Sakaar’s “Grandmaster” is Jeff Goldblum, who gives exactly the sort of performance you’d want Jeff Goldblum to give in a project like this: intellectually detached, droll and smart-alecky, yet also somehow petty, arbitrary and sadistic. The overqualified supporting cast does a lot with not-quite enough.

As revealed in trailers, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is back, too-and why wouldn’t he be? He’s easily the most entertaining villain, or antihero, in the franchise, so beguiling that when Thor inevitably succumbs to his charisma and fights alongside him, both he and the audience momentarily forget how much death and property destruction he’s caused in prior chapters. The other “Thor: Ragnarok” is a largely comedic gladiator movie with prison thriller accents: Thor is trapped on the planet Sakaar, where he’s forced to fight the planet’s reigning champion, the Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo). After that, the film splits into a couple of parallel narratives.įully half the film is a court intrigue/war picture, charting the takeover of Asgard by Thor’s long lost sister Hela ( Cate Blanchett), a black-clad force of nature who seems to turn into a demonic stag-beast when she fights: her head sprouts elegant antlers that might have been sketched in the air with a brush dipped in India ink.

The demon tells him that his father Odin ( Anthony Hopkins) is no longer on Asgard and that their homeworld will soon be destroyed in Ragnarok, a prophesied apocalypse. Written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost and directed by Taika Waititi (“ Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” “ What We Do in the Shadows”), this is almost but not quite a stand-alone picture, tethered to previous “Avengers” entries only by Thor’s opening search for the Infinity Stones, which has led him to be imprisoned by the fire demon Sutur. Hemsworth’s charisma holds “Thor: Ragnarok” together whenever it threatens to spin apart, which unfortunately is often.

Thor 2011 full movie review