I know I’m late to the party, but I don’t think Thor: Ragnarok is very good.
Alright before you get to shooting me, I realize that it’s pretty much Internet heresy at this point to suggest that Thor: Ragnarok is not one of the greatest superhero films of all time, and by far the greatest Marvel film. It’s taken critics and audiences by storm for taking the set up for the Thor movies, which so far had been mostly kind of ‘meh,’ and turning it into a hilarious galactic/mythological adventure. Everyone adored it.
Except me, apparently.
Alright, I’ll admit that at least part of my reaction was that I saw the film after everyone and their mother had, and with all the ranting and raving I’d heard, the movie had big shoes to fill. There was a lot of hype on Thor: Ragnarok and all my friends told me it was fantastic, so going in my expectations might have been too high.
But there were also things that I just didn’t like about the film. Honestly they made me somewhat angry about the movie and its reception. Thor: Ragnarok is not a great film; I don’t even know if I’d call it a good film. And I stand by that assessment. I’m not writing this to tell you that you should hate this movie, or that you are dumb for liking it. I just hope to point out that this isn’t exactly the glorious cinematic masterpiece that everyone says it is.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
The thing that stuck out to me the most about the film was how it just wasn’t very good at maintaining any serious tone. There were serious moments, to be sure, but they were almost all undercut by comedic moments and lines. The jokes were funny, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t change that they should not have been in some of those moments. It wasn’t even really dark humor, it was just humor that showed that the makers of the film refused to take the story seriously at any point. Thor, the Asgardian prince, the hero and the defender of his people, is being kidnapped and tortured, all the while he’s desperately trying to get back home so he can protect his people and his friends…and we’re all laughing at how hilarious it is that he’s being slapped around by slavers.
“The hero’s been enslaved and tortured and can’t help the home he loves from being taken over by a homicidal maniac! Tee-hee!”
When Hulk finally turns back into Bruce Banner, we find out that he’s been that way since Age of Ultron, and that he’s afraid that if he transforms into Hulk again, he’ll never be able to turn back. He utterly despises becoming the Hulk, the fact that he might have hurt people, but Thor only talks nicely to him because he needs his help, makes it clear he prefers Hulk to Banner, and the film makes light of the fact that Hulk has killed dozens in the arena, something that would horrify Bruce Banner When he sees that the people of Asgard are in trouble and he’s the only one that can help, he bravely leaps into Fenrir’s path to stop…and flops on the Bitfrost, unconscious, as he hasn’t transformed yet. He then transforms into the Hulk and the fight begins in earnest. He actually goes so far as to try to fight the giant Surtur, and is hilariously slapped away and Thor has to call him off.
“This guy might spend the rest of his life as a murderous alternate personality he despises, and the only familiar face he has around him doesn’t care! Tee-hee!”
The end of the film sees Asgard itself destroyed, but we’re all just chuckling because as the people of Asgard are watching the only home they’ve only known be destroyed, Korg has some funny lines. He tells them that they can still be rebuilt as long as the foundations are there. Right after he says that, on cue, Asgard is completely obliterated and nothing is left, prompting him to correct himself.
“These people are watching their home world be destroyed! Tee-hee!”
It isn’t just that there are jokes to lighten what should be a dark movie. If we were just talking about comic relief, I’d let it slide, but this goes beyond that. Thor: Ragnarok absolutely refuses to take these moments seriously, and that’s a problem. If the film doesn’t take these issues seriously, then why should we? I’ve seen tons of people deride 2017’s Justice League for having problems with consistent tone, but Thor: Ragnarok was by far much worse. The Asgardians are watching their home being obliterated, and we’re invited to laugh at it because Korg said something stupid.
It seems as if the film has trouble taking anything seriously, with seemingly every other line being a joke. Turns out the portal that they need to use to escape Sakaar? Is called ‘the Devil’s Anus.’ That’s…not even particularly clever or really something that makes much sense in-context of the setting. But hey, we needed a butt joke, I guess.
