Thor: Ragnarok (Walt Disney Picture, Marvel Studios, Government of Australia, 2017)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night at about 8:30 p.m. my husband Charles and I watched the third of the four movies so far in the Marvel Thor sequence: Thor: Ragnarok. “Ragnarok” is the name of the Nordic apocalypse, in which Asgard and Valhalla burn to the ground and take all the gods with them – in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung he called it “Götterdämmerung,” which means “Twilight of the Gods.” I had high hopes for Thor: Ragnarok because it was directed by Taika Waititi (a native New Zealander despite his African- or Polynesian-sounding name; I remember my surprise when Steplen Colbert had Waititi on his show and a white person came out), and one of the things I had liked best about the most recent Thor movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, was the campy sensibility Waititi had brought to it. Alas, on Thor: Ragnarok Waititi was merely a director, not a co-writer as well, and Ragnarok has one of those convoluted writing credits that are the bane of modern-day superhero movies. According to imdb.com, no fewer than nine writers did credit-worthy work on Ragnarok, though three of them – Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby – got credit for creating the Mighty Thor comic book on which these films were based. The others were “written by” Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher L. Yost – Pearson’s name was separated by the word “and” from the other two while Kyle and Yost were linked by an ampersand, which is Writers’ Guild-speak meaning that Pearson worked on the script solo, then was replaced, and Kyle and Yost worked on it as a team – and three other writers are also credited. Greg Pak and Carlo Pagulyan are listed as having created something called ‘Planet Hulk” that was the source for some of this film’s story elements, and imdb.com’s page on the film lists it as being “based on the works of” Walter Simionato. On Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi didn’t just direct: he also wrote the original story and co-wrote the script with Jennifer Kaylin Robinson, so that film shows far more of Waititi’s sensibility than the relatively staid Ragnarok.

Thor: Ragnarok comes off as a perfect example of my General Field Theory of Cinema: that the quality of a movie is inversely proportional to its number of writers. (One writer – or two working in direct collaboration – is optimal.) The sheer messiness of the writing credits on Ragnarok is a good indication of why the movie also seems messy; there are a few bits of Waititi’s sensibility, notably Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) insistent that he’s about to do some really stupid, risky and foolhardy thing because “I’m a hero, ahd that’s what heroes do,” but most of the movie is in the heavy, ponderous Marvel house style in which we’re apparentlyi supposed to mistake sheer ponderousness for profundity.​​ There is something of a plot to Thor: Ragnarok – Thor is supposed to save Asgard from the titular apocalypse, which we at first think is coming from Surtur (Clancy Brown), a fire-creature with a weird headdress, but we ultimately learn is coming from Thor’s older sister, Hela (Cate Blanchett; when I was watching the movie I had no idea it was she, but she makes a marvelous all-out villainess and really turns in the best performance in the film), who’s pissed because Odin (Anthony Hopkins, who’s barely in this movie) passed her over in favor of Thor and made him, not her, his heir. (If the writing committee had been clearer that the reason Hela was passed over was because Odin wanted a man, not a woman, to succeed him, this plot line might have had a lot more pathos than it does.)

Along the way two other characters from the Marvel stable make guest appearances: Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) shows up briefly on one of Thor’s few (in this movie, anyway) trips to Earth, and later on the Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) appears as a gladiator on a world ruled by “The Grandmaster” (Jeff Goldblum, who used to be a good actor but his personality quirks have taken over his performances and made thm just annoying) and the two have a fight to the death. Well, not really to the death – the fight ends inconclusively and bothThor and Hulk claim that they won – and Hulk reverts to his normal identity as Dr. Banner (whose first name is never specified: he was “Bruce” in the comic books and “David” on the TV show from the 1970’s that used two actors, Bill Bixby as Banner and Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk). In the end Thor, Banner, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, who’s a much more interesting character when she returns in Love and Thunder) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steal the Grandmaster’s spaceship, which looks like a giant flying doughnut, to go to Asgard and try to save the home of the gods from Ragnarok. Only they end up evacuating the gods and bringing them to Earth instead if trying to stop the apocalypse because, as Odin tells Thor repeatedly, “Asgard ins’t a place, it’s a people.” Thor: Ragnarok is 130 minutes long – 12 minutes longer than the current Love and Thunder, which also has a much more interesting mix of characters – and despite a few good aspects, it mostly lumbers through a not-especially-interesting story and a good cast wasted in boring, slovenly material. Fortunately Waititi got to make another Thor movie that was actually well constructed, fun and genuinely entertaining!