Hacker Cinema
Thor: Ragnarok
2017 · Film · 131 min
Part of Thor Collection
Directed by Taika Waititi
ActionAdventureComedyScience Fiction
Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok, the destruction of his home-world and the end of Asgardian civilization, at the hands of a powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela.
17 positive2 negative1 mixed11 neutralfrom 31 commenters
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33 comments on Hacker News
> In fact the whole British imperial project was largely glossed over. But lots of coverge of the Romans, Vikings, Normans, the black death and the two World Wars.
I feel that this is a major source of why Britain (and Europe to a larger extent) is unable to come to terms with reality on a majority of issues today - immigration, foreign policy, economic policy etc. They simply have not come to terms with the loss of their empires and the wealth they brought. So they choose to not teach it. This leads British institutions today to have a serious colonial hangover whether they know it or not. The operating paradigm is still an outdated one in many cases.
They teach students what they think made Britain great -- the Romans, the Norman invasion, the World Wars, Churchill etc. -- while actually glossing over what made them great: Empire. It really brings to mind a line from the Thor: Ragnarok movie - "Proud to have it; ashamed of how they got it". The British people today might not have an idea of their Empire but the effects still linger on in their former colonies.
The studios milked the trend for what it was worth, all the way to audience exhaustion.
All the while putting out each movie crappier than the previous, towards the stupid buildup to Infinity War (the epitome of tedious formulaic crap), with very few exceptions (for example Logan which at least was a little more gritty or Thor Ragnarok which had camp humor).
They also never took any chances, or tried to put a real director in charge as opposed to some studio committee (again, with very few exceptions).
Same goes for the Star Wars franchise, once the stuff of nerd dreams, and now more like "what, another SW universe movie out, jesus...".
I think that's a bit reductive. Part of what's missing here is personality, or what I would call unique mediocrity. People who have no idea what they're doing just deciding to paint a wall yellow because they feel like it. The issue isn't just that some apartments have craftsmanship and others don't: it's that the high-skill and low-skill efforts look superficially the same.
Think about it with Marvel or Star Wars movies. There are some really good ones, and some really boring ones, and although you can definitely say "Thor Ragnarok" was better than "Iron Man: Age of Ultron", that doesn't change the fact that when you zoom out, it seems all we're getting is superhero and Star Wars movies, and maybe it would be nice to watch something else now and again.
We want more than just good craftsmanship. We need people of mediocre skill to be making things that are weird and interesting.
It's one of the primary responsibilities of the movie to set up a universe that is compelling and believable. The fact that it's live action imposes some constraints, but they can be creatively worked around.
Just a few movies that do this well that come to mind:
* Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
* Kick Ass.
* Ella Enchanted.
* Amelie.
* Thor: Ragnarok.
* Space Jam
* The Mask
I am not a big fan of the Marvel franchise, although I enjoyed Thor Ragnarok, but I’m passionate about film. All I see is Marvel (Disney) as a sausage machine churning this stuff out until interest wanes.
How can you watch Ms Marvel and think this is copy paste or looks generic? The characters, culture, and art style are pretty unique and make the show quite enjoyable, and I am generally uninterested in the Marvel universe.
Loki was also very different and had a unique look.
Each one of these little series has been pretty enjoyable and different, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. The movies however are not my cup of tea and do seem repetitive and generic with some notable exceptions like Thor Ragnarok.
And as far as Marvel movies go: Iron Man, Spider Man, Doctor Strange. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Thor:Ragnarok.
I thought they would, considering they introduced the Goddess of Death in Thor: Ragnarok, but...NOPE. Cate Blanchett delightfully hamming it up as a supervillian only lasted one film.
Were they ever in sync? I've always seen critics as a "negative recommendation" -- if a critic recommends a movie, it's usually bad and vice versa (and like all rules there notable exceptions like Thor Ragnarok, which both critics and normal people loved).
