Thor: Ragnarok (a movie review post)

 

MCU #17

It appears that I somehow missed reviewing this one the first time it came out. How did that even happen? I have no idea. It's not the first one I missed doing but, by this point, I thought I was getting all of them (until Black Widow, but we'll get there when we get there).

Ragnarok is my favorite of the current Thor movies. There are a couple of things I find interesting about this:
1. The Thor movies have gotten better as they've gone on. Generally speaking, this is a thing with the MCU movies, Iron Man being the exception.
2. The Thor movies, with the possible exception of Ant-Man, are the most comedic of the MCU movies, which is surprising because they are also the most tragic. But maybe that's why they have all the comedy. You need that comedic relief to keep from falling apart during the movies.

With a new Thor movie on the near horizon, I guess we'll find out if these things hold true.

I'm going to kind of nutshell my review of this one, because I have something else of interest, at least to me, to talk about. Related but not specifically about the quality of the movie.

Ragnarok is great. A lot of fun. It has one of the best openings of all of the MCU movies, with Thor's soliloquy about being captured and stuff, then the whole spinning on the chain as Surtur tries to... what? threaten him? Intimidate him. It's a great and unexpected opening.

Anthony Hopkins has his best moment in any of the movies as he plays Loki playing Odin.

I'm not sure there could have been a better Hela than Cate Blanchett. There could have been different Helas, but I don't think better. She was magnificent.

Karl Urban was unsurprisingly great as Skurge. I wish he was going to be back for more, but I doubt Skurge is a character we'll see again.

All of the regular cast was as spectacular as you should have come to expect at this point. And, hey, Hulk makes a significant appearance, too.

Speaking of Hulk, when we watched Civil War, someone tossed out the idle question, "Why aren't Thor and Hulk in this?" To which I responded, sort of jokingly but not really, "Because then it would be an Avengers movie and not Captain America." Ragnarok is where we find out where Thor and Hulk were during Civil War. Also, you have to have Hulk and Thor be somewhere else for it to be a real fight for everyone else.

Something else of interest:

I was talking with my buddy Squid the other day about a big crossover event in Marvel back in the 90s that he is currently reading, and I was remembering when those issues were originally coming out and how it seemed like it was a big deal and how it was going to change the Marvel Universe and all of that. At the time, that story seemed important and significant. And, yet, the state of the Marvel Universe is much the same today as it was back in the 90s. Or the 80s. Or the 60s. Sure, there are more characters, but, other than morphing the universe to keep up with society, the state of the characters is much the same as it has always been.

And that's fine, you know. It's really what the readers want. They want to have big events with huge climaxes and, yet, for everything to remain the same at the end of it. So Captain America can't stay assassinated. Superman can't stay dead. Wolverine must get his adamantium back. The character has to stay the character.

But this isn't true for the MCU. At all. Nothing will, or even can, stay status quo. The characters are too tied to the actors, and there just isn't the mass of material to allow for the MCU to revert to the way things were. It seems to be a living universe, and I like that. Tony Stark is dead. As is Steve Rogers. I don't expect to see them come back.

Thor seems to be the series that has shown the most change. Frigga died. Odin died. Thor lost his eye. And his hammer. The Warriors Three are dead. Asgard is destroyed. It's a lot. And I expect things to stay that way. Changes will be ongoing with new characters in as old characters fade out. It's dynamic. I like it.
That's all. Just my interesting thought about a fundamental difference between the Marvel Universe and the MCU.

Now I suppose we should do some ratings (because I know people can't wait to know how I slam Edward Norton this week):

1. Captain America: Civil War

2. The Avengers
3. Captain America: The First Avenger

3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
6. Iron Man

7. Doctor Strange

8. Ant-Man

9. Thor: Ragnarok
10. Thor: The Dark World
11. Thor

12. Guardians of the Galaxy

13. Avengers: Age of Ultron

14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
15. Iron Man 3
16. Iron Man 2
17. Incredible Hulk (Norton's ego could be the Grandmaster's champion. No one can defeat it. Well, except Disney, I guess.)

Roma (a movie review post)

I'm not even sure where to begin talking about this movie. It's one of those movies that seems meaningful, yet it is unclear what that meaning is. It is tragic and, yet, ends full of hope. It's black and white, so it must be important.
Okay, so that last bit is kind of a joke and, yet, not quite. I'm not sure this movie would have worked in color.

