People said that this was going to be a buddy cop film, but it really isn't. I have no idea how people came up with that description. I didn't even get that impression from the trailers, and now that I've seen the film, I can definitely say that it isn't that type of film.
People said that this was going to be a Planet Hulk film, but it really isn't. There's not a lot of time spent exploring the world of gladiators so much as joking about it. The world is still pretty cool, though.
People said that this had the most jokes out of any Marvel film, and I can't really verify that without painstakingly going back and taking a tally of every joke ever told in each Marvel film. It could very well be, though, since there are a lot of jokes.
Previous films said that this was going to go a certain way and...yeah, here's where there was strait-up false advertising. That post-credits scene from Doctor Strange was pulled out of context and gave me a very different impression of what sort of film this would be. I also find myself having a reason for disliking Avengers: Age of Ultron because that one scene was unnecessary.
The actual trailers, I think, did much more to make people want to see this film than any easter-eggs from other films. I think that most people are going to be satisfied. It's funny, visually pleasing, has that techno music that got everyone excited, has some decent action, and it has Thor, Loki, and the Hulk all in one movie, all with nice chemistry. It's a recipe for success.
But this is where I admit that, for the most part, was disappointed with the film. I'm not really sure if this is a sequel to the last Thor movie or the last Avengers movie. As a means of capping off the Thor trilogy, I actually think that it's a bad film. "What?" you say. "You're calling this a bad film?" Well no, not entirely. It just doesn't really serve the Thor trilogy all that well.
For starters, there's Jane Foster, a.k.a. the beautiful Natalie Portman, a.k.a. the women I'd turn to the Dark Side, pledge my allegiance to a Satanic megalomaniac, and kill a thousand younglings for. The first two films set her up, and I was curious to see where they would take her. It turns out, she's not in this film. All that buildup — nothing. Perhaps she'll appear in some future film, but she most naturally belongs in the climax of Thor's personal story. Without her, I don't feel like you had a complete story arc for Thor.
The storyline with Odin is also pretty underwhelming. I just expected something far more satisfying, but it was hardly there and made almost no impact. And then the villain arrives, and her arrival wasn't really built up to and didn't feel quite as foreboding as you'd expect. Somehow, emo Cate Blanchett with awesome-thorn-helmet didn't make much of an impression.
Then there's the lack of a sense of finality. When I said that this movie just as much of a sequel to the Avengers movies, it's more than that, because it's also a giant buildup to Avengers: Infinity War. It not only feels like it picked up from where other films left off, but it also has no sense of finality, because it's clearly leading into future films. So it neither caps off a trilogy, nor is it a standalone film. I wish that it had, at least, felt like a definitive ending to Thor's story, but it didn't feel quite that way.
The humor was good, but I found that I actually didn't laugh too much at it. There were times when it actually ruined moments that could have been legitimately epic, too, so it actually frustrated me. There were moments that were simply designed to be epic, but they either didn't get enough time dedicated to them before cutting away, or the humor took away the awesomeness. For example, the climax. That could have been pretty amazing, but I actually didn't feel too invested, and though the visuals were pretty good, the subversive humor kept on reminding me that there was nothing really at stake, and I couldn't quite get invested in the action scenes as action scenes. Ironically, I found myself more invested in the final fight in Wonder Woman. The best action scene in the film is probably the one in the trailers, where Thor fights with Hulk (and wins, easily), which had the least humor in the film and simultaneously the best humor because it's the type of humor that gets you invested in the conflict.
There was one joke, though. On one hand, it was a callback to everyone's favorite joke from The Avengers, but on the other hand, I also happen to think that it's one of the funniest jokes in the entire MCU. But it's still pretty good. I anticipated it, actually, and I laughed for an uncomfortably long time in the middle of the theater because of it.
As it happens, although I didn't feel the stakes, the stakes actually were real. I've said that there are things that I didn't like, but what I did like, which I think that this did better than most Marvel movies, was that it made some serious decisions that ended up having permanent repercussions. There are changes to the mythology that will carry over in to future films that will have a lasting effect on the landscape of the MCU, I'd argue even more than Civil War did.
At the end of the day, I'd say that the film is pretty funny and captures almost exactly what everybody either seems to love or hate about the MCU. I'd personally have put less emphasis on the humor and more on the balls-to-the-wall creativity of the settings, but that's just me. In order to get the most entertainment out of this film, you should go in expecting something that will do a great job of setting the stage for Avengers: Infinity War. I'd recommend that everyone go see it — once. Because it's such a middle film, I actually don't think that it's worth worth watching a second time until it comes out on DVD and you want to go on an MCU marathon.
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