Thor - Love And Thunder

From Her To Eternity

Thor - Love And Thunder
Australia/USA  2022
Directed by Taika Waititi
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Electrifying spoilers within.

Right then. This is going to be a fairly short review, I think. Not because I didn’t like Thor - Love And Thunder... on the contrary, I loved it... but because it’s really hard, sometimes, to come up with things to say when the movie you’ve just watched is damn near perfect in every way. Now I know I’m in the minority here, judging by talk on the internet... and I know a lot of people didn’t like Eternals either (another truly great Marvel movie, which I reviewed here). I do find a lot of Marvel films a bit hit and miss, to be honest but, seriously, I think this new Thor may be the best movie from Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as it stands so far. When Marvel get things right... they really get things right.

Okay, so this one is something you can watch without having seen any of the recent Marvel movies after Avengers Endgame. After a brilliant prologue, where we see the origins of the film’s main villain, Gorr The God Butcherer, played by Christian Bale, this one starts off properly as Endgame left things. We have Thor tagging along with the Guardians Of The Galaxy and a wonderful and very strong set up scene which sees Thor inheriting two, giant, screaming space goats. I kept thinking to myself... this is such a strong opening, it’s got to go down hill from here... but no. The movie just keeps going from strength to strength as we have two initial separate story strands starting off... one being Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Kevin (director Taika Waititi back as the comic relief rock creature) leaving the Guardians with the quest of finding the God killer, a trail that leads them back to new Asgard.

Meanwhile, Thor’s ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (played once again by Natalie Portman) is dying of stage four cancer. While trying to fight this, she is called by the shattered remains of Thor’s old hammer Mjonir, in New Asgard, which reassembles itself and turns her into a female version of Thor. But when she doesn’t have the hammer and she reverts back to her Jane Foster alter ego, she still finds herself dying of cancer. So, everybody suddenly finds themselves back at New Asgard on Earth, ruled over by Valkyrie (once again played by Tessa Thompson) when Gorr attacks but fails to kill them... he does, however, kidnap all the children as bait for Thor and his gang, so he can obtain Thor’s second hammer, Stormbreaker, which will allow him to gain access to the character of Eternity. Now, Eternity looks pretty much like he did in the comics but, Marvel are mixing thing up again since he was not originally a Thor character but a character from the original Doctor Strange strip... Eternity making his debut there in Strange Tales Issue 138.

And there you have it. There’s lots of good stuff happening in this and it’s mostly, pretty much, played as high comedy again, with even Matt Damon and Sam Neill returning as the Asgardian actors portraying Loki and Odin. That being said, there’s a warm beating heart at the film’s centre in the rekindled relationship building between Thor and Jane but, even a moment of high tragedy near the end of the movie, is still seen as pretty much upbeat the way it’s played here by the director. Although it’s simultaneously quite brutal and pulls the rug from under audience members like myself, who can see the solution to the big problem at the heart of the movie being put together piece by piece, only to have it taken away at the eleventh hour (but stay for the second of the post credits scenes to give a little more closure to the fate of one of the characters, for sure).

Another high comedy moment is when Thor and co go to Omnipotence City (where all the Gods hang out and plan for their big orgy)... in order to raise an army. I’m not exactly a fan of Russel Crowe but he does a pretty good, comical version of Zeus for this film, it has to be said.

And, yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say on this one, for the reasons explained in my opening paragraph (Katrin, if you’re reading this one backwards again, please jump to the beginning for closure on this sentence). Thor - Love And Thunder, like the previous Thor movie Ragnarok, wallows in its own levity and tears down the comic book gatekeepers of this world while still respecting the material on which it is based and managing to be completely entertaining in the process. It’s not hyperbole when I say that this is probably the best stand alone Thor movie yet... and I love the bit at the end which says, Thor will return... like he’s James Bond or Fu Manchu. Nice movie, not deserving of the critical drubbing it’s gotten in any way shape or form (indeed, I saw it at a screening with a fairly small audience but there was a round of applause when the credits started to role). Don't miss this one.

