Thor: Ragnarok

I don't really mind Thor and Jane breaking up, if that's what they're going for.

But I would really love it if they had her still relevant to the MCU.

Even if they can't get Natalie Portman back they could still have Jane make a discovery that has implications for one of the films.

Just. Just give me one Darcy cameo during the period where Thor is apparently in New York with Dr. Strange. Gimme it.

I don't necessarily mind the Jane and Co. as characters, but I hate how they're used. A lot of the comedy in the movies involving them just doesn't work for me.

Like cutting from Frigga's funeral to Selvig rambling with a Stan Lee cameo, or Thor saying goodbye to a dying Loki being followed by a joke about Jane's ringtone.

Sometimes they almost feel distasteful. Selvig's mental instability, for instance, being played for laughs really bothered me. It's especially jarring if you watch it right after Iron Man 3, which handled anxiety and PTSD so seriously.

I really didn't give a fuck about Jane or the human characters in the first Thor, at all. To me, Jane was little more than a mandatory love interest, she was there because genre conventions demanded she be there and for no other reason. I don't even remember who Darcy is, I guess my brain just turned off during the earth scenes because they were so boring and made the story grind to a screeching halt while Thor waited for the plot to come to him. The only interesting parts of that movie are Loki and any of the Asgard scenes, but they really weren't enough to make it a good movie.

...I apologize for the negativity, but the first Thor is one of my least favorite Marvel films. I can't really decide between it and The Incredible Hulk; the former is inoffensive, but a completely throwaway, forgettable movie, which in many situations is worse than a straight up bad movie which at least can make an impression on you. Thor on the other hand is a film with some real potential and good parts to it, but it's squandered by spending too much time on all the most boring, flaccid aspects of it, resulting in a movie that has more notable strengths but is much more frustrating. Despite Hemsworth's best efforts, Thor just isn't a compelling character to me. I admit I haven't actually seen the film recently (I only ever saw it when it was in theaters) so I suppose maybe it's possible I'd have a different opinion of it now, but I honestly doubt it.

I'm not a big Marvel guy these days in general but I do admit Ragnarok looks like a big improvement. I might even see it, just to see how and if it's much better and also goth Cate Blanchett.

edited 29th Jul '17 11:47:48 PM by Draghinazzo

The ironic thing is that we seem to be getting even LESS of the Asgardian cast in this movie. Instead, it's "Thor and Hulk's wacky adventure, guest-starring Valkyrie and Loki," judging by the marketing so far.

It's really amazing that people keep making the same general complaints about these films, and Marvel has done little to nothing to address them. In face, they've doubled-down on some of them it would seem.

That's generally been the criticism of the MCU, humor at the expense of character, drama and tension. They rarely hold on a single emotion for more than 30 seconds and they undercut a lot of potentially powerful moments by inserting humor around it.

After seeing the second trailer I am just not that excited for the film. It seems to be juggling Space Opera, Buddy Comedy, and Mythology with a Tournament Arc thrown in. It doesn't help either I've felt Thor to be one of the weaker elements of the MCU, which I think is generally agreed upon. I do like a lot of the imagery in the trailer but I just don't quite get the tone or the story arc. Given how absurdly powerful Hela appears to be, they have a lot to do in order to explain the scope of her powers and plausibly make Thor win in round two. Unless they go for a straight up Downer Ending (they succeed in protecting key individuals but they are scattered and Asgard is lost, a good lead in for Infinity War), which would actually be points for me.

That became really apparent to me as I was watching Homecoming, and in retrospect is probably my biggest criticism of the franchise. Did we really need the toilet flush joke in the bathroom scene with Peter and Happy at the end? Films shouldn't be so pathologically afraid of coming off as "too serious" or "too cheesy" that they feel the need to consistently undercut their own drama.

There's also the matter of the film's alleged runtime (feel free to look it up if you haven't heard already). That, if true, doesn't exactly inspire confidence imo.

What alleged runtime?

Supposedly it's only like 100 minutes long.

Sounds like an average runtime, what's the problem?

Not for a Marvel film its not. And not for all of the stuff/characters that they seem to be trying to introduce here. Also one of the big complaints about the previous Thor films is that they don't feel "grand or epic" enough given the source material, and that a lot of the stuff that most people actually want to see more of, simply isn't developed enough.