Moving aside from the humor, there are Plot Holes you could drive a truck through. Mind you, plenty of superhero movies have this to a degree, but Thor: Ragnarok has them by the bucketload. The new villain, Hela, is Odin’s eldest daughter, whom absolutely no one has ever mentioned before this point? In the hundreds of years Thor and Loki spent in Asgard, no one ever mentioned or thought about the fact that they had an older sister? Given Asgardian lifespans, it’s downright impossible that there would be no one else who knew about Hela, especially when we find out that she’s the one who wiped out the Valkyries (which both Loki and Thor have heard of). The surviving Valkyrie is definitely nowhere near as old as Odin, so there are Asgardians within living memory who should be familiar with Hela.
We’re explicitly told that time is different on Sakaar, I guess, but that doesn’t actually mean anything other than “We don’t want to explain why Loki’s here earlier than Thor.” As far as anyone can tell Hela’s takeover of Asgard is happening alongside Thor’s adventures in a parallel fashion; no time shenanigans here. It seems more like a handwave to say that the film’s not interested in making a coherent backstory or timeline rather than anything else.
And there’s also no reason that Hela didn’t kill Valkyrie (a character who the film doesn’t bother to even give an actual name)? We see that a blonde valkyrie takes a shot for her, but there isn’t any reason Hela would miss that there was another valkyrie right behind her? It’s unclear as to why she’s not dead.
I think most of all though, this film does not care about character. Valkyrie’s reaction to be the last surviving member of her order is essentially to become an alcoholic slaver who sends her innocents to be killed in the arena, yet we’re meant to overlook this because she’s an Asgardian upset at Hela. The Warriors Three, who by all earlier accounts are among Thor’s best friends and valiant fighters, are killed off with little fanfare by Hela, and Thor doesn’t hear this news, much less mourn their deaths. Sif is not in the film, due to Jaimie Alexander having commitments with her show Blindspot, but she also isn’t even mentioned making her role as one of the supporting characters of the franchise kind of moot.
Character arcs are kind of ignored for the most part, really. The Grandmaster, for instance, is just some guy. He’s a villain, I guess, but Thor doesn’t have any particular enmity for him, nor does he care about Thor much at all except as a gladiator. There’s a rebellion against him by the people of Sakaar, but Thor, Loki and Valkyrie have nothing to do with that and don’t care about it other than a means to suit their own ends. His downfall is relegated to an after-credits gag, because that’s all the Grandmaster is: a gag. He doesn’t contribute much to the Plot, he doesn’t have any thematic meaning, he doesn’t mean anything to the characters, he’s just there because Jeff Goldblum is funny.
Hela is also a rather boring villain, for all the fans’ assertions that she’s not. Yes, she reveals the problematic nature of Odin’s empire and all, but as a character, Hela’s one trait is that she’s a homicidal maniac. I’ve seen some try to point out that she’s evidence of Odin’s terrible parenting, but honestly it just seems that Hela’s always been a homicidal maniac. She never shows herself capable of anything else. There’s no indication that she was once not willing to murder people, that Odin turned her into a weapon, or that she has any soft side at all. The only other argument I’ve heard for why she’s a great character is that she’s a female villain, as if that in and of itself makes her interesting. She’s not complex, she’s just…another murder-happy villain.
I’m not against any of these things: important characters can be killed to great effect, dickish characters can be redeemed, absent characters can be written out, and villains can be simple. But the movie doesn’t bother writing these things in any coherent fashion. Valkyrie’s redemption arc is just plain skipped, Sif isn’t mentioned, and the Warriors Three are just cannon fodder for the villain. The villains are just there to be threats or to be jokes, with no connection to the heroes at all (in the Grandmaster’s case) or to be a onenote monster to be put down (as Hela’s case). I understand that when making a movie series, one does not have the time and liberties that something like a television series has when it comes to giving time to characterization, because important cinematic moments have to be the main draw of the film. But this movie didn’t even try to write in these issues.
There are continuity issues to contend with as well. The film seems to establish that the Asgardians, or at least the ones of the royal family, are actually gods. Odin calls them gods, and a major plot point is that Thor’s power isn’t in his hammer, but within himself. This is in direct contradiction to the previous Thor films in which their powers are implied and at times outright explained as advanced technology. Odin even says at the beginning of the second Thor film that they aren’t gods. It’s a retcon I don’t mind so much because I like this take on the characters much better, and the ‘sufficiently advanced aliens’ thing only went so far in making any sense. But it’s a glaring retcon, and pokes holes all through continuity when it comes to these characters and their universe.