And this is true not just in movies but books as well. Critics in both domains love the "ooh lala, fancy pancy hard to understand arty farty" book/movie that doesnt make sense but makes the critics feel smarter than the holloi polloi.
Critics have always recommended movies that wouldn't appeal to the working Joe , in a sort of condescending manner. (and yes, like all rules, there are exceptions)
Coming to this article-- as someone who isn't a data scientist, I wasn't sure what point the author is making? Correlation is 0.7-- eh?
> Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies unless they’re about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is damaged unless it’s background scenery buildings and cars.
This is probably the biggest thing. The biggest mistake of hero films is that characters who are strong are not very strong. They do big hits but its all clearly irrelevant. It doesn't really matter how strong they are absolutely. Getting thrown into walls is my particular pet peeve of damaging moves that never matter. There's an over reliance on suspense where its not really deserved. I feel Captain Marvel and Thor Ragnarok did this decently. They just shrugged and made it explicitly clear that the heroes were 100x stronger than the trash mobs and released any tension in the fights to just have a good time with them.
I think marvel has actually gotten fairly good at fights and making them interesting to watch as a function of why the hero is unique tbh.
Throwing huge punches is bad. Firing arbitrary laser blasts is even worse. Especially when the consequences of being hit seem so trivial. But it can be done well. I think Thor Ragnarok is a good example of this.
This is the first movie in which both Thor and Hulk were actually shown as extremely strong with little more than just physical blows. What’s noteworthy is that most of the fights they’re in are very easy for them, and frankly it’s much more fun to watch them stylishly stomp 100 goons and look strong rather than incomprehensibly struggle to fend off 10 nobodies. Filmmakers tend to be afraid of having a fight scene without tension.
Avengers infinity war fight v. Thanos also comes to mind as a quick little highlight reel of each of a dozen characters special contributions. It comes across as competent and unique.
Off the top of my head, black panther, iron man 1,2,3, guardians of the galaxy 1,2, Shang chi, wandavision, earlier avengers, all felt particularly bad at this.
Couple of thoughts:
1. I'm not really sure what making this so interactive accomplishes. The result seems akin to a listicle: "X Great Movies to Watch When You're Feeling Y", except with a lot more clicks required and, importantly, no curation. I think I would prefer to see a static list of recommendations with a "random" button and a cool blog post linked about how the recommendations were generated. Furthermore, it seems fairly safe to say (?) that the site isn't dynamically generating recommendations because the list exhausts rather quickly, after 10 or so. Just make a list!
2. The lack of curation leads to a lot of strangeness in the recommendations. For example, my first choice was feeling "weird". I got a bunch of blockbuster action films: Justice League, Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Ragnarok, Interstellar, Black Panther, Captain Marvel.
I would comment as follows.
Iron Man - sort novel for setting marvel tone but mostly banal action movie
Iron Man 2 - banal action movie
Thor - banal action movie
Captain America: The First Avenger - particularly banal action movie
Marvel's The Avengers - banal action movie
Iron Man 3 - banal action movie, sort of interesting to see protagonist suffering PTSD anxiety from being a superhero
Thor: The Dark World - banal action movie
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - first interesting take. Patriotism is not the same as government obedience. Real fight choreography approaching a soft john wick.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Early rock and roll aesthetic pretty interesting
Avengers: Age of Ultron - banal action movie, perhaps mcu lowpoint
Ant-Man - superhero heist movie, literally deconstructs larger than life superhero tropes. I think thumbs up
Captain America: Civil War - by this point doing the mcu's own thing, which is novel, but probably not interesting outside
Doctor Strange - banal action movie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - aesthetic still feels mostly fresh.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - super down to earth high school drama, frustrated working class villains suffering the fallout of superheroes, seems interesting to me
Thor: Ragnarok - great film, very genre savvy. Rare achievement to make godly strength brutes feel really engaging to watch. Taika Waititi is a genius.