And TDW was longer than that and STILL couldn't develop everything properly.

Also in a world where the last two Captain America movies were pushing two and a half hours, there's no reason for a cosmic Thor movie to be the length of your average 80's action film.

Okay well do we have any source for it being that long? Because I don't see a point in panicking if the film's runtime turns out to be way longer than that.

I think there was some talk that Thor movies aren't even supposed to be grand or epic, but just perfectly adequate filler.

Nah. There's less of the Asgardian stuff, yeah, but we're not getting a bunch of wasted time on Earth dealing with the shennanigans of the human characters. They're going for the cosmic Kirby wackiness instead of having Thor farting around on Earth again.

That's because, again, The Dark World wasted a bunch of time on extraneous characters who didn't really need to be there rather than on, ya know, Thor and the characters the audience actually came to see. A focused narrative can achieve what it's seeing out to do with the right creative team.

edited 30th Jul '17 8:15:53 AM by comicwriter

The Director at Comic Con said the current cut is 100 minutes and he doesn't expect it to change that much, he wants it at a breezy pace and leave the audience wanting more.

There's nothing wrong with the core idea, after all Dunkirk was touted as a swift experience rather than a long war epic, but this is believed to be the last Thor movie and it has a hundred different things it's trying to resolve. Like I said it's juggling a lot of different elements and the only way it can give those elements proper attention is with a longer runtime. Already the trailer makes it seem like the gladiator fights are going to be last five minutes.

I took it as the first movie setting up the character's premise of Thor being the protector of Midgard, and then when people backlashed against that they went for a mash-up of both it and cosmic in Dark World, and then when even that was too much for the audience they went full out in separating Thor from everything (including Asgard) and decided to just put him into a cosmic exploration story instead.

Arguably, they might have gone for an Iron Man 3-esque "well, if people didn't like the setting and worldbuilding so much, let's just forgo that as much as possible and deliver 90 minutes of action and tension instead."

Though ultimately I still think people misblamed Earth and the Midgard characters for what was actually general issues with the writing - so hopefully Marvel's read between the lines and actually fixed where they went wrong as well, so we won't still have stuff like wasted characters, a lackluster villainess and aimless plot directions.

edited 30th Jul '17 10:58:03 AM by KnownUnknown

Strange happenings among the Taika.

So this movie.

I found the first one to be very bland and the second one mediocre at best. So I had no plan to watch this one.

But the "He's a friend from work!" line from the trailer? Yeah, that fucking sold it for me.

edited 8th Aug '17 7:15:00 PM by dRoy

Reportedly that line was included by Chris after a kid he met via Make-A-Wish suggested it.

Even better. then!

Kid knows comedy it seems.

Taika Waititi's movies are always on the shorter side (I think Hunt For The Wilderpeople is his longest and it was just over 100 minutes) so I'm not too worried about the runtime.

I am because this is a very different kind of movie. And given all of the grand epic material to mine from, having them just be "adequate filler" feels like a waste of potential.

People sat through three LOTR films and didn't mind the runtime. So this notion that they cannot accept longer runtimes (heck the Captain America movies are well over two hours as well), doesn't really hold up.

You have two epic storylines (Planet Hulk and Ragnarok), and all that you want to do is a "breezy movie that leaves people wanting more?" We've gotten TWO movies like that already, for goodness sake. How about actually satisfying people this time around, is that too much to ask?

Ugh, my reaction to this is similar to my reaction to TDW. Namely I was REALLY excited for it, because they were saying all of the right things, and then this happened and my excitement dropped like a stone.

edited 9th Aug '17 12:27:15 PM by Punisher286

I don't think The Dark World left anyone wanting more.

But as I said before, that can be solved by having a streamlined cast. Part of what hurt The Dark World was not just the short runtime, but the fact that for much of the movie we're getting two stories: The stuff in Asgard and the stuff on Earth with Jane and her friends.

Deleting Jane and her buddies already fixes that immediately, since I doubt we're getting separate plot tangents about what the Hulk or Valkyrie are doing while Thor is off doing something else in a completely different setting.

edited 9th Aug '17 12:46:10 PM by comicwriter