“But Juracan! This movie fixes the Plot Hole with the Infinity Gauntlet being in Odin’s treasure room! That’s good continuity!”
Yeah, but did it need to? The Infinity Gauntlet appearing in the first Thor film was an Easter Egg. That fans were frothing at the mouth about the continuity of this one artifact appearing in one shot of a movie continues to boggle my mind. It’s an Easter Egg, not a Plot Hole. That doesn’t stop big sites like IGN calling the Infinity Gauntlet’s appearance “Marvel’s Biggest Plot Hole.”
And even if it was, does that change that Thor: Ragnarok is a mess of a movie? It doesn’t care about the seriousness of the events handled, it doesn’t care about its characters, it doesn’t care about continuity, but before Black Panther it was lauded by many critics and fans as the best Marvel film, because…it’s funny, I guess? I am baffled guys. It’s an enjoyable and competently-made film, at best, but it’s not great, and it’s not the best Marvel’s ever done by a longshot. I’m honestly confused why critics loved this movie as much as they did when it’s so amateur in executing its narrative.
TMary on 30 March 2018, 05:07 said:
I can’t say for sure how great of a review this was or whether I’d agree with it, since I’ve never seen Thor: Ragnarok (or any of the Thor movies…or…very nearly anything from this decade. As far as movies go, I’m old). However, I found it well-written and informative, which is what people want from a review anyway, so thanks for that! :)
There were a couple of things I wanted to discuss further. The first one I can get out of the way really quick: The idea that a villain (or any character) being a woman automatically makes her interesting and good, and if you criticize her, you’re sexist. It’s like, I get that women are often underrepresented in movies and books and whatnot, but let’s not sit here and pretend that just because we see a woman in an important role, that automatically makes her a good and interesting character. Being willing to settle for NOT good and interesting characters because hey, she’s a woman, just makes the problem worse. We’re out of the fifties now, y’all, it’s time to bring our standards up – and the fifties had some good and interesting female characters, by heck!
The second one was actually something I was just thinking about, and that’s the problem of tone in a movie. Like you said, there’s nothing wrong with having a few comedic moments in an otherwise serious movie, and nothing wrong with a few serious moments in an otherwise comedic movie, but you have to decide what tone you’re going for, otherwise your audience is going to be confused. And I feel like it’s harder the latter way than it is the former. In Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, there are definitely some comedic moments, but the overall feel is pretty serious, so the result is that the comedy just kind of gives you a chance to relax, which makes you feel better and appreciate the serious moments more. In The Princess Bride (which I just recently watched, so reeeally late to the party on that one), there were definitely some serious moments, like, say Inigo’s backstory and his fight against Count Rugen, but the whole feel was kind of silly, which leads to a somewhat awkward feeling when you get to the serious moments. You’re still in laughing mode, so to speak, and so when the movie broadsides you with “My father was killed by a six-fingered man and I have sworn vengeance”, you go, “Ha! That was ludicro-no, wait, that was actually sad, gee, sorry, Inigo.” There’s a certain tension and confusion when the serious moments come up, so it feels a bit jarring.
DISCLAIMER: I liked The Princess Bride, please don’t lynch me, Internet. I actually liked the book quite a bit better, though; the tone felt a little more balanced, there was room for more story, and I felt more interested in Westley and Buttercup’s characters. But I liked the movie just fine – it was fun, it was entertaining, and it distracted me from a migraine I’d been having for the last three days.
And even with The Princess Bride, I understood what they wanted from me. Mostly, I was supposed to laugh, and occasionally I was supposed to actually feel something, and I could do that. But it sounds like Ragnarok here couldn’t decide what tone it wanted. Is it supposed to be silly? If so, it doesn’t feel like a silly situation. Is it supposed to be serious? If so, you’re not treating it as if it is, so why should I? You yourself have to know what you want from your audience, or else it just results in them being confused and jarred by every turn of events.
Or maybe not, since, like you said, you seem to be the only one who didn’t like it. shrug At any rate, I enjoyed this review, so you seem to have accomplished something. :)
Princesselwen on 30 March 2018, 21:38 said:
You actually articulated a lot of the problems I had with this movie, and why I didn’t like it very much. So no, you aren’t the only one to dislike it.