Black Panther - pretty good. interesting aesthetic. directly addressing racial tensions.
Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame - Mostly fan service and not too surprising but honestly still novel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ehhh I really don't remember
Captain Marvel - Beginning had some great hard sci fi imo. Thought the ending message of newly apotheosizied female not needing to prove herself to her evil male mentor was a solid take, whereas a classic "mano a mano" kind of showdown would be so typical of the genre
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Villain emphasizing themes of the power of deceptive media? heck yeah.
Wandavision - Really bizarre and interesting start. Unfortunately non-self-aware conclusion
Falcon and Winter Soldier - Active discussions of race and the problematic nature of superheroes being supremacists? Very good.
Loki - kind of a super cliche topic (time cops) that is also somehow really rare? eh.
honorable mentions for Logan and Deadpool for being just great; and the Amazing Spiderman for its excellent aesthetics despite terrible writing.
Thor Ragnarok is one of the few capeshit movies I have seen and it was pretty bad. The entire dialogue is written around forced oneliners from a minute into the opening scene. Guardians of the Galaxy was OK but nothing to write home about or even make me remember to watch the sequel(s?).
All of them are a steep drop in quality from The Dark Knight and there certainly isn't enough material there for twenty something 3hr films and half a dozen TV shows. Just like The Empire Strikes Back is a legitimately great movie while everything else Star Wars themed asymptotically approaches zero.
The whole idea of world building with dozens of movies is a scourge on story telling and a complete dead end imho.
Sure, everyone has different tastes. In my opinion Thor Ragnarok and the two latter Avengers movies (Infinity War and Endgame) are worth a watch even for non-hardcore fans.
After the second Avenger's movie (Age of Ultron) I found the quality seemed to increase and became fresher and less repetitive (Guardian's of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnarok, Spider-Man Homecoming).
But still if you didn't like the first 8 movies, you probably won't like the next 14 movies.
But I still highly recommend Thor Ragnarok. Even as a standalone movie. Especially if you didn't like the first two Thor movies.
> And like any serialized TV series, you can't really skip episodes without missing key parts of the story, so once you commit to the show you're on the bandwagon.
There’s a flip side to that, though: once someone is off it’s a lot less likely they’ll jump back on (or even jump on in the first place)
I count myself in that group. I’ve watched Marvel movies here and there (either Thor Ragnarok or Doctor Strange was the most recent) but at this point I’m turned off from watching more because I know there are numerous plot points I won’t get. And I don’t want to commit a week of my life to catching up.
Now don’t get me wrong, clearly Marvel doesn’t need people like me to be an enormous success. But I think it’s a bit of a high wire act that other pretenders to the throne (DC etc) run the risk of failing at.
The real secret sauce: Kevin Feige of Marvel Studios, and his team including the top-tier casting director Sarah Halley Finn.
Kevin Feige prevented Marvel movies from getting stale by completely switching the genre every single movie: eg, Winter Soldier (political thriller), Ant-Man (heist movie), Spider-Man Homecoming (high-school drama movie), Thor Ragnarok (Australia/New Zealand comedy), Shang-Chi (mythical Chinese martial arts movie).
Feige has said if a character is ever successful enough to have a third movie, they will always take a very different approach from the prior two movies. Thor Ragnarok is the best example of this: a soft reboot of the personality of a previously dull Shakespearean character into a fan favorite. The success of that soft reboot was enough to give that C-level character his fourth solo movie -- something Marvel has not done before.
None of Marvel's competitors have any producer of Kevin Feige's caliber. Not Warner Bros (DC comics), not Sony (Spiderman-villains universe) and not even Disney's LucasFilm (Star Wars).
Kevin Feige is 48 years old and it's not clear whether he'll retire after the X-Men and Fantastic Four are integrated in the MCU.
His magic touch and keen understanding of the characters have been a key part of the Marvel Studio's success, and it's not at all clear whether it will survive when he leaves.
