As you know, Thor: Ragnarok ended up being my favorite movie from the first three phases. Needless to say, I was excited to see how Taika Waititi would follow it up. He did not let me down. This one kept the silliness that made Ragnarok so good, but added more depth and emotion. It was not as good as Ragnarok, but it was definitely close.
From here on out there will be spoilers. And this is just going to be me writing my random thoughts…no real structure to this (is there ever structure to my posts?).
-I like that Waititi switched up the opening. In Ragnarok, we get a funny scene with Thor and Surtur. This time it is the tragic death of Gorr’s daughter. The agony of watching Christian Bale cry beside his daughter’s grave…it was tough. Side note, I have noticed since becoming a parent that scenes of a parent losing a child hit me way harder now (and that does not mean I was some robot towards those types of scenes, but now they hit me like 100x harder). Plus the gods being complete assholes, yeah I was rooting for Gorr to pick up the Necrosword and kill Rapu.
-I thought we would get more of the Guardians of the Galaxy with Thor, but it made sense for the story to split them off. It would have been too difficult to focus on Thor if we had to also have Star-Lord, Drax, Rocket, Groot, and the rest of the team in there as well. I did like that we immediately went from Gorr to the silliness of the GotG. Thor not helping the team until the end. It felt like the opening to a GotG movie and it was fun.
-The Jane Foster storyline was incredible. The cool thing about not reading comics is that I have no clue what is happening, so I am out of the loop on whether or not they took the cancer from the comics. But damn, it really worked and I loved how the magic of the hammer extended to protect her. Natalie Portman was awesome as the Mighty Thor. Did they film the scenes of her sick early on, then have her get ripped and film the rest? I thought they handled the cancer well. Jane is in denial while at the same time remembering her mom going through the same thing.
-I really liked the Gorr/Thor battles. I just wish their final showdown would have been a little longer or a bit more intense. But Gorr’s ending was satisfying. Like dude, you have one wish and you are going to use it to kill all the gods or you could bring back your daughter! Glad he made the right choice.
-I was wrong about Zeus. He definitely plays a bigger part, but it was definitely much funnier than I thought. Russell Crowe is great.
-Thor with Mjolnir and Love with Stormbreaker…yeah, I look forward to seeing what craziness those two get into together. Uncle Thor…I love it. Also, I think the Young Avengers may have found their god-powered being.
-And we get our first look at Hercules played by Brett Goldstein. I cannot wait for Thor vs. Hercules or even a nice battle with Hulk.
-The post-credit scene was a bit underwhelming. It was a nice moment, Foster at the gates of Valhalla meeting Heimdall, but it would have been cool to see something with Loki or something else multiverse related. Although, I was glad the movie did not have any references to the multiverse. Not because I do not like it, just that this was a fun, straightforward story (and it worked so well as a journey of discovery for our hero).
