Went with wife to 7pm sneak preview showing.
Enjoyable enough time-killer but not one of my faves, not by a long shot. Waaay too jokey. I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel as they were so fresh and such a nice change from the other, somewhat more formulaic MCU stuff. Thor: Ragnarok is much too close in tone to GotG for me. (Though at least the humor in T:R wasn't as crude as the GotG flicks, especially vol.2) Being based on the apocalyptic end of Asgard, this movie should have been more somber, with real game-changing gravity to it. There were occasional moments of dramatic weight, but the constant jokes and overall feeling of levity throughout the film ...even those handful of "serious" moments just felt hollow. In the end I felt like the director was 'making fun of' the MCU, instead of just 'having fun with' - especially in the first 1/3 of the film.
Hela was good but should have had more to do. Skurge was a throw away character. Heimdal was better than I've seen him in the previous entries, despite him limited screen time. Surtur was cool, but basically comes off like a giant version of the Filmation version of Skeletor. Loki was alright, but Hiddleston's performance felt rather phoned in (and WTF is with his makeup and hair in this film??? Hiddleston's skin is practically alabaster and his hair & eyebrows look like they were colored with a puck of shoe polish - unnatural and, frankly, just awful-looking). Thor is still pretty much Thor, although they really dumb him down here and it does no justice to the character, especially in comparison to Hemsworth's noble-ish portrayal in the first film. Here, he's basically the dumb guy from the Ghostbusters reboot dressed in Norse togs. My wife said (and I agree) that in the previous MCU films she thought Thor said some pretty funny stuff, but those seemed genuine and unintentional because of his 'fish out of water' naiveté, whereas in this film he's just a clueless bonehead. Grandmaster was just Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum and Goldblumming his way through the whole flick. Valkyrie was solid but nothing special, and the ridiculous behind-the-scenes focus on making her an LBGT-whatever character was absurd and felt totally forced, in order to make things more PC and topically relevant. (
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Best thing about this film, for me, was finally seeing the Hulk as close to classic Savage Hulk as he's ever been portrayed on film. Looks, attitude and strength levels were PERFECT. Banner had some gravitas, but again it was mostly snatched away by Ruffalo's light-hearted somewhat clueless-sounding delivery. I get that part of that was intentional, as he's 'coming back' after not having been Banner for two years, but a lot of it felt like the director saying "Remember, Mark, keep it goofy and funny, this is a going to be a funny Thor film!" (nudge-nudge, wink-wink)
Overall I give it 6.5 out of 10 stars. (Oh and not worth sticking around for the two post-credits clips, IMHO, especially the 2nd clip. Neither did much in the way of significantly wrapping things up for this film, nor of really giving any important clues as to the next installment, etc., etc. And that's the first time I've ever felt that way about the post-credit stuff, either.)