Other Marvel movies balance their drama/comedy ratios much better, such as The Avengers, the Iron Man films, the first two Captain America movies, the original Thor, and more recently, Black Panther. The last one is interesting because it deals with some of the same plot elements as Thor: Ragnarok, but keeps them dramatic instead of playing them for comedy, and the story is much better for it.
I think the tone in Thor: Ragnarok was trying to be too similar to Guardians of the Galaxy, and it didn’t work. (And the 2nd GOTG had a problem with turning everything up to 11, as well as presenting stuff-that-shouldn’t-be funny as funny. But it was still better than Thor 3.)
And I agree with the 1st commenter’s statements about female characters. I’m tired of people telling me ‘like this character! She’s female!’
Dragonstorm on 30 March 2018, 23:45 said:
The tone of Ragnarok really bothered me too, although I did still enjoy the movie. I enjoyed your analysis!
lastcerebrate on 31 March 2018, 16:10 said:
Hello
I found the review interesting Juracan and thought of a note on The Last Jedi that it had too much “Marvel style” humor.
I would have to agree that the film doesn’t sound like a superhero action film, it sounds like a comedy. I haven’t watched the Marvel films past Iron Man 3, and am kind of hesitant to jump back in because I’ve heard they reference everyone else. Do you think it’s worthwhile to watch the other films?
Have a good day.
Juracan on 1 April 2018, 10:53 said:
To be fair, I haven’t seen a lot of people pull the “If you don’t like her you’re sexist!” card with Hela, but there’s been a lot of crooning about how great she is as a villain, and how Marvel finally got a female antagonist, when I don’t think she’s particularly deep. She’s memorable, but she’s not very deep. I didn’t have much issue with her character, I just didn’t understand why people heaped praise when Hela’s not all that complex.
See the issue I take more with Hunchback is that a lot of the comedic moments in that are from the gargoyles, who really don’t add anything much to the story at all. That’s a different issue from what’s going on in Thor: Ragnarok though, and as you said it’s separate from the serious moments, so it still holds together well enough. There aren’t a lot of jokes when Frollo’s on the scene, for instance, which shows you exactly how we’re supposed to take that character. Compare this to Ragnarok which is loaded to the brim with jokes whenever the villains are on screen.
I agree that the book’s better—I actually didn’t like the movie that much? But in any case, the very nature of that story was one that allowed it to be comedic. It’s an old-timey fairy-tale type story that a man is reading to his grandson (in the film) or that is being abridged for the audience (the novel). To an extent it realizes how ridiculous it is at times.
I think Thor: Ragnarok does too, but instead of keeping itself balanced it with serious moments, like say, Inigo’s whole plotline, or the torture of Wesley, it just refuses to make anything actually serious.
The thing is, I think Ragnarok knew exactly what it wanted to be. It’s a straight-forward action comedy. Supposedly the original cut of the movie was serious, but test audiences found it boring so it was re-edited so that all the humor was back in the movie to make it a comedy. And while it’s not a boring movie anymore, to be sure, I felt as if it just didn’t care at all about making anything matter. It was just a massive gag, but one that was yanking around important elements that it shouldn’t have.
Thank you! Glad I could provide an interesting article.
That’s…something I hadn’t thought about, and I think maybe I should have, especially because I loved Black Panther much more as a film. I think another key difference is that all of BP actually ties together much more neatly. Like I said in the review, Thor: Ragnarok has the main character spend most of his time on another planet that has very little to do, thematically or developmentally, with the conflict with Hela. He’s just there to keep him out of the way for a while. Black Panther on the other hand has all of its screen time dedicated to developing the characters and world in a way that all connects.
I’d have to re-watch Guardians 2 again. I didn’t think it had this issue too much, but if it did it certainly wasn’t to the extent as Ragnarok as you pointed out. There were, by the end of the movie, things that I didn’t think I was supposed to laugh at, and when the villain was revealed the entire thing was played mostly seriously.
I’ve actually heard a lot of people say they liked Ragnarok because it was like the Guardians movies, when…I don’t think, aside from trying to be funny and a nostalgic song in the soundtrack (which is played twice in the movie, for…reasons). It didn’t have any of the things that made Guardians worth watching though; it was just…humor for it’s own sake, with little regard to things like character development and growth.
