View original postIt took them three movies into a franchise about Norse gods set in the present day to actually use Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song"?

View original postIt was funny and good. Despite being less ostensibly serious than the last "Thor" it has more significant stakes, emotional & narrative, and does a much better job of character development. Thor himself is the best balance of humorously ignorant & oblivious, while still being functionally intelligent. The post-credits scene from "Dr. Strange" expanded upon in the film, but it's just a cameo, without the team-up I thought was implied the first time I saw it. But it's still good. This is arguably the best Hulk movie as well as the best Thor movie, where the Hulk actually gets significant dialogue and there is a good bit of Banner as well. And Thor trying to use Natasha's sundown mantra to rein him in is pretty amusing. Karl Urban shows up as an Asgardian guy (they really aren't clear what the status is of the non-mythological people in Asgard, like Ray Stevenson's & Zachary Levi's characters, and their Chinese fiend who is featured slightly more prominently than usual here) with a humorous and yet serious character arc that would probably have been cut from the film if the release date was two weeks later.

View original postThe human scientists are gone, but most of the Asgardian crew are back, minus the attractive females who were previously killed off, or have TV shows of their own now, so there is a new one, Valkyrie, an expatriate Thor encounters on his travels. Loki is fun, and they found a way to reprise the team-up dynamic that made Thor 2 without watering him down or forgetting the characterization that made him the villain of his first two movies. There's a play-within a play thing with some very amusing cast members, and Anthony Hopkins doesn't seem quite as checked-out as he did last time. They gave Heimdal more to do that wasn't as shoe-horned in as his action scenes in the last one seemed to be.

View original postCate Blanchett is great as Hela, but this is the second mythology-based superhero villain this year, to have abandoned the character's ancient backstory in favor of cribbing from Warhammer 40K's Horus Heresy (and I don't mean Hulk:Angron). And you can't say this was another one that just preserved the status quo while waiting for one of the big team-ups.

View original postI'd put this among the best of the Marvel films, good Marvel I mean, better than Shitty Marvel (under which I lump all the pre-Holland Spider-mans, the Hyphenated Mutants and the Not-so-Incredible 4) goes without saying. Really, it's up there with "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Civil War" "Ant-Man" and "Ultron", and IMO, better than any Iron Man or the first Thor & Captain America films.