#hela proves the gilgamesh principal that blade spam is the ultimate superpower and should be feared

[kurozu501]

just got back from seeing Thor Ragnarok and… im not sure if i liked it? Its a damn weird movie. spoilers below.

I saw an article saying mark ruffalo was worried the silly tone of this movie wouldn’t really fit with the rest of the mcu. having seen it, i can really see why he was worried.

like this is easily the darkest thor movie. The super special hammer gets broke. Odin dies. Thor loses an eye. The heroine of our group is an alcoholic. Asgard gets blown to dust, and countless people die on screen in horrible ways. Hela alone kills a shit ton of people on screen by impaling them with blades. sex is brought up repeatedly, such as the stupid orgy spaceship. And yet at the same time that its easily the darkest thor movie, with tons of fucked up shit happening in it, its also trying, so, so hard, to be the funniest thor movie. 

The film opens on a joke, and ends on a joke. When thor loses his eye, instead of it being treated like the serious, dramatic moment it is, Hela makes a joke about him looking more like odin now. The psychopathic grandmaster guy executes someone right in front of us. We watch the poor guy beg for his life, and then dissolve, screaming, and literally 1 second later the film is making a joke out of it. Thor and Loki have a serious talk about how they’ve grown apart and we cant hold that tone for even a minute before its on to the next joke.

At the end of the movie Thor is taking the refugees of asgard to earth, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that his ship is also carrying Loki, who personally lead an alien invasion into new york that killed hundreds if not thousands of people, and Hulk, who killed dozens, if not hundreds of people in his aou rampage. Thor isnt worried, their crimes have already been brushed off and forgiven through humor apparently. 

Hell, Banner seemingly sacrifices the last of his humanity to help save the asgard people, as its established that turning into the hulk again could be permanent, and he’s still stuck as Hulk by the end of the film. Yet no weight is given to this, and its not treated as anything serious. We just needed a cool hulk shot for the ending team thor lineup i guess, don’t worry about that guise. he’s probably fine.

Really, thats the problem with this movie, it wants to do tons of dark, serious stuff but it also wants to be ridiculous and silly and funny. It’s like someone tried to mash lord of the rings together with guardians of the galaxy: the resulting combo works in some places, and certainly manages to be funny in places, but it undercuts the drama, making it weak at best and downright cringe worthy at worst. It almost felt like the humor was making light of the dark stuff in gross ways.

I felt nothing when Odin died, it felt abrupt and sudden, with no build up. Pretty obviously just there to start the plot. When the sniveling coward who’d worked for Hela all film finally redeemed himself, i should have felt for him, but the tone of his sacrifice is jarringly disrupted by him using human machine guns to do ridiculous things like parry sword strikes. When thor unlocked his true power i was hyped for a second that his fight with hela was going to finally get intense and awesome, but instead it turns into a cheesy rock music montage of him and his buddies easily blowing through her mooks. Instantly, all tension vanishes.

If Civil War was marvels badly handled attempt at grappling with the responsibilities that should come with superheroes, this movie felt like the opposite extreme of “consequences? what consequences? never mind responsibility, never mind all the people loki killed before, never mind the people suffering wheeee look fun and explosions and jokes wheeeeee”

idk. It had its good parts, Cate Blanchet turned in a stellar performance as the sadly underused and underdeveloped Hela, I liked the valkyrie, the stuff it did with Banner/Hulk was kind of interesting, and before the narrative let loki off the hook for everything i liked the thor+loki development. I just wish this movie had chosen lighter material if it wanted to be such a whimsical and silly romp. 

#hela proves the gilgamesh principal that blade spam is the ultimate superpower and should be feared #Thor 3 #MCU #criticism #idk overall it was still fun and enjoyable but man… those tone issues