two Easter eggs in this movie after showing the credits. The first one is fine in terms of, you do not have to wait for very long. But I would suggest to skip the second one because you have to wait like more than 10 minutes, and the result is totally a waste of time.

To sum up, this is a very entertaining movie, which is both hilarious and exciting. Certainly, we cannot expect any Oscar-level performance from the cast in this sort of action-packed movies, but I will say it is worthwhile for your time, to actually go to a theatre for watching this movie.