The first Guardians film introduces and develops five different characters in the main group. Ragnarok sort of develops Thor and Loki a bit and then makes a bunch of stupid jokes with everyone else without giving them development.
Thanks! Like I said, I didn’t necessarily want to shame anyone for liking it, but I did want to point out that I wasn’t a fan and explain why.
I think it’s worthwhile, yes, because some of the Marvel films are genuinely good movies. So yeah, while I didn’t enjoy this film and I thought it was the example of everything Marvel does wrong, I don’t think it’s a good indicator of the quality. Black Panther, which came out recently, was spectacularly good, for instance, and I’d highly recommend seeing it.
So yeah, Marvel movies are worth checking out for sure.
Princesselwen on 1 April 2018, 21:17 said:
Post-Iron Man 3, I’d recommend Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: The Dark World, Ant-Man, and Black Panther as really good movies; and Dr. Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 as not quite as good, but still enjoyable. (Dr. Strange has AMAZING effects. I personally didn’t care for Avengers: Age of Ultron or Captain America: Civil War, though.) Of the ones I mentioned, Winter Soldier, Dr. Strange, Thor 2 and Black Panther are more dramatic, while Ant-Man is a comedy, and the Guardians of the Galaxy are a mixture of both.
TMary on 6 April 2018, 22:01 said:
That’s fair, though I do feel like it ties into the same argument – she is deep and worthy of praise-heaping because she is a female character, when…that’s just not how it works.
That is also true; I kind of just picked Hunchback because I’d just rewatched it and it was the first mainly serious movie I could come up with off the top of my head. XD I know a lot of people criticize the gargoyles for that (not adding much to the story except humor), and just for existing in general, though I never really had a problem with them. The movie does know when to usher them off the stage when things are getting serious, though, as you noted, and even the gargoyles are capable of some serious moments.
The trouble with that is that it can work to have jokes while the villain is onscreen and still have the villain be taken seriously, though it takes both serious guts and talent to pull this off. I feel like the webcomic Order of the Stick does this pretty well; it’s mainly a comedy and an affectionate parody of D&D and general storytelling tropes, so there’s jokes galore no matter which villains are onscreen (heck, sometimes the jokes come from the villains), but it’s still interspersed with enough seriousness and taking serious things seriously that it works. (It’s also gotten much better in this regard in later strips; when it started out it was much sillier.)
Ah, so it wasn’t just me, lol. I liked it okay, I just wasn’t blown away or anything. Although it does make for some excellent GIFs.
Ah, well, then, my analysis was off; it was just trying and failing to be what it was supposed to be, and not understanding what makes that thing work. I understand wanting humor in a movie to liven things up, I really do, but even Marx Brothers movies have moments that are meant to be taken seriously! Too much humor gets just as wearing as too little of it. It’s like your dumb friend who starts cracking jokes about a family member’s death; sometimes you need to stop, y’know?
You’re welcome, thank you!
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Bananawaffles on 4 August 2018, 13:40 said:
I didn’t think Thor: Ragnarok had a problem with tone at all. As an Australian, I greatly appreciated the Kiwi style of humour. I also had zero problems with dramatic moments cut with humorous moments because it reminded me of other Australian comedy films as well as Stephen Chow films.
I think the biggest issue here is differences in culture. I do not see humour as something that takes away from the seriousness of a situation. Apparently you do. The fact that you think Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t care about its plot or characters just because there are jokes in it is genuinely baffling to me. I guess Kiwi humour tends to be irreverent and can be misconstrued by other cultures?
Also, your definition of ‘plot hole’ is questionable. I’d describe what happened in Thor: Ragnarok as ‘contrived coincidences’ at most. Time is weird on Sakaar, moving faster and slower relative to the rest of the world, likely due to the wormholes over the entire planet. This allows contrivances to be made, such as allowing the heroes to show up at the right moment, but I would hardly call it a plot hole.
As for your timeline issues, Odin is the oldest and most powerful Asgardian alive and Valkyrie ended up on a planet where time behaves differently. It only takes one generation for history to be wiped in our world, and sometimes not even that. So it is perfectly conceivable for Hela and Asgard’s bloody history to be wiped from Asgard’s memories.