Men In Black International

Women’s MIB

Men In Black International
USA 2019 Directed by F. Gary Gray
UK cinema release print.

Well now, Men In Black International is a surprisingly better sequel than anyone had a right to expect from this franchise, I think.

The Men In Black films, based loosely on the comic book mini series by Lowell Cunningham, are usually not great films but neither are they ever in any way terrible. They’re fun, entertaining pieces which usually just about manage to rise above the level of mediocrity, truth be told and they do so with a certain amount of style... even if they don’t always make perfect sense or maintain their own continuity.

And this new spin off/continuation of the franchise pretty much falls under that same category, it has to be said. Well... except it makes a little more sense now than the first one (in light of the events of the third film) at any rate. Also, instead of going ahead with the two leads of the previous movie, this one gives us a new partnership and, it’s a pretty shrewdly cast one too. Both Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson have been imported over from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hot from their on-screen partnership as Thor and Valkyrie as seen in Thor: Ragnarok (reviewed here) and Avengers: End Game (reviewed here).

Once again, the two prove to have good chemistry, with Hemsworth basically importing over the version of Thor from the later MCU films and Thompson playing it slightly differently but, again, making the perfect straight man... err... straight gal for Hemsworth’s charmingly imbecilic shenanigans and, more often than not, coming to the rescue when he gets himself in trouble. Which he frequently does.

Actually, it’s a very positive role for Thompson because, right from the start, she’s not only playing a strong woman but also a very smart one and, frankly, her character is a good example of a lady in a genre movie working her way to the top honestly with a nice combination of brains and tenacity. Although, with Emma Thompson reprising her role as the new head of the MIB organisation, we also have to suffer the inevitable and mostly necessary questioning of the gender bias of the film’s title but, you know, after a few references and even a ‘me too’ reference if I’m remembering things correctly, it doesn’t push the whole gender agenda in your face and manages to keep an equal balance exploring these issues without turning the film into some kind of catalyst for a preachy subtext so, yeah, all for it.

So this is a totally different Men In Black here... the London branch, in fact, with Liam Neeson in charge of the UK side of things and some nice little ideas thrown into the mix. It’s also a little more globe hopping than the previous films and this gives Danny Elfman and his co-composer Chris Bacon some more scope for different orchestrations on the scoring front. I’m not sure how much of Elfman is in this score (aside from the obvious use of his main Men In Black theme) but I seem to remember in an interview around the time of the second movie that he was kinda implying that he was just doing it by the numbers and so I suspect there’s a lot more of the always excellent Chris Bacon in here than I might at first have suspected. I think this one is getting a CD release at some point soon so hopefully I’ll be able to give it a listen away from the film.

It’s nicely put together and there’s some real good comedy moments from the leads and supporting cast... including a surprisingly interesting character played by Rafe Spall, who actually gets a chance to progress considerably in the story, considering his short amount of screen time scattered throughout the film. The film is not without one problem however...

Although the story is a lot simpler maybe than the previous films, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it does make the ability to surprise the audience a lot harder for the writers. Indeed, there’s a so called twist towards the end... two twists technically... which are only surprising in that the movie makers obviously thought we were supposed to not know this stuff already when, honestly, most people are going to figure out both these things about two of the characters within the first half an hour for sure. If you are going to go down that route... especially given the way the film is structured in the way it reveals and hides certain information... then maybe the story should be a little more convoluted to distract the audience from the obvious conclusions.

So, yeah, you’re not going to be surprised by anything in this movie but at least it’s fairly entertaining and that, pretty much, means it’s at least ‘on brand’. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to this one with these same characters at some point but I don’t know how likely that is having seen some of the word of mouth on the film via Twitter. We shall see, I guess. After all, they’re making a sequel to the recent Tomb Raider film (reviewed here) and nobody I know liked that one other than me.