What I can say for sure is that Alfonso Cuaron is a writer that I like. At least, he is based on the movies I've seen by him. I loved Gravity (and there is a great in-joke in Roma about Gravity). The Best Director Oscar was very deserved (and I still feel like Sandra Bullock got robbed of Best Actress for that movie (and, no, I didn't see Blue Jasmine, so I don't know if Blanchett deserved the award or not)). Children of Men was also really good. Cuaron writes complex stories that don't always have clear meanings, and I can support that. A story should be engaging and leave the audience thinking. My wife and I have continued to bring Roma up in the weeks since we watched it.

There are really three levels to the movie... Well, there are three levels to the movie that I'm seeing. Maybe there are more, and I'm just missing them.

There's the level of the movie that deals with Cleo and what it's like to be a house servant, one of the lowest people in society. The movie opens with her cleaning up dog shit, which is, of course, a metaphor for her place in society.

Then, there is the family she works for and the lives they live. He's a rich doctor and his wife used to be a biochemist but, of course, she no longer needs to work so doesn't. The contrast between Cleo and the family is, frankly, astounding. The family lives in a huge house which Cleo is constantly cleaning, especially picking up after the children, while Cleo lives in a small room which she shares with the other servant.

All of this against the backdrop of society in general. The movie is set against the drama of a student protest movement that was going on in the early 70s and lead to... well, that would be telling.

On the surface, it seems like a "boring" movie, but it's actually quite fascinating.

Yalitza Aparicio, in her debut, is quite good as Cleo. And Marina de Tavira, as the woman of the household, is good opposite her. The weight of the film rests on the two of them, and they carry it admirably.

It's a good movie. I say that with the full knowledge that the fact that it's in black and white will put many people off of it right from the start, compounded with the fact that it's a personal drama and fairly slow moving most of the time. But for those of you who can sit through it, it's well worth the watch.

You Know You've Made It When... (part 2)

Sometimes it's good to ask questions. My last post on Lego minifigures inspired a friend of mine to go into research mode and look for figures that I may have missed, and he came up with some. It made me feel a little inadequate, actually, because I didn't even think to check for most of these guys.

First, though, the fails. The Lego fails, that is. Here are some ones that at least one of us checked only to find out that a very obvious character has never been made into a minifigure.
1. Sallah:

Despite being in half of the Indiana Jones movies, Sallah was never made as a minifigure. John Rhys-Davies does appear as this minifig, though:

Rhys-Davies did do the voice for this one, so I guess he can get partial credit for it:

2. Jane Foster:

Despite having more than a dozen Avengers related Lego sets, Jane does not appear as a minifigure.

Natalie Portman does appear as this figure, though:

3. Galadriel:

Explain to me how, exactly, Galadriel

does not get made into a minifigure while

Irina Spalko gets a figure in three different sets (while Sallah has none!). If I was Cate Blanchett, I'd feel robbed.

Also, a retraction. As I was working up this post, I realized that I was in error about Chris Evans.

The Fantastic Four have not, yet, been made into physical minifigures, although I could have sworn they had some sort of Lego set out several years ago with their flying car. When the FF re-boots, soon, it will no longer be Evans as the Torch, so it still won't count for him. He got robbed, too!

But there are a few new editions to the list of actors made into two different minifigure characters!

1. Ryan Renolds

2. Ben Kingsley

(Again, really? Nizam from Prince of Persia gets a figure but Galadriel doesn't?)

3. Alfred Molina

Another Prince of Persia figure on the list? Seriously? And he gets one from Raiders of the Lost Ark, too!

Which brings me back to my question of how the heck does Sallah not have a figure? Satipo, here, dies in the opening sequence of Raiders, but Sallah doesn't get one? I smell a conspiracy! Or a rat! Or Denmark!

But that's not all! Because there's also

Which gives Molina three different characters in three separate movies which may just make him the greatest actor of all time! Except, then, there's

4. Warwick Davis. Davis has been four different characters in two different movie franchises, though two of the movies from one of the franchises were 15 years apart. Who's greater, Davis or Molina? I guess you will have to decide. Here are Davis' figures:

5. Gary Oldman! And, really, how could I forget him the first time? I feel so bad. I love Gary Oldman! And he was by far the best thing about the Nolan Batman movies.

And he's also

Well, there you have it. The best actors who have ever lived. Or something like that. If I ever get a movie made out of any of my books, I'm going to make sure I'm some side character, some vital side character, so that if they ever get Lego sets, I will get to be a minifigure, too! Now that's the DREAM, folks!