Thor has spent two years looking for the other Infinity Stones, but has had no luck. Thor learns that his adopted brother, Loki, is not only alive, again, but has been impersonating as their father, Odin, for the past four years. With the help of Doctor Strange, a sorcerer from Earth, Thor finds his father, Odin, but only to find out that he is dying. Odin reveals to Thor and Loki that they have an older sister named Hela, who is the Goddess of Death. Hela is free from her prison and plans to cause death and destruction around the Galaxy. Thor uses his hammer on her, but she manages to stop and destroy it. Hela then blasts Thor and Loki to the planet Sakaar. Thor is captured by a bounty hunter named Valkyrie and is forced to become a gladiator. Meanwhile on Asgard, Héla raises an army from the dead. Hela needs to use the Bifrost in order to transport from planet to planet and cause chaos to the galaxy. The only thing that is missing is the Sword to activate the Bifrost. Heimdall, an all seeing, all hearing Asgardian who used to be in charge of the Bifrost, has taken the sword and hides the Asgardians somewhere that Hela can’t find them. Back on Sakaar, Thor is about to fight it's champion. Turns out it is one of Thor’s Avenger team mates, The Hulk. Hulk is a superstar on Sakaar for being a gladiator champion. After they fight, Thor finds a way to have Hulk transform back into Bruce Banner. Thor informs Bruce that he has been in Hulk mode for the past two years. Thor needs to find a way to get back to Asgard and stop Hela. Thor learns that the bounty hunter who captured him was once an legendary Asgardian warrior. Valkyrie doesn’t want to help at first, but then after putting a lot of thought into it she decides to help. Thor, Valkyrie and Banner free the other prisoners of Sakaar. Then they go through a wormhole in order to get to Asgard. It is up to them to defeat Hela.
Blaine: I love the first “Thor”, the second one not so much. It had too much humor, not enough excitement and the villain didn’t feel like a big threat, so I didn’t know what to expect for the third film. But then they were adding actors like Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and things were starting to get very interesting. They also were planning to have Mark Ruffalo return as Bruce Banner a.k.a the Hulk and it made me question how the plot was going to go. Chris Hemsworth and Marvel Studios had talked about doing something completely new and different with the third “Thor”. One of the things that had to go was Thor’s long hair. I think it’s a great new look for Thor, even though I’m a fan of long hair. Chris Hemsworth said it was nice not to sit down in the makeup chair for an hour every morning having that wig put on his head.
Marvel hired director Taika Waititi to direct “Thor: Ragnarok" after seeing his movie, “What We Do in the Shadows”. The reason they hired him was because he has a great comedic side to him and that’s what they needed for “Thor: Ragnarok”. Taika had never directed a blockbuster or a big budget film before. Directing a superhero movie was something Taika never thought about, but it sounded really cool to him when Marvel explained how they wanted “Thor: Ragnarok” to go. Taika was also able to bring a lot of new exciting energy into this film.
I really like how different this “Thor” is compared to the first two. So much was reveled that you never would have expected like Hela, the Goddess of Death, being Thor’s sister and Odin having done evil deeds. It was Taika Waititi’s idea to cast Cate Blanchett as the villain, Hela. Cate Blanchett is one of the most respected actresses out there and from time to time she’ll be apart of a movie that her kids can see. In fact Cate said she has her kids to thank for being apart of a movie with a skilled director like Taika and work with tremendous actors that “Thor: Ragnarok” has. No Marvel movie in the past has had a female villain until “Thor: Ragnarok” and Cate Blanchett made film history by being the first. Cate Blanchett worked with legendary stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Death Proof) and learned the Brazilian jujitsu capoeira to prep up for the role. Cate’s role also required her to wear this skin tight green suit.
Thor’s relationship with Jane Foster, from the first two movies, had ended even though their breakup was never shown just mentioned. They thought about Thor meeting somebody who is more his equal. Tessa Thompson was cast as Valkyrie, a tough, hard drinking bounty hunter, who was once a legendary warrior for Asgard. Fans of the comic books had problems with Tessa playing Valkyrie because of her color. In the comics Valkyrie is white and blonde haired woman. The reason Taika Waititi cast Tessa Thompson was because he knew she was a woman with talent after she auditioned. Tessa was happy enough to present a new Valkyrie to the audience. Taika and Tessa wanted to give Valkyrie a new outfit. They wanted her uniform to represent someone who is tough and a great warrior instead of wearing a bathing suit. They also gave her pants. It was also decided that Valkyrie be her own person.