Your criticisms of Hela being one-dimensional are somewhat more valid, but she was still an effective villain to me. The main theme of Thor: Ragnarok was imperialism, and she was the personification of imperialism coming back to bite Asgard in the ass. She represented the former Asgard and everything that Odin was trying to hide. Eventually, she and Asgard (the city) needed to be destroyed so Asgard (the people) could move on.
Finally, your complaint that the film crammed a lot of things into it again is valid, but isn’t really the fault of the filmmakers. Thor: Ragnarok needed to destroy Mjolnir, power up Thor, give Loki a redemption arc, incorporate elements of Planet Hulk, set Dr Banner/the Hulk up for a three-film character arc that would be continued in Avengers 3 and 4, include a Dr Strange cameo, and end the film with the destruction of Asgard and the Asgardians floating in space. I thought the filmmakers did rather well considering they also managed to give us stunning visuals and make the first two Thor films more meaningful (e.g. Thor’s banishment and the reason why everyone hates Odin).
Juracan on 4 August 2018, 20:41 said:
But it’s not just that there are jokes. It’s that there are jokes at the worst possible times. People watching their homes being destroyed is not the time for a joke from Korg. The destruction of Asgard isn’t taken seriously by the film; we’re not supposed to care. And for all the jokes, Valkyrie’s still a terrible person, something the film doesn’t acknowledge. If it acknowledged the faults of the characters in its jokes, like in Guardians I’d give it more of a pass, but it doesn’t.
But the “Time is weird on Sakaar” excuse only works for the sake of explaining that Loki’s on Sakaar first (and given that Sakaar doesn’t have much sway on the character development there’s no reason that needs to be the case). We see Hela’s takeover of Asgard as presumably happening simultaneously, with no time shenanigans, so it’s there to handwave a plot point that didn’t need to be there anyway.
But you know, there are other Plot Holes. Like the gods thing. Or that Hela is demanding Heimdall’s sword to use the Bitfrost when we’ve seen that Odin’s spear works just as well. Or that Valkyrie’s survival isn’t really explained. Or that we’re supposed to believe that Hulk happened to find a wormhole to another planet with a jet plane that isn’t equipped for space travel (as we’ve seen in Agents of SHIELD).
But Hela wasn’t just some person. She was an important figure in Asgard’s history. I know it’s super popular for people to be like, “Oh history is written by the winners,” but that’s not how history works! It does not take one generation for history to be wiped out in our world. The pharaohs tried to wipe out Ahkenaten’s name from history, and we still know exactly who that guy was. C’mon. It’s lazy writing.
Are you seriously telling me that, given Asgardian lifespans are around five thousand years, no one is left alive on Asgard old enough to know about Hela? Frigg? No one in Odin’s court? No one in any of the Nine Worlds? That’s pretty darn contrived. Clearly the Valkyries aren’t that old because both Thor and Loki have heard of them, and know of them as an all-female force.
I agree that Hela’s an effective villain, but my point was that she wasn’t as great as so many people were claiming.
But uh, yeah, no, imperialism was a theme in the film, but you’d be pretty stretched to claim that it was the main theme of the film, considering that it doesn’t really cover it that well? It’s mentioned, but if we really wanted to do a film about the atrocities of colonialism, then Asgard would have been destroyed, and rightfully so, by those it colonized. But those it colonized are just footnotes, more people Hela wants to kill.
You can’t say, “This film is about colonialism” and then not give a voice to those who have been colonized.
Why would it need to do all of these things? All the third film actually needed to do was continue Thor’s story up until the next Avengers film. Why did it need elements of Planet Hulk? Why did it need a Doctor Strange cameo? Your defense of the film holding too many things in it is basically “Well it needed them,” and it didn’t! There’s no reason that this film, nor any of the Marvel films, needed to go the way they did. It’s like saying “The third Captain America had to be Civil War becauses they had to have Spider-Man and Vision!” No. No it didn’t. All it needed to do was continue the arc of the previous films.
Thor: Ragnarok is garbage. One of the key characters isn’t even given a name.
bananawaffles on 6 August 2018, 09:22 said:
I can’t be bothered figuring how this website works so I’ll just address your points with numbers.