At the end of the day, Men In Black International is not the greatest film out there but it does rise to the occasion and give us something which is humourous and never boring. It’s possibly a little longer than it needs to be (some of the motor bike sequence, for example, could have been pruned down a bit) but it upholds the standards set by the previous movies and if you are a fan of those outside of just being hung up on whoever the main leads are, then this film should be right up your street. Definitely worth giving a look at if there’s nothing else you want to see at the cinema this week.

Creed II (aka Rocky VIII)

Here Be Dragos

Creed II (aka Rocky VIII)
2018 USA Directed by Steven Caple Jr.
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Okay, this one has spoilers in it.

So now we have Creed II which, if you’ve seen the other movies, you’ll know is actually Rocky VIII and this one follows on directly from Creed (reviewed by me here) a few years down the line. Now, I wouldn’t say that this is nearly as entertaining as the previous one in the series... and it really should have been given the plot set up on this one... but it’s nowhere near the worst in the series either and I was pretty okay with this. Plus, it has to be said, there’s one really mind blowing moment of audio/visual design which had me almost leaping out of my chair and applauding at one point (I’ll get to that soon enough).

Okay, so once again we have Michael B. Jordan playing Adonis Creed, the son of the late Apollo Creed who got clobbered and killed in the ring by Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lungren in Rocky IV, which kind of kick started Lungren’s acting career. In this film, Ivan Drago returns with his son Viktor Drago (played by Florian 'Big Nasty' Munteanu) and the young Drago challenges Creed to a match to defend his newly won title as champion of the world. Adonis takes the match, much against the advice of Rocky, who refuses to try and train him for what he obviously sees as a fight Creed cannot win. Of course, this comes to pass and young Creed is heavily damaged in the ring in the fight, although he retains his title on a technicality as Drago is disqualified because he hit Creed as he was on his way down to the canvass (I think... some boxing thing, anyway).

So yep, you guessed it, we have the drama of a recovering Creed who has to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend Bianca (played again by Tessa Thompson) who is expecting their first child and he and Rocky Balboa (played brilliantly, as usual, by Sylvester Stallone) have to sort things out so Rocky can train him up properly for the re-match. We also have appearances from Phylicia Rashad  as Apollo Creed’s wife Mary Ann plus... and I really wasn’t expecting this... the still stunning Brigitte Nielsen as Ivan Drago’s ex-wife Ludmilla.

And, yes, it’s more or less a direct sequel to, in some ways and, pretty much a remake, sort of, of Rocky IV. And it’s an okay addition to the Rocky movies. Although, it has to be said, Viktor Drago is so big that I don’t, for a minute, think that Creed could have come close to beating him in real life (although that may be because I don’t know anything about the sport).

Both Jordan and Stallone get an equal share of the screen time but I would say Stallone actually comes off a lot better in this one. The films have never really been about boxing (not a sport I really have an affinity for) and they really just use that genre arena to explore the characters and I would say that Adonis Creed doesn’t seem to have come very far as a well rounded human being in terms of progression from the previous film. Whereas Rocky, like he always seems to, little by little, is just a bit more smarter again than the previous installment. He’s now a very shrewd man, in some ways, although he tends to back away from showing that with a lot of self deprecating talk, it seems to me.

The film does seem a little bit ‘by the numbers’ and, unlike previous Rocky films, this one still hasn’t been as brave as some of the previous installments where, in at least one as I recall, Rocky actually loses the final fight. Here, even though Creed is beaten to a pulp midway through the film, he still retains his title on a technicality... and I wish the writing here had been a little different. That being said there were some nice things about it... and fan pleasing references to most (if not all) of the previous seven movies in terms of dialogue call backs and such. It was certainly an entertaining piece that really doesn’t do any damage to the memory of the others in the series.

One of those nice things is the tradition of talking to the dead, which seems to have somehow been handed down from Rocky to Creed. Like in the movie Rocky Balboa (and possibly Creed), we have a sequence where Rocky spends time talking to the tombstone of his deceased wife Adrian and, at the end of this movie, we have a scene (cross cut with Rocky visiting his long estranged son) where Adonis visits the grave of his father and introduces him to Bianca and their daughter. So that’s kind of nice and I wonder if this will be something featured in later chapters of the series (Stallone has recently said Rocky won’t be seen again in any future sequels).

