We rejoin the titular God of Thunder two years after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which time he has been travelling around the universe in an attempt to learn as much about the Infinity Stones as possible. After finding out that it is Loki, not Odin, who sits on the throne of Asgard, Thor confronts his brother and travels with him to Earth in order to find Odin and return him to the throne - but ends up accidentally stranded on the junk planet Sakaar in the process, leaving Asgard vulnerable to attack from Hela, the Goddess of Death.
By pushing the plot to the background for much of its running time, Waititi is able to focus on the bits of the film he's actually interested in, such as the characters and their interactions with one another. It also means that the drama of Thor: Ragnarok is only ever serviceable at best. There's a balancing act going on here that I don't think Waititi executes perfectly, meaning that your enjoyment of Thor: Ragnarok is ultimately going to depend far more on if you Waititi's character direction than on the plot itself.
Fortunately, I love Waititi. While the film undoubtedly lacks the emotional resonance of his previous films (most likely a by-product of this being the first of his movies that he hasn't also written), his unique voice still manages to shine through thanks to the amount of creative freedom he's clearly been given around the studio-mandated story beats. It's a hilarious movie thanks to the irreverent, naturalistic, quasi-improvisational sense of humour that made Waititi popular and that imbues the film with the kind of energy and originality that some other Marvel films have sorely lacked. As someone who was laughing throughout, I found Thor: Ragnarok to be among the better Marvel Studios films released in recent years.
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