Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

By 2017, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was twelve films deep and the Thor corner of it was, by common agreement, its weakest stretch. Kenneth Branagh's Thor had introduced Chris Hemsworth's Asgardian to the big screen with polished but unremarkable results, and the sequel had done little to change the temperature. Marvel's response was to hand the third instalment to New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, whose previous work had earned him considerable goodwill for its dry, offbeat humour. If you've seen his mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, you'll have a reasonable sense of the sensibility he brings: a fondness for absurdity, a lightness of touch, and a genuine comic instinct that tends to deflate pomposity rather than celebrate it. The question Marvel was essentially asking was whether that sensibility could be stretched across a 131-minute blockbuster.

The premise finds Thor stripped of his hammer and stranded on a distant planet, forced to compete in a gladiatorial contest while a far greater threat, Cate Blanchett's Hela, bears down on Asgard. Blanchett, an Oscar winner with a career spanning theatre, arthouse cinema, and franchise fare, brings a theatrical relish to the villain role that few actors in her position would bother with. Alongside Hemsworth, the film reunites Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Idris Elba as Heimdall, while Mark Ruffalo returns as Bruce Banner and his considerably greener alter ego. The production was handled by Marvel Studios, shot largely in Australia, and cut to a propulsive retro synth score that owes a clear debt to 1980s science fiction. Visually, the film leans hard into a neon-drenched, Jack Kirby-inspired aesthetic, a deliberate departure from the grey, Shakespearean register of its predecessors. For a franchise picture of this scale, the tonal gamble was real enough, even if the commercial risk was rather less so.

Waititi had form in front of the camera as well as behind it, and he cast himself here as the rock creature Korg, a role that became one of the film's more talked-about comic flourishes. His direction on Next Goal Wins would later show him working in a lighter register again, and it's fair to say Ragnarok sits at the more maximalist end of his output. Whether the resulting film amounts to more than the sum of its brightly coloured parts is precisely where opinion tends to divide, and it's what our man Macca has been turning over.

I know the consensus is that Taika Waititi “saved” the Thor franchise with this one (swapped the dour Norse gloom for neon, rock music, and quips) but after the hype, what’s left feels less like a revival and more like a theme park ride with a soundtrack. The film’s so busy being fun, so drenched in CGI colour and forced irreverence, that it forgets to have weight, tension, or anything resembling a soul. It’s loud, fast, and relentlessly vibrant to the point of exhaustion, like watching a fireworks display in a blender. There are moments that work. Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster is gloriously camp, Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie has cool and charisma, and the Hulk/Banner split lets Mark Ruffalo finally flex some comic timing. The retro synth score is catchy, the one-on-one fight between Thor and Hulk is satisfying, and Waititi’s fingerprints are all over the oddball humour. But too much of it feels like a parody of a superhero film rather than the real thing. It’s not badly made, in fact, technically it’s polished to a shine, but it’s emotionally hollow. All that brightness and noise can’t hide the fact that it’s just another MCU machine turning, swapping one tone for another without saying anything new. Sometimes the vibrancy feels less like confidence and more like distraction. A flashy, forgettable entry in a franchise running on fumes.

I keep coming back to that comparison with a fireworks display in a blender, because it really does capture something true about how this one sits with me on a rewatch. There's craft here, no question, and Hemsworth has genuinely grown into the comedy side of the role in a way that the earlier films barely hinted at. I'd seen him put that physicality to very different use in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, where the showmanship felt grounded in something, and the contrast is telling. Ragnarok mistakes relentlessness for energy and noise for wit. There are films that are loud and still leave you with something to carry out into the car park. This isn't one of them.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-08-17

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Thor: Ragnarok (2017) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Taika Waititi: What We Do in the Shadows (2014) · Next Goal Wins (2023)
More with Chris Hemsworth: Thor (2011) · Men in Black: International (2019) · Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) · Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)