Another nice thing is the musical score, which is a bit hit and miss and features some awful songs but also has some of Bill Conti’s themes from the original Rocky films woven into the fabric of the music, with a really nicely timed appearance of the Rocky fanfare at pivotal moment in the final fight which has been smartly held back until this moment.

And then there’s the absolutely brilliant thing which has been haunting me since I saw it...

There’s a moment in the film where two scenes featuring different characters in completely different locations are crosscut and suddenly, the audience is kinda treated almost as a character in the narrative, if you think carefully about it. What happens is Bianca and Mary Ann Creed are talking about Adonis and Bianca is explaining how he has become more distant since the whole thing with Viktor Drago kicked off. Meanwhile, this is cross cut with Adonis training (or doing physiotherapy possibly, I can’t quite remember which stage of the film this is at) and he is seen swimming in the pool and we have some of the ambient noise from that scene but, at the same time, we are still hearing the voices of the two actresses talking in the scene we keep being cross-cut back to. Now this is the thing... as Adonis’ head goes below the surface of the water, the voices of the actresses become blurry like we’re listening to them from under the water. When his head breaks the surface they become full bodied voices again and then, when he goes under again, they get distorted by the water. Now this is amazing because we know that Adonis Creed can’t possibly hear what these two ladies are saying about him in another part of the town so... think about it... this is a case of the audience via the camera going under water and hearing the cross cut scene being distorted through the water we’ve presumably got in our ears. And, even though it probably should pop you out the movie (well okay, it did me but only because it was such a brilliant artistic decision) it works really well and I suspect that 99% of the audience doesn’t even register it on a conscious level. But I raise my hat to the film makers because this was just amazing.

And that’s me done with Adonis Creed for however long it takes them to bring out another sequel. People who like the Rocky films in general should like this as it’s another, mostly, entertaining chapter in the Rocky saga and doesn’t let any of the other films down (unlike Rocky V perhaps). It runs over two hours but I didn’t notice the time and, if anything, it seemed a little rushed in some sequences. Looking forward to the next one but... I really hope Stallone changes his mind and comes on board, even if it’s just so we can see his character die on screen and have some kind of closure to Rocky’s life. That would be a nice thing.

Annihilation

Arming Shimmer Man

Annihilation
UK/USA 2018
Directed by Alex Garland
Paramount Pictures

Warning: Very minor spoilers, I guess.

Annihilation is Alex Garland’s adaptation of the first novel in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy.

Now, I tend to find Alex Garland one of those writers/directors who are a bit frustrating. I loved Dredd (reviewed here - it was recently made known on the internet that he was responsible for ghost-directing it) but I had real problems with Ex Machina (reviewed here) and I think it stems from the same issue. Something I believe he shares with Doctor Who writer Stephen Moffat. He tends to have great set ups which arouse the curiosity but the endings and most of the various revelations along the way tend to be more than just a little bit obvious and, alas, although it’s based on someone else’s source material, I think that this is very much the case here with Annihilation.

So we have the spectacular but, to be honest, extremely clichéd sci-fi concept inspired/borrowed from... and the writer himself denies this but it seems quite obvious to me... Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky’s excellent science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, which was also made into a blisteringly cool science fiction movie called Stalker by one of my favourite directors, Andrei Tarkovsky. This is the concept of an area on Earth which has been rendered or declared off limits due to some kind of mysterious alien infestation. Films such as Monsters (reviewed here) have been using this as the starting blocks for their own tales for years and Annihilation does the same thing, I think, by taking this as an opening set up.

The film starts off with Natalie Portman’s ex-military biology specialist Lena returning from a mission into the forbidden zone of the tale, a place which is named The Shimmer. This scene, where she is interrogated by Benedict Wong (in some kind of bio protection suit) is the framing scene which we keep going back to while the tale unfolds... as the returning Lena tells her story of the days (while months pass outside) she has spent in The Shimmer.

