So…thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok below the cut:

Overall Thoughts:

Right off the bat, let me say that this is clearly the best Thor movie. And while it felt absolutely like a Taika Waititi film – the sense of humor, the love of awkwardness, the offbeat timing – it also felt like an absolute love letter to Jack Kirby (Hela, the look of Sakaar) and Walt Simonson (Surtur, Skurge the Executioner, the brief mentions of Thor as a frog and the flash of Beta Ray Bill). 

That being said, it’s not a perfect film and there were a few places where I felt like it needed a few more minutes to wrap up character arcs or have a bit more plot buildup (I would have liked to see an undercard fight or even just a montage in the arena). 

Oh, and they earned the hell out of their use of Immigrant Song. 

“Did they give enough for Thor to do?”

Thor gets the most complete arc of any of the characters, starting the movie as much the same arrogant young warrior-prince as he’s been before, albeit a little wiser now (hence seeing through Loki’s disguise). And then in the course of the movie he loses his father, he loses Mjolnir, he has to become the leader of a team, he saves his people, loses an eye, comes into his own as the God of Thunder and not merely the wielder of a hammer, and ends the movie as the All-Father of the people of Asgard. It works as a nice dyptich with the original Thor. 

“Did they utilize Hulk properly?”

Yes. Indeed, Hulk specifically gets more characterization in this movie than he’s had in any of the Avengers movies, in no small part because he gets more than one line. We see him living in barbarian splendor on Sakaar being the crowd favorite, we see that he has made a friend, we see him butt heads with but eventually come together with Thor, we see something of his internal anguish in the wake of Age of Ultron, etc. 

What we don’t get as much is enough Banner. We get a setup that he’s truly terrified that he’s completely lost control to the Hulk, that he might never come back, and we see him briefly overcome that fear to faceplant onto the Bifrost, but we don’t see what the news status quo is afterwards. We get the setup that he and Valkryie almost recognize that Hulk and Valykrie were friends, but there’s not enough of a payoff for that. I would have like to get a few more minutes of Banner.

“Did they tackle the concept of Ragnarok well enough?“

I thought they did a really interesting reversal through the line about Asgard being its people not the planet, with the heroes bringing about Ragnarok rather than trying to prevent it, in order to defeat a more insiduous evil. And given that it ends with pretty much all recognizable Asgardians save for Heimdall dead and the rest refugees, it’s hard to be more final than that. 

And they even gave us a moment of Skurge standing alone at Gjallerbru. 

“And what did you think of the Valkyrie?”

The Valkyrie was given just enough of a character arc to be functional – runs away from her confrontation with Hela and then comes back to get revenge for her fallen sisters – but more could have been done. Apparently there were some scenes they cut, some of which involved actually mentioning that Valkyrie was bi, and that would have been a nice addition.