Marvel Studios could become like LucasFilm after George Lucas sold it. It's a shell of its former self that can barely produce anything passable: Mandalorian and Rogue One just make the cut as being acceptable Star Wars, but very little else.
IMHO this what Thor: Ragnarok got right.
It was one of the few Marvel movies that seemed to remember its comic book origins. Quick pace--individual comic issues are short, snappy (not necessarily quippy) dialog--because there isn't space on a comic panel for walls of text, colorful and interesting character designs, and a good dose of humor sprinkled in.
It would probably get old if every Marvel movie were like that, but all in all I think the formula works. Guardians of the Galaxy also did pretty well in this regard, but making most of the characters assholes in one way or another undercut the theme somewhat.
For sure. Or look at things like Knives Out or Thor: Ragnarok. Solid comedies both and mass-market successes.
The notion that people can't be funny anymore just because they can no longer use particular groups as punchlines is just lazy. A great example is Get Out. It's a lot of things, but it can reasonably be called a comedy: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/jordan-peele-get-out-golden-globes-comedy
Or look at Sorry to Bother You: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You
I thought both of these movies were hilarious, and they worked with extremely "challenging" social topics.
As an old, when people start talking about movies were only funny back in the day, I suspect they just imprinted on whatever was funny in their youth. Time moves on, and humor has to move with it.
After the first Thor movie, myself and many more. After Thor: Ragnarok, it really seemed about right for him to break out. Very interesting character when played right, could have been another actor but Hiddleston has really made him his own.
I am pretty sure most of these subscribers are free. They gave our subscriptions in mass. If I wasn't getting it for free I wouldn't be subscribed, for sure.
The service is honestly rife with problems. Which, to me, doesn't make much sense. Why is it the company which owns 66% of Hulu can't poach engineers from the company they own?
Some of the examples of problems I have had with the service so far. The other day rewind stopped working for me. Before that I was unable to watch an entire movie without the movie randomly dropping frames for literally entire minutes. One minute I am watching Thor: Ragnarok and before I know it in the span of 10 seconds I saw five minutes of the movie flash before my eyes.
And now, according to my wife, you can't even change the audio track. Which was fun because you got to watch movies that you grew up with in other languages. The service is totally a train wreck.
I don't see the MCU movies as a problem. They're doing some ridiculously bold stuff with the way they're bringing comic book attitudes to the big screen. From the weirdness in Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor Ragnarok, to wrapping up a dozen movies with dozens of main characters in Infinity War, and then ending the movie in defeat!
That stuff takes balls, and I'm enjoying it a lot.
It's true that superheroes do dominate the current movie landscape maybe a bit too much. Nerds won and now everything has to be SciFi, Fantasy, Horror or Superheroes. I wouldn't object to dialing that back a bit, but only a bit.
I'm with you 100%. Many of the things I used to really dig into, just don't grab me as much anymore. I'm not completely sad about this, though. It lets me explore other activities that I ignored before because of my fixations. I still play games, read, watch movies/shows, but it is really difficult to let go of the detached part of me critiquing constantly as I'm consuming. There's writers/creators behind there and I end up thinking about them and why they chose to do it this way or that. I find some things I enjoy enough that I can totally relax and get into, and honestly quite often it is things that have some rough edges. Thor Ragnarok and Last Jedi are two of my favorite movies in the past couple of years, and the reason I love them are reasons others hate them. Things that are weird or unexpected, even nonsensical. Because that makes it feel more real to me, in a way. Too many films and shows these days are slick as shit, and feel incredibly manufactured, like I can sense the teams of people working the material again and again until it is smooth and hitting the targeted emotional responses.
The Flying Princess Leia scene in Last Jedi was dumb, but that made me love the movie more. The Original Trilogy had a bunch of dumb moments in them too, but JJ Abrahms Force Awakens had none of them (it had a different kind of stupid ;) ) and felt soul-less to me.