We then cut to a flashback scene from before the main narrative (the main narrative is the flashback technically but it’s where we keep coming back to) of her husband, played by Oscar Isaac, filmed by him at the same time he was shooting scenes for Star Wars - The Last Jedi on the set very near to where this was shot. He has unexpectedly returned home, missing presumed dead, from his top secret military mission after being absent for a year. But something doesn’t seem right and when he starts to slowly, internally combust, the ambulance that Lena and he are riding in to get him to a hospital is intercepted by the military and she wakes up in 'Area X', where the slowly expanding Shimmer can be viewed from a, relatively, safe distance.

At this point, you probably have already figured out what the main end twist/scene of the movie is going to be but I won’t elaborate on it here since some people will enjoy the journey of getting there and might be put off if they realise the answer to things are that easy.

Anyway, after hearing that every other mission from The Shimmer has never returned and only her husband has come back from the last one, Lena realises the only way to help him is to go into whatever is in The Shimmer so she can figure out something to keep her husband alive. So she goes in with the tough cookie team leader of the project, played by Jennifer Jason-Leigh, plus three other military women played by Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny. And the film follows the journey of these five women as they try to trek to the lighthouse where The Shimmer was first started.

On the way, of course, new perils await them and their slowly diminishing group try to survive both the strange things they see in The Shimmer comprising biological mutations and, also, each other... as paranoia and madness begin to creep in.

Well the five ladies are all great with their performances in this and the storyline is refreshingly surreal, in some ways. It doesn’t hurt that the cinematography and set design are never short of being, at the very least, visually interesting. I just wish this film could have got a cinema release in this country as opposed to me having to watch it on a television set, where I have to say the potential power of the movie seemed somewhat diminished.

For example, Garland seems to like using vertical lines to section off areas of the widescreen aspect ratio and use them to frame characters and objects... as a lot of the more interesting directors do, I've noticed in recent years (as global DVD and Blu Ray sales has made more international stuff in the correct aspect ratio readily available). I don’t know if this is a specific fingerprint of his visual signature or not but I did notice he had a particular leaning to crowd out or overfill one delineated section and leave the other remaining sections with hardly anything in them for quite a bit of the time. Which makes for an interesting watch as you try to figure out what part of the screen he was going to fill up next.

There is also a nice sequence with a genetically altered bear which is quite memorable. The girls have already suffered two attacks by a strange crocodile and fast moving bear in the course of the movie (and one of them certainly doesn’t survive one of these attacks). These were, it has to be said, less than surprising moments and very clumsily telegraphed by the director. However, in a sequence which is a little reminiscent of a scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing, where the most paranoid of the group has the others tied to chairs and is being particularly threatening to Natalie Portman’s character, another of the girls can be heard calling from off screen and... well I won’t give away what happens next but the juxtaposition of creature and sound emitting from its hungry maw is more than a little surreal and extremely attention grabbing. It could have gone completely the other way and been a really laugh-worthy moment but somehow the director manages to reign it all in and it’s ultimately a very effective scene.

The film is also helped by a score from Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, which sounds a bit like they are electronically trying to echo elements of György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna or Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra... which is fine by me because those are two of my favourite pieces of music by one of my favourite composers. I just wish someone would release a proper CD of this score instead of expecting people to download it as... I’d really like to hear it away from the movie.

Ultimately, the end of the movie after Lena reaches the lighthouse and discovers its secrets are... not much of a discovery by this point in the game if you have been paying attention and the set up for the final twist is, frankly, very obvious. You kind of hope they are going to veer into different territory but it stands as it is. We all, in the house I was watching this in, saw this ending more or less from the start and so, yeah, we all felt a little deflated by the end of it, to be honest.

That being said, Annihilation is not a bad movie and I’d certainly place it higher than Ex Machina in this director’s work. I might even go on to read the novels at some point too because, hopefully, there’s more to the story than just this exercise in the obvious. Maybe the good stuff coming from what is essentially an intriguing concept turns up later in the novels? Certainly, if you liked this wrier/director’s other work then you will probably get something out of this one. Not a terrible movie and quite entertaining but it's not going to be making any of my end of year lists, I suspect.

