Thor Ragnarok Takes the Thor Franchise in the Right Direction

Thor Ragnarok Takes the Thor Franchise in the Right Direction

Chris Chalker, Staff Writer

Over the last few installments to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Avengers Thor and Hulk have been missing. With the release of their latest movie, Thor Ragnarok, we learn about what happened to Thor while everyone else was caught up in a heated civil war.

The film starts with Thor imprisoned, he has been captured by Surtur the fire demon while searching for the infinity stones. Thor escapes and defeats the fire demon, taking its crown back to Asgard. When he arrives there, he soon finds that everything is not as it seems; the Bifrost is being controlled by someone else and Loki is posing as Odin. Thor exposes Loki as an imposter and they go to meet Odin. When they do meet him, after getting a little help from Doctor Strange, Odin tells them about Hela, his firstborn child and the goddess of death, which will free her from a curse Odin has placed on her. When Odin dies, Hela appears and destroys Thor’s hammer. When Loki uses the Bifrost to help the duo escape, she follows them and casts them both out to die. Hela kills most of the people at the Bifrost when she arrives at Asgard, except for one, a man named Skurge.

As we later learn, Hela was used by Odin to conquer the nine realms Asgard has control of, but when her desire grew to be too much for him to handle, Odin locked her away by cursing her and erased her from history. Thor, who crashed on a garbage/junkyard planet of Sakaar, is caught by a group of scavengers who want to eat him. His is then “saved” by a lone scavenger who reaches him and takes him to the “Grandmaster.” The Grandmaster is in charge of a “Contest of Champions,” in which Thor fights Hulk in a fight that is fixed for him (Hulk) to win. We meet a few fighters here and we also learn that Loki has befriended the Grandmaster. Thor eventually convinces Hulk and the scavenger who brought him here, who was a valkyrie back on Asgard, to help him fight Hela and escape the planet. Back on Asgard, Hela kills Asgard’s “Warrior Three,” recruits Skurge (the man Loki placed at the Bifrost in Heimdall’s place while he was posing as Odin) and names him her executioner, and raises an army of the dead (including a wolf she had, named Fenris) to fight with her. While escaping, Loki betrays Thor in order to get in good with the Grandmaster, but Thor knew Loki would do it and leaves him behind. Loki is found shortly thereafter by the other escaped fighters.

Upon arrival in Asgard, Thor and Valkyrie fight the army of the undead and Skurge. Loki and the fighters from Sakaar arrive and help fight Hela and her army. While Bruce Banner, who has just transformed back into Banner after being Hulk for 2 years (and only changed back after hearing Black Widow’s message from “Age of Ultron” from the Quinjet that was on Sakaar, changes back into Hulk to fight Fenris. Loki and the others decide to get the Asgardians on board the ship Loki had and as they do so, Skurge has a change of heart, deciding to sacrifice himself to allow them to escape and turns on Hela. Thor and Hela face off which seems to be very one-sided as Thor loses his eye and takes a massive beating, he has a vision of Odin in which he realizes that only Ragnorok can stop Hela, but the cost will be the destruction of Asgard. Thor has Loki place Surtur’s crown in the Eternal Flame beneath Asgard, resurrecting the fire demon and having him destroy Asgard and kill Hela.

Thor and the others make it to the ship, where Thor gets an eyepatch for his wound and he and Loki talk for a bit. Thor is crowned king and says that, as his father taught him in earlier in the movie, “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people”. The scenes mid and post credits show the ship used by Thor and the others coming across a large spacecraft and the Grandmaster encountering rebels.

I interviewed Juniors Kody Swartwood and Anthony DeFazio for their takes on the film

Swartwood: The only problem I saw with the movie was the advertisement of the Hulk being a major part of the film. I feel if that was kept secret, the reveal would have made the movie all the more enjoyable. Other than that, it was a very entertaining movie with great comedy and characters.

DeFazio: It was a nice change of pace. Normally we see Thor movies being long and dragging and very boring after a while. But now we see a lot of action and a lot of comedy that blend together very well. If every Thor movie was like that it probably would’ve been the best in the franchise.