The Mighty Hammer of Thor

I like to hold my finger on the pulse of modern film by reading reviews on the internet: in newspapers like The Guardian, blogs, or magazines like the New Yorker. Thor: Ragnarok was unfamiliar to me perhaps because, as a second sequel, it was less of a novelty.

Perhaps because of this critic's-eye view, I tend to think of superhero movies as a self-referential, uniform genre, with a few noble examples like the Superman films and also films-as-pop-art like Tim Burton's Batman films. Wonder Woman tried to be different. While I watched it, it felt profound, afterward I didn't feel as if any great lesson had emerged from it after all. I guess it's best to watch it again to tell which impression is truer.

Wonder Woman was putatively the work of an outsider, a woman director. But Thor: Ragnarok was in fact more of an outsider's perspective, I thought. Later I realized why, perhaps; it's because the director is a New Zealander and also felt less bound or pressurized to match or criticize other American output. There was a chummy feeling to the interactions between some of the actors, probably because they had worked on the other films in the series together, which wasn't displeasing. The Australians Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Cate Blanchett as Hela, Hemsworth's brother in a brief scene, the director himself disguised as a computer-generated rock monster, were a relaxed Antipodean grouping. But Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seemed to have an unforced camaraderie that also lent appeal to the world in the film, and Mark Ruffalo was also touchingly genuine in his dishevelled, self-deprecating way.

While Hemsworth and Hiddleston played their roles with enthusiasm, as did Tessa Thompson as a Valkyrie who had turned into a spaceship's captain far away from her native Asgard, I felt (as others have said) that Cate Blanchett's role was one-dimensional, and so was Idris Elba's. His contribution was to look sapient and lead around the hapless folk of Asgard in a cloak, with walking stick in hand.

I found 'problematic' aspects, too. In Thor's world, electrocution was a comedic element in spite of its detrimental physical effects in real life. The Valkyrie's alcoholism was a harmless voluntary quirk that, while it anesthetized her feelings and banked her ambition, did no harm to her fitness, her mental health or her social interactions. The demands of superhero films on the actors were also worrying me yet again; in Wonder Woman, too, the filmmakers had eradicated any kind of physical imperfection, and I don't think it's healthy.

Amongst other aspects, I'd freely endure films in a blurrier screen resolution if it means that Hollywood can indulge its collective wrinkles. I also see no need to build masses of muscle fibre or exercise and diet off one's lipid elements before an actor or actress is allowed to appear in the public eye.

Cate Blanchett appeared to think of her role as a pastiche of fashion models, glamour models, etc., in the way that she moved and walked, although perhaps that was also edited in after her own acting. I felt that it ended up being mocking and demeaning; and that it plays into the belief that women who are sexualized in their careers freely manipulate men; but I am perhaps imagining it. (It also worried me because I think that a few established Hollywood actresses are reacting to the sexual harassment reports lately in a very uncongenial way, either because they believe that everyone must suffer as they did earlier in their careers, or because they don't want to acknowledge that even people who haven't necessarily harmed them personally shouldn't be given the power that they presently wield.) Much as I admire her as an actress, I don't know if I approve of everything.

Also (on a different topic) I did find the seamless, deindividualized computer-generated world uncanny. Aside from a few strikingly realistic ideas, like the early scene that takes into account the awkward physics of suspended objects on a chain, there was not much practical and real.

Yet I left the theatre with the happy impression that this was a thought-free film, edited with an efficiency that made a Gesamtkunstwerk, and that it was partly fun to film. The computer or set designers planned out the worlds in the film with real love (as well as, in Asgard, hints of Lord of the Rings) and I liked the dystopia, a kind of 1980s-90s wonderland that was not pretty but was at least evocative.