Thor - Ragnarok

Ragnarok N’ Roll

Thor - Ragnarok
2017 USA Directed by Taika Waititi
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor ‘ish’ story spoilers, I suppose.

So here we go again with Thor - Ragnarok. It's yet another, fairly impressive, entry into Marvel’s strand of MCU films (Marvel Cinematic Universe) which all take place in a shared universe and have interlocking characters, themes and situations which build on and support each other. So, essentially, this is yet another sequel to Iron Man, even though Robert Downey Jr’s version of Tony Stark is only mentioned here and doesn’t actually appear in the flesh. Although there have been a few misses along the way... Iron Man 2 and the two Guardians Of The Galaxy films really didn’t do much for me, it has to be said (although I do like the characters in the GOTG films... just not the story ideas surrounding them)... the films are mostly solid and, musical continuity aside, the Marvel films in this sequence seem to have a knack for good casting (both in front of and behind the cameras). This latest installment is no exception to that rule. Sure, it’s certainly not the best of them but it’s definitely somewhere in the upper half of fun Marvel movies, I would say.

The previous two Thor ‘solo’ movies (if you can call this a solo adventure) were different in tone to each other and this third entry again changes the look and feel of the stories. Starting off with Thor imprisoned and talking to the a captive audience abut how he got in this predicament, I at first thought the majority of the running time was going to be one long flashback telling us how Thor got to this point and that the conclusion would lead on from here. Not so, though, and in the first of many surprises, we have a typical James Bondian ‘end of a mission’ moment when Thor talks to a big fiery devil creature and gains an inkling about the duplicity of Loki’s last trick, when it was revealed to the audience but not to Thor that Loki had replaced Zeus and was impersonating him to rule Asgard (at the end of Thor - The Dark World reviewed here). Thor then does battle with the monster and, when he finally gets back to Asgard, uncovers Loki tricksterism (in a nice scene which spoofs Loki’s fake death from Thor - The Dark World). After the two go to find Zeus, played once again by Anthony Hopkins and helped in their quest by a recent addition to the Marvel Universe, they learn that they have an older sister, Hela (played by the wonderful Cate Blanchett), who was banished by Zeus in days gone by. She is the Goddess of Death and she’s pretty powerful.

In a mini showdown, Hela destroy’s Thor’s hammer and, while he and Loki are fleeing to Asgard, she follows them up the Bifrost and both Thor and Loki are thrown from that mode of transport into a random part of the Universe where Thor is taken prisoner by Jeff Goldblum’s ‘Grandmaster’ and forced to fight in the arena against... The Incredible Hulk. However, he has to find a way back to Asgard and so he teams up with Loki, Valkyrie and Hulk/Banner to try to make things right. And that’s the plot set up and that’s all I’m saying about it here... which is pretty much what you can gather from the trailer anyway.

So we have Chris Hemsworth back as Thor and Tom Hiddleston back as Loki and, frankly, the chemistry between them is great. We also have one of my favourite modern actors, Mark Ruffalo, back as Bruce Banner/Hulk and he’s always a fun watch but he’s mostly back as Hulk here, rather than in his human form. The Hulk character has, as you will have seen from the trailers, finally ‘found his voice’, so to speak and is more in keeping with the original comics in this way. I think the character also looks a lot more like Ruffalo here and, maybe I’m wrong here but his head seems to have grown smaller in size too? Seems to have been redesigned. We also have Tessa Thompson who seems miscast, racially, as the blonde haired, Wagnerian styled Valkyrie from the 1970s comics, although I don’t know if she’s been revamped in recent comics like the Nick Fury character was so I might just be showing my age here. Away from the ‘look’ of the character, though, she does do pretty well here and creates an entertaining screen personae but, again, she seems far removed from being The Enchantress as she ‘kinda/also’ was in the early 70s comics.