1. Nope, I still don’t see it. I guess I don’t understand your culture.
2. It isn’t handwoven because they explained it. Time behaves differently on Sakaar. Jeff Goldbloom’s two lines and the visual cue of wormholes were all we needed to understand it. We didn’t need Dr Banner to give a two-minute monologue about time dilation and the general theory of relativity. That would’ve been overkill. Thor spent a two days and a night on Sakaar. Meanwhile, Asgard was under siege for much longer than two days as Asgardians fled their homes and made their way to Heimdall’s hideout.
As for your other plot holes, I’ll give you the one about Odin’s spear. That was probably something the writers forgot, but it could easily be explained by ‘Odin only recently gave the spear that power so Hela didn’t know about it’. As for Valkyrie’s survival, is that honestly something you need explained to you? Every time a character is a lone survivor of a massacre, they need to give you a monologue about how they hid underneath a dead body for days, or they ran away as soon as the enemy’s back was turned, or someone else sacrificed their life to cover their escape? Come on.
Also, I haven’t seen Agents of SHIELD so I have no idea how their aircrafts work but Tony Stark made his suits viable in space so I’m pretty sure he can make his aircrafts viable in space. Also, they explained that Sakaar is a planet covered in wormholes where all the refuse from the universe ends up. I don’t think it requires much thinking to connect the dots.
3. Let’s not kid ourselves. Right now, Holocaust deniers are living at the same time as Holocaust survivors, the Japanese are refuting the atrocities they committed in WWII, and the Chinese media exists in a bizarre alternate reality that I can’t even begin to explain. Many people in the UK, USA, etc. have no idea about the imperialist acts their countries have committed and are currently committing. Is it that much of a stretch that two princes and the palace guard aren’t aware of the history that their nearly immortal and all-powerful king desperately tried to hide?
4. Colonialism is the main theme of Thor: Ragnarok. Colonialism is one of the main themes of Black Panther even though the main characters of that film have never been colonised (aside from the villain, Killmonger). It’s almost like gasp there is more than one way to tell a story about colonialism. On one hand, we can have the same old Pocahontas story all over again, where colonialism is only committed by undeniably evil caricatures. On the other, we can have a story where the main characters learn about and come to terms with their own country’s imperialist history. Even though Asgard has become a benevolent ruler of the realms and the Asgardians are decent people, it is still benefiting from imperialism and still deserves to answer for its crimes. As someone whose home-country was colonised, and as someone who grew up in (and benefited from) another colonised country, I thought it was an incredibly refreshing take on colonialism in mainstream media.
5. You’ve referenced AOS so I guess you are aware of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Individual films in the MCU are part of a greater continuity and are obligated to contribute to that continuity. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And in my opinion, Thor: Ragnarok felt a lot less disjointed than AOU, Civil War and Infinity War. I can give you my reasons if you’re curious.
I don’t know about the specific examples you gave, but yes, AOU needed that scene of Thor’s vision even though it made zero sense and distracted from the rest of the film. Yes, Civil War was almost forced to cut Iron Man until Kevin Feige complained to the higher ups and got the board of the MCU reshuffled. Yes, Thor: Ragnarok needed to set up vital parts of Infinity War. Yes, Thor: Ragnarok needed to give the Hulk the beginning of a three-film character arc. Kevin Feige specifically talked about this. The writers of Thor: Ragnarok specifically talked about this. I don’t know the exact quote, but it was something like ‘We were given all these puzzle pieces and had to somehow put it together’.
Finally, it seems like you are just upset that everyone else loves a film that you don’t understand. Like, there are genuine criticisms of this film (like the Warriors Three and Skurge) but the things you’re bringing up are simply inane. ‘We never saw Valkyrie getting up and running away in her half-minute flashback’ is not a plot hole. It’s a deliberate stylistic choice. You are going to need to learn the definition of plot holes if you want people to take your reviews seriously.
Juracan on 6 August 2018, 17:04 said:
I think making jokes while someone’s house is burning down makes one an asshole. I’m not sure that’s a culture thing.
Even if it was, does that excuse it? There are cultures where it’s not considered offensive to wear blackface. Would it make it okay to put a character wearing blackface in a big-budget Hollywood movie? After all, it’s a culture thing! You just don’t get it.