Tessa began her workout and stunt training while she was shooting a different movie in London. She asked for someone to teach her how to sword fight and she was lucky enough to work with the same swordsman who trained Gal Gadot for “Wonder Woman”. The reason Tessa Thompson wanted to be apart of this project was because she felt that the “Thor” movies were more Shakespeare than comic book. Tom Hiddleston felt the same way when he did the first “Thor”. It has been said that Valkyrie is bisexual in the comics. Tessa Thompson had recommended that they also add that bisexual quality to the character. She also convinced Taika to shoot a scene where a woman is walking out of Valkyrie’s bedroom. Taika meant to keep it in the film, but it got cut out because Marvel didn’t like it. Tessa said that if you take a close look during Valkyrie’s flashback where Hela murders her warriors, one of those warriors gets in front of her and takes a sword to the chest. Tessa believes that to be Valkyrie’s lover. I think losing her lover is what caused her to resign from being a warrior of Asgard. Thor however convinces Valkyrie that somewhere deep inside her there’s that feeling that she still cares for Asgard.
Taika Waititi acts in his own movies and in “Thor: Ragnarok” he plays a CGI character, Korg. Korg meets Thor backstage of the Grandmaster’s battle arena. He is a species made of stone. Taika would direct a scene while wearing the CGI suit and people on set didn’t recognize or were aware that he was the director. Korg is supposed to be taller than Thor and Taika is around the same height as Chris Hemsworth. The special effects department made a cardboard head of Korg and put it on a pole attacked to Taika’s back. Chris would be looking up and talking to that cardboard head a lot of the time. Taika’s performance would be added into the character. Korg’s a real chatterbox and also very friendly, which is what I like most about him.
Chris Hemsworth asked Marvel why they left Thor and Hulk out of “Captain America: Civil War” because it had just about every Avenger in it except Thor and Hulk. For some reason Chris thought that he and Mark Ruffalo were going to be fired, but Marvel informed him that their characters have their own journey ahead. A while back there was talk about Hulk having another stand alone movie where he goes to another planet, but the project got terminated. The movie was based off of the “Planet Hulk” comic book from 2006. When it came to the third “Thor” movie, Marvel thought about combining it with “Planet Hulk”. The last time fans saw the Hulk was in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. He flew off in a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet and had mysteriously vanished.
The Led Zeplin song, “Immigrant Song”, is used twice in the film when Thor battles demons of Surtur, the fire demon, in the beginning of the film and then later when he is fighting Hela’s army. It was Taika’s idea to put the song in “Thor: Ragnarok”. Taika had a small meeting with Marvel and showed them clips from other movies with “Immigrant Song” in the background and pointed out how cool it made those scenes look. Marvel decided to go with it for “Thor: Ragnarok”.
In the beginning after Thor returns to Asgard, there is a play going on about Loki’s death. The reason they had a play for Loki’s death in “Thor: Ragnarok” was because they thought it would help refresh the audience’s memories of the fact that they thought Loki was dead after one of the space elves stabbed him in “Thor: The Dark World". They wanted to tell it in a funny way. The idea for the play came to them after watching an episode of “Game of Thrones” where they reenacted a few things that happened in the previous seasons. Taika asked Luke Hemsworth if he would like to make fun of his brother’s acting? And so he played Thor in the play. Odin was played by Sam Neill, who was in Taika’s previous film, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”. It was Chris Hemsworth’s idea to have Matt Damon play Loki because he is good friends with him. Matt’s friendship with Chris Hemsworth made him want to make an appearance as Loki in the film. I was very surprised to see Matt Damon making a cameo appearance in a Marvel movie. Fans are so used to seeing Stan ‘the Man’ Lee make an appearance in these movies because he’s the creator of the Marvel Universe, but Matt Damon?! Out of all the humorous stuff that is in “Thor: Ragnarok”, Matt Damon’s cameo appearance made me laugh the most because it was very unexpected.
Thor returns to Asgard and fights Hela. Hela slices off one of Thor’s eyes. Thor fights Hela with everything she has got and she’ll go down, but she won’t stay down. The characters keep saying Hela draws her power from Asgard, and that made it clear that Asgard had to be destroyed. That was pretty extreme having Asgard be destroyed. But all the Asgardians made it on a giant ship with Thor leading them and his warriors by his side, Loki, Valkyrie, Hulk, Heimdall and Korg. The idea of Thor losing his eye was to make him resemble his father, Odin, now that he is gone and Thor is now ready to be the ruler of the Asgardians.
“Thor: Ragnarok” is a lot of fun to watch and my rating on it is five out of five stars
Chris Hemsworth’s tribute to Mjolnir (Hammer)
Song: Immigrant Song
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Music by Mark Mothersbaugh
Blaine: Mark Mothersbaugh’s music score for “Thor: Ragnarok” has a nice retro theme to it.