Idris Elba returns as Heimdall, partaking in some nice heroics and there are also a couple of special cameos here from Sam Neil and Luke ‘brother of Chris’ Hemsworth which provide a great moment when Thor gets back to Asgard. Karl Urban also turns up (although I didn’t actually recognise him, which shows just how good of an actor he is) as a... well he’s definitely someone you have to keep an eye on. He’s not a black and white character by any means, even though he’s still a quick sketch of one... in terms of the film moving at a very fast pace. My favourite new character here, though, was easily a rock creature called Korg who definitely gets all the best laughs in the movie... so I was surprised to learn later that he’d been played by the director, Taika Waititi.

And when I say he got the best laughs...

Thor - Ragnarok shouldn’t really work as well as it does here and this is due to the tone of this one. I mentioned earlier that the previous Thor movies seemed to have a slightly different tone but this one is a complete ‘about face’ to the way in which the characters were presented in the previous Thor adventures. In fact, this one is pretty much written as a comedy all the way through. The scripting pretty much consists of a load of jokes and one liners thrown together and, although a lot of it was apparently improvised on set for this particular film, it really works quite well for most of the time.

Now, you’d think that such an out and out comedy treatment of the subject matter might trivialise the story arc of the ‘big picture’ the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building towards completing over the next two years but it really doesn’t fall into any of the traps it could have been tripped up with and the tone of the piece never really interferes with the tone and credibility of the established characters (for the most part... I’ll get to my one big complaint in a minute). Furthermore, although comedy is the order of the day in this one, you never really feel like it’s watering down the stakes which are quite high here. It’s also quite edgy in something it does to one of the characters and I realised at one point in the film that one of the scenes used in the trailers must have been shot twice (once with and once without... something) or at least had some heavy CGI work done on it in order to not reveal something which will be a permanent change to one of the regular characters in the MCU.

My one big problem here was the Banner/Hulk character... not in terms of acting but in terms of scripting. For starters, Banner’s few scenes in the movie seem to be really ‘out of character’ to me and it’s like he’s gone completely mad. I understand that after being ‘imprisoned’ in the Hulk’s body for two years the character might return a little dazed and confused but something about the writing here just didn’t seem to ring true to the excellent work Ruffalo has done with Bruce Banner in previous films in the series. Also... and I may be completely wrong about this... but isn’t the continuity completely wrong here. I thought the jet that Hulk used to escape in Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) was found or tracked to a specific place on Earth, although Hulk was not found. Or did I remember that wrong because... that’s not in the back story here. The jet seems to have ended up somewhere completely different and ‘off world’. Also, the character makes reference to having been on another planet other than Earth and the one he’s currently on here and Thor seems to remember this too. Well, I don’t. When the heck did this happen in the intervening movies? So I was finding myself very puzzled during some scenes here.

Also, while I'm on the subject of continuity. If Thor was in a happy relationship with Natalie Portman's character still when he left Earth in Avengers - Age Of Ultron... how can they have had any time to 'split up', as is stated here, when he hasn't been back to Earth since then until a certain scene in this film? That makes no sense. Honestly Marvel, if you find yourself in the position where you have to write a character out because they don't want to do anymore, you could at least make it a little more credible.

However, this is all just minor stuff and, in terms of broad strokes, Thor - Ragnarok is definitely one of the better entries in the MCU. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score is nicely done too (although I would have liked to have heard what Brian Tyler might have done with this one) and there’s even a nice musical cameo from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, if I’m not much mistaken. If you’re a fan/follower’/true believer’ of the Marvel movies then you really need to see this... especially since it helps set up (as do they all, I guess), next year’s Avengers - Infinity War. It’s perhaps more married, in terms of the kind of comedy action style it has here, to the two Guardians Of The Galaxy movies but it doesn’t seem to make the same mistakes that those two did (for me) and this one was a much more positive experience. And, like I said, the stakes are high in this one and, by the end of the story, you definitely feel that various things have been changed forever in the wake of this movie. Things which certainly, in some ways, live up to the movie’s subtitle of Ragnarok. My big question of the writers, though, is this... where the heck is Lady Sif these days?