Loki, as usual, tries to betray Thor, and Thor responds by... electrifying him. And then walks off, leaving Loki in pain with no way of stopping the pain. That was when this version of Thor came damn near crossing the Moral Event Horizon in my opinion.
Awful things Loki has done to Thor:
Stab him when they were eight years old.
Try to kill him and genocide a planet.
Try to kill him by dropping him out a Helicarrier and murdering a friend of his.
Try to kill him and invade a planet.
Abandon his adopted father to die with his memory obscured.
Leave Thor to die by Hulk.
Try to betray Thor again and sell him to the Grandmaster.
Frankly Thor should\'ve caught the hint the second or third time.
Stab him when they were eight years old.
I admit I find this a bit incoherent with what we saw in the original movie, but don\'t care that much because that was so damn funny.
It was a prank, bro
Hela was easily my favorite part of the film. Honestly, I think her lack of screentime was because she clashed so much with all the comedy. Kinda hard to be a good villain when the rest of the cast are clowns in a circus.
Find the Light in the Dark
The weird comedy/darkness juxtaposition is the director\'s trademark style. His next movie was a comedy in NAZI GERMANY (again with some very serious moments in there.)
I can see why it\'s not to everyone\'s tastes honestly but in many ways it\'s the purest distillation of the MCU style - \"realistic\"/serious take on Superheroes but with lots of snarking and subversion.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Loki constantly suffering karma for being a backstabbing piece of work is something that offsets how vile he is and makes him almost endearingly pitiful. He's The Starscream after all.
To compare I found Valkyrie pretty unlikeable, since she was essentially the stock Easily Forgiven anti-villain who turns good with little satisfactory build up (she doesn't even willingly release Thor), and is about the one protagonist that never has any sort of karmic Butt Monkey moments to offset all the unsympathetic things she has done.
I actually feel Hela might have also been more memorable if they had done this and maintained a broader comedic side with her, I'd have loved if they'd played up the stupidity of her trying to crush Ragnarok for all its worth like the whole "Puny god" moment. I love climaxes where the villains are such suicidally narcissistic pieces of shit that it feels like fate itself is going "No I'm sorry I have to kill this asshole).
If you're going to make things more tongue in cheek at least be indiscriminate with it, otherwise the picture will feel all over the place.
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Entertaining, but Disappointing
On the one hand, I quite liked this film. On the other, I spent the whole thing wondering if the director had taken the script of a Guardians of the Galaxy movie and changed the names to make it a Thor movie.
The first scene has Thor in a cage for reasons never fully explained, talking to a skeleton. Huh? Then he starts snarking at Surtur, something that would be more in-character for Loki than Thor. Actually, the first time I watched it I thought that was Loki, in disguise as Thor. But no, it's Thor.
Then, in the space of minutes, Thor goes back to Asgard, reveals Loki has taken Odin's place, and sets off with Loki to find Odin, who dies just after they find him, and whose death is immediately followed by the appearance of Hela, whose existence in the MCU was never mentioned before this film. Talk about fast-moving.
Most of the rest of the film was enjoyable for how entertaining it is rather than for how good it is. There was one thing that I absolutely hated, though. Loki, as usual, tries to betray Thor, and Thor responds by... electrifying him. And then walks off, leaving Loki in pain with no way of stopping the pain. That was when this version of Thor came damn near crossing the Moral Event Horizon in my opinion. And this is never brought up again! Loki — Loki, of all people — seems to completely forgive Thor for it!
Hela's a great villain, but her scenes are so dark (massacring the soldiers, destroying Mjolnir, taking out Thor's eye...) that they clash with the comedic, light-hearted mood the rest of the film tries to convey. The result is a jarring Mood Whiplash. The truly good parts of the film are Loki and Doctor Strange, both of whom are unfortunately underused.