I saw Thor: Ragnarok earlier this week and let me start by saying I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of director Taika Waititi, if you haven’t seen What We Do In The Shadows or Hunt for the Wilderpeople yet you should do so immediately. He’s brought humor back to the Thor films, restoring Thor back to his cocksure self, which plays incredibly well with Waititi’s sense of comedy.
Unfortunately, even Waititi can’t solve Marvel’s villain problem.
Spoilers below.
Loki is arguably the most compelling villain in the MCU, so much so he was made the big bad in the first Avengers film. The problem is his popularity has rendered him an ineffective baddie. I think directors and execs are too afraid to push his character too far into the realm of wicked because they don’t want to alienate audiences towards one of their most bankable characters.
The result is a they play into the sibling rivalry/comedy dynamic between Loki and Thor in Thor: Ragnarok, which works just fine and is actually the source of some great scenes. It feels much more genuine than the middling previous entry into the series, Thor: The Dark World.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Hiddleston as Loki – Marvel Studios
Thor: Ragnarok introduces two villains with great potential, neither of whom reach their peak. We’ll start with The Grandmaster, who seems poised to be less critical to the overall universe. He’s played by the always watchable Jeff Goldblum. The Grandmaster is basically what I’d imagine Jeff Goldblum in space would actually be. He rules over Sakaar (yes, this is the closest it seems we’re going to get to a Planet Hulk thread in the MCU) where the Hulk has been fighting as a gladiator for the 2 years following the events of The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Rachel House as Topaz, Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie – Marvel Studios
The Grandmaster is almost bacchanalian in his pursuit of entertainment. He’s incredibly peculiar and could have felt very out of place in the Thor universe, but thankfully because Goldblum is so well cast in the role, he’s mesmerizing to watch. His motivations may be considered immoral, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him evil in his pursuit of vice. If the film pushed him further toward the dark side, he might have been a contender for one of the better wrongdoers in MCU canon. They keep his story self contained to Sakaar in order to make way for the other malefactor, Hela.
Hela is the Asgardian goddess of death, played by Cate Blanchett. The film differs from the comic interpretation (although name me a Marvel film that doesn’t). In the comics Hela is the daughter of Loki, in the film, she is the banished firstborn of Odin. I understand that Marvel saw success in the first
Thor film by having a conflict driven by siblings, so they were keen to repeat it in this one. Unfortunately the result is not as effective as the first.
Cate Blanchett as Hela – Marvel Studios
Blanchett is a wonderful actress, and her performance is enjoyable. I will say some of the weakest scenes in the movie are when they replace her with a digital double for some bad CG fighting. It appears most of the VFX budget was spent on the Hulk/Thor showdown seen in the trailers. I digress though, as the main issue is once again Marvel handicaps itself by not taking the time to give their villain long lasting legs.
If Hela’s storyline centered around her claim to the Asgardian throne as the first born of Odin, that would make sense. Odin wrote her out of Asgardian history and banished her. Both pretty compelling plot drivers for a character. The problem is instead of trying to subjugate Asgard, she tries to destroy the people of it, and then plans to move on to conquering other realms. Where is the logic in that? They set her up with an understandable motivation, and then minimize it in favor of simplifying her down to a killing machine.
In reducing her to such an extreme end of the evil spectrum, we know there’s no way the hero isn’t going to triumph. When there’s no complexity to the struggle between good and evil, there’s limited stakes as the audience. Yes, of course we want to see the good guys win, that’s why we love superhero films. Yet without a worthy opponent what’s the point?
Cate Blanchett as Hela versus the Valkyries – Marvel Studios
Hela could have been great in that she’d force Thor to confront the idea of no longer being the next in line to rule Asgard. He’s spent his whole life assuming he’d ascend to the throne (whether or not he wanted that responsibility is a different matter). Now suddenly his status as heir apparent is ripped from him. Where would he go from there? How much of being in line to be king was part of what defined his identity? Is the throne something he even wants to fight for? If she ended up being a cruel ruler it also would give him a reason to come to terms with that he does want to take on the responsibility of leadership and give him a reason to challenge Hela. That could have been a weighty conflict worthy of watching, and one that didn’t just involve Hela trying to come in and murder everything from the get go.
Instead Marvel neutralizes the possibility for us to invest in Hela long term by making her so extreme that we know she won’t last. There’s speculation that Hela is the “death” that Thanos is courting and will appear in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, however based on the way Thor: Ragnarok plays out, they’d have to either do a lot of explaining to justify how she got there, or they could just force us to accept her presence without any justification… Which unfortunately I could see them doing.
Until Marvel gives us a villain who has some sense of relatability instead of these disposable characters we’ll forever be stuck in a purgatory of unreached potential. While it would take a legal miracle for a character like Magneto to appear in the MCU (though stranger things have happened, after all we did see Spider-Man return to the fold), he’s a great example of how a character can be complicated, have understandable motivations, and yet still be a villain.
In spite of the issues with Hela’s overall arc, Thor: Ragnarok is still a great entry into the MCU. I hope Marvel continues to give directors like Waititi these opportunities, and maybe someday one of them will finally solve the villain problem.
