I saw the first Thor movie in college because some friends I was with wanted to watch it on DVD. And I found it a fairly forgettable, standard superhero movie.
I watched The Avengers a couple years later on DVD. Aware that everyone in the world pretty much loved it, I was expecting to as well. But instead, I found myself confused with inside jokes I was missing because I’d never seen the Iron Man movies, and honestly a little bored.
So basically at this point, I’ve declared myself not that into the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. But my husband is rather more of a fan, so when we saw that Thor: Ragnarok had come to Netflix the other day, we decided to watch it. I had pretty low expectations myself, which were about to be proven wrong.
Premise
I never saw the second Thor movie (I didn’t even realize there was one until recently…), so I didn’t quite understand where things stood at the start of this movie.
And while it was helpful that my husband knew what was going on and could fill in the gaps of my knowledge, this movie does a pretty good job of making a new viewer understand enough of what’s going on to follow along.
It picks up with Thor imprisoned in a cage, and then shortly after talking with this fiery horned-hat-wearing bad guy, about how this bad guy is going to destroy Thor’s home of Asgard in a huge destructive event called Ragnarok.
But the real goal of the movie ends up being to defeat Thor’s sister, Hela (pronounced “hella,” as in “hella cool,” or “hella scary,” convenient for me to make jokes along these lines to my much-enduring husband the entire time we watched…). Hela is the goddess of death, and she wants to take over Asgard in a brutal, evil reign.
So she kicks Thor and his brother Loki (oh yeah, he’s alive — is that a spoiler? I’m not really sure, to be honest, but he’s a big part of this movie) off Asgard, thinking she’s killing them, but instead they’re captured by some weird, other-planet people.
From there, it’s all fun and games and attempts to get back and save the day.
It’s a Lot of Fun
Apart from the fact that this movie does a much better job at helping a non-Marvel fan like myself figure out what’s going on than some of the other movies do, this film has a lot of light, fun moments.
There’s plenty of witty banter from Thor, but also some other fun characters. Like the weird leader of the planet Thor must escape from, played by Jeff Goldblum. And my favorite, the rock-guy Korg who has just the driest, most awkward and yet hilarious lines of the whole movie.
I’m sure the action and special effects are great to, if you’re a fan of that type of thing. I mostly only notice if they’re bad, and in this movie I definitely didn’t notice them being bad.
Moral Issues
Like most superhero movies these days, this movie’s rated PG-13. Plenty of non-gruesome violence and fight scenes, and a bit of scattered profanity (no F-words).
There was also at least one sexual innuendo joke that was sort of a quick, non-focused-on comment, as well as a non-graphic reference to orgies.
Over All
I never would have gone out of my way to watch this movie or have even thought to get it from Redbox for $1.50 (barring a lot of other movies being sold out first, of course). But since it was free, I had nothing to lose.
And while, at its core, it’s just another superhero movie with lots of action and special effects, I found this one to be quite a bit more enjoyable than most.
