Thor: Ragnarok Review

Taika Waititi's solution to a character nobody had cracked was to notice that Chris Hemsworth is very funny and had never once been allowed to be. So Thor loses the hammer, the hair, an eye and his home planet, and gains a comic timing that turns a stiff lead into the best hang in the franchise. Sakaar is the most distinctive world the studio has built, all garbage heaps and neon Kirby geometry, and Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster is a masterclass in confident nonsense.

Cate Blanchett strides through in antlers having an obviously wonderful time. Mark Mothersbaugh's synths and a well deployed Led Zeppelin cue give the final battle a swagger the series had not touched before. The cost is tonal coherence. Odin dies and the film moves on in ninety seconds, Asgard's history of conquest is raised as a genuinely serious idea and then dropped for a gag, and Karl Urban's Skurge and Idris Elba's Heimdall both deserve far better than they get. Hela is underwritten as a threat and overqualified as a presence. But the film is a blast, and it saved the character.