Thunder Comes

A while ago, I was telling some of my co-workers how I invited MrBrioche to dinner and he rejected me. Not long afterwards, one of them mentioned how he hadn't seen some movie because his girlfriend didn't want to watch it. I told him that I also wanted to see it, and suggested we see it together. His silence said volumes. I quickly backed out of the statement, and changed the topic. To me, seeing movies is just something you do with friends, but maybe to him, it's a date thing.

So when Commissioner Gordon mentioned how he hadn't seen Thor: Ragnarok yet, the words, "Me, neither, let's go and see it together" were coming out of my mouth at the same time my mind was saying, "Noooooooooooooo, don't do it again!" They say light travels faster than sound, but sound travels faster than brainwaves (although that doesn't make sense, since it takes brain power to make the sounds for talking...). I tried to rack my brain for a way to gracefully take back my words, but to my pleasant surprise, CG said, "That would be nice."

We decided to go on cheap-ass Tuesday, as...well, we're cheap-asses. The movie has been out for a while now, but the cinema was still packed.

I had pretty low expectations for this movie. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't enjoy the first Thor movie, didn't bother with the second, and the only reason I went to see this one was because of Taika Waititi. MrMoustache said:

I hope you like it. But it has lots of critical acclaim so if you don't it's cos of you :P

I found the start of the movie a bit cringe-worthy. Some of the humour felt a bit forced, and dumbed down, and I was already starting to compose my message to MrMoustache saying how I tried to like the movie, but here is a long list of reasons why I couldn't like it. But I also wanted to like it because Commissioner Gordon loves comic books, and I felt like he would feel disappointed if I didn't enjoy myself, and maybe he would be less inclined to do this again. I enjoy spending time with him, as I think he's a lovely person, and he's one of the nerdiest people I've ever met. I'm not sure who would win a Star Wars knowledge battle out of him and MrMoustache.

The movie started to turn around for me once Korg entered the picture. I really love the humour that he has - and it turns out he was voiced by the director himself. Also, according to IMDB, 80% of the dialogue in the film was improvised. It really picked up the pace after that, and by the end of the movie, the long list of complaints I had drafted were sitting somewhere on the cinema floor, and nobody wants to touch the cinema floor - who knows what kind of gross stuff you'll find under the seats?!

There was a part of the movie that seemed to be an homage to Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The parodied scene used to completely freak me out as a kid, and Gene Wilder still gives me nightmares to this day. The Stargate SG-1 Asgard theme is also used, probably as a reference to the fact that they share a name with the people from Thor's homeworld of Asgard.

I also really enjoyed the way the movie had what I felt was a good amount of foreshadowing, while still managing to subvert a lot of your typical hero tropes. It was still pretty predictable, but I think that's par for the course for superhero movies these days. The humour is really what made it stand out for me. It was ridiculously funny for an action movie, and if I didn't like Captain America so much, might be in the running for my favourite Marvel movie so far.