Hands down Thor: Ragnarok. It’s utterly hilarious and I dislike most of the other Marvel movies.
Into the Spiderverse is absolutely great as well.
Well on the TV side, Friends, for example. Netflix is coughing up $100M to keep it for another year because people are flipping their lids about losing it. Also, you're taking the definition of "classic" far too literally. There's any number of movies from the 80s, 90s, 00s, etc. that Netflix just doesn't have or shuffle in and out of the service within a matter of months that are of far greater appeal than something Netflix cooked up in the span of six months. That's the difference between "lots of content" and "lots of content that people want to see."
> I think more people want to watch "Thor: Ragnarok"
Again, say bye-bye to that one in the near future when Disney's streaming service starts, and in its place we'll get some Netflix junk that no one's ever heard of. See the problem here?
/!\ minor "Thor: Ragnarok" Spoiler inside
A good recent example is "Thor: Ragnarok", I usually avoid trailers but I watched this one because I don't care much for superhero movies anyway. They reveal in the trailer there is a Thor vs Hulk fight. Then I actually watched the movie and I realized they spent a good 15 mins building up the encounter between Thor and a mysterious champion, and the reveal itself is clearly supposed to be a major twist. I definitely felt the trailer took from my experience...
I would like to see a comparison between Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and Avenger: Infinity War that supports your hypothesis (the three most recent films besides the very recently released Ant Man and the Wasp).
I'm not arguing the Marvel movies are the perfect movies or that they should displace and divert funding from other movies like say Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Dunkirk, or The Big Sick, and maybe 3 of them per year is a bit too much, but c'mon, "sterile as still packaged surgeon gloves"? Marvel's Overhyperbolic Universe?
The Joss Whedon inspired comedy is great for many of us. I loved Taika Waititi's take on Thor, especially compared to the first one, as did most other people. And it's sitting on 7.9 on IMDB, which is pretty much a resounding "Wow". If you loved Thor Ragnarok, watch Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it's a real indie gem and you can play spot the Ragnarok actors.
Also Chris Hemsworth's comic timing is great, he was a real highlight in Ghostbusters too. It reminds me of Ryan Gosling in the Nice Guys, a rare surprise that an actor can do comedy too that you weren't expecting.
As for Marvel baddies, yes, I generally agree with you. Their best baddies have been in the TV shows, namely Wilson Fisk's Kingpin and David Tennant's Kilgrave.
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If Thor: Ragnarok and early reviews of The Last Jedi are any indication, though, they're not afraid to experiment and break the formula. Especially as the brand recognition increases, they've taken and are starting to take some big risks as it pertains to blockbusters.
The real out-of-the-ordinary films are always going to come from studios like A24. We'll never get a 150 million art film (Blade Runner 2049 notwithstanding), but it's a little much to expect that.
They actually did release an article in place of a _Thor: Ragnarok_ review that mentioned the original article.
[edit: here's the note: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-holiday-movie-preview-2017-times-note-on-disney-1509668978-htmlstory.html ]
Ah, that makes more sense. I don't think that's an issue unless there are no "jumping on points", and if there's one thing Marvel is good at, it's creating artificial new starting points...
And there's lots of jumping on points coming up, with Dr Strange, Spider-Man Homecoming, Black Panther and Captain Marvel having mostly characters new to MCU and seemingly being relatively disconnected. Thor: Ragnarok might qualify as well depending on how they do it. Ant-Man and The Wasp might too - there's not much of the back story you need to catch up on.
Marvel has a large enough stable of characters to keep on churning out new standalone movies for a very long time. Though they'll need to start dipping into less well known characters, their ensemble movies and TV series will presumably let them test characters.. Then give the top performers sequels...
If they manage to get back control over e.g. X-Men and Fantastic Four too, they'll have characters to draw on for the next couple of decades at current rates...
At which point they can start all over.