I’m not sure if you understand what ‘handwave’ means. It basically means they throw a bare-bones explanation, basically waving their hands in front of it to say ‘Don’t think too hard about it.’ That’s what they did with time on Sakaar. Because despite saying ‘Time works differently here,’ the only thing it’s really used to explain is Loki arriving their first. It’s not consistent, it’s just a vague line to say that the writers aren’t going to do the work of making the timeline match up.
I don’t need a full explanation of how Valkyrie survived. But we get a flashback that tells exactly what happened in that final battle, and it leaves little wiggle room for why Hela didn’t kill her. I don’t need everything spelled out, but they decided to spell it out and it doesn’t make sense. Watch the scene again.
The Quinjets? They’re the same kind of aircraft that are used in SHIELD. They had to adapt those for space travel in the show, so yeah, no, they’re not equipped for it. From what I remember only Tony’s newest suit in Infinity War is equipped for space travel, so no, not all of his suits are anyway, and certainly not the ones he had when Hulk flew off with the jet.
So this explanation requires that there’s a wormhole here on Earth somewhere, undiscovered, that Hulk threw a jet through, that happened to land on Sakaar. That’s… maybe it’s not a Plot Hole, but it’s such a huge plot contrivance that it might as well be. You’re stretching the bounds of suspension of disbelief, even by Marvel standards.
There are deniers of history, yeah, but that doesn’t mean the history is gone. The historical records are there, and historians do the work to make sure the records remain so. Unless Asgardian historians don’t exist, I find this argument implausible.
Also since when is Odin nearly all-powerful? We get little indication of him having a lot of his own powers in the films actually. The idea that he’d be able to, on his own, wipe out any historical records that paint him badly, is rather silly, especially considering how often his subjects disobey his orders. Unless we’re suggesting that he’s murdered everyone who was alive to talk about Hela which is A) unlikely and B) pure speculation at this point, as we have no indication that he did it.
Thor! Never! Comes! To! Terms! With! Colonialism!
The reason Black Panther works so well is because we see that the villain, Killmonger, has a point, and T’Challa has to own up to his country’s own role in letting colonialism happen. And the film, while not being about slaves, or even mostly African-Americans, talks at length about the struggles black people have had all around the world and the atrocities of colonialism. Not that Black Panther has anything to do with criticism of this film.
Meanwhile, the subjects of Odin’s colonialism… don’t come up? Vanaheim, Nidavellir, Alfheim, Jotunheim? Yeah, those people never come up. Thor doesn’t decide to dissolve Asgard’s monarchy for a parliament for the colonized worlds to have their own voices (like what happens in the comics). He doesn’t let Asgard be destroyed because he wants to free those people from being under Asgard’s thumb, he does it to stop Hela.
Heck, Thor being imprisoned or enslaved doesn’t make him stop and reflect about how Asgard’s done that to hundreds of thousands of people around the universe. It’s just played for laughs because Sakaar’s shenanigans have no narrative connection to the actual Plot of the film, which is stopping Hela.
You don’t have to. You’re not wrong; all three of those movies have connectedness issues far worse than Thor: Ragnarok.
Well they did it terribly. They could have found better ways to set up Hulk’s arc, or the destruction of Asgard. They didn’t. The way they did those things sucked.
No, I’m upset that people are saying this is one of Marvel’s best when really all it has going for it is that it’s funny. Have you not read the review?
I explained before: Valkyrie’s survival wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t for the film deliberately showing us a scene to try to explain it that didn’t work. You’re acting like I need things spelled out. I don’t. I just need the things spelled out to make sense. That’s not ‘stylistic choice’ that’s film making.
Furthermore, it’s not just that Valkyrie survived when the film tells us she shouldn’t have. It’s that her entire character doesn’t make sense. It’s that huge chunks of the movie don’t make sense. They’re all signs of the fact that the movie doesn’t hold up very well if you look at it with any scrutiny.
I mean people were taking it seriously. The one who didn’t was you, who came swaggering in with, “Well it’s culture so it’s all fine.” And coming from a guy who says he couldn’t learn how to use comments when there’s a ‘Textile Help’ button in the corner, this sure means a lot.
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