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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 310225" data-attributes="member: 23">Thor: Ragnarok (2017) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F94%2F7f%2Fde%2F947fde0050fe54425ce142331a9002cb.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 385px" /> Well, I was greatly looking forward to this one. I got the sense it was viewed by many as an improvement on the previous film(s) and I was also looking forward to seeing real-life versions of Hela. This made me both curious and a little excited to see how this film would play for me. The great news is that I LOVED Hela. I loved that her look was pretty much straight from the comics. I loved that she danced the line between dark brutality and camp. I enjoyed that her arrival introduced a genuine threat to Asgard. The little nods to MCU history and chronology were enjoyable, what with the footage of Natasha from Age Of Ultron and finding out what Bruce and Thor have been doing while absent from the universe. This film also introduced Doctor Strange to the wider MCU and felt significant on that level. The not so great news is that I didn’t enjoy much else and I actively disliked a great deal of it. Ironically, one of the reasons I disliked this film was a reason I enjoyed Spider-Man: Homecoming so much: the sense of fun. I really don’t care to see Thor quipping away while chained up and listening to a villain monologuing. I didn’t like that some of the laughs were at the main character’s expense (tee hee. Clumsy Thor is ruining Doctor Strange’s sanctum with his oafish, accident-prone ways). It felt more like watching a satire of Thor than an actual Thor film. Most unforgivable of all, much of the film felt as though it was simply riffing on Guardians Of The Galaxy. Thor travelling between worlds and gathering a motley crew of companions of various CGI shapes, sizes and IQs made it feel simply a badge engineered GOTG, right down to the endless gags, quips, puns and aggressive wackiness. Another irony: I cited the Jeff Goldblum style of delivery as a reason for not enjoying Justin Hammer. In this film, along comes… Jeff Goldblum. Dear God. For me, dialogue and delivery are really important to a good story. I’ve revisited this again and again in these films - pedantically pointing out various small details such as vocal fry, the register of a voice, contemporary speech patterns and anachronisms - because these details can go a long way towards creating a believable world, but it can also throw things right off if it’s not right. They’re the skeleton of the films and at the back of my mind is whether or not this dialogue would convince on a stage with a minimal set and no effects, or in a novel. In the first two Thor films, there were some tiny details that bothered me on Asgard, which could have mostly been resolved by not using contractions in speech. Overall, though, they did create an Asgard that a felt authentic and seemed to choose actors with care. This film simply threw it all out the window for the sake of increasing the fun. Asgard seems to have been overrun with contempory British accents, from the Cockney gatekeeper/executioner to the MCU’s version of Valkyrie (who is at least shown to be a Valkyrie rather than the Valkyrie I associate with the Marvel Universe.It’s not just the delivery but the dialogue that’s gone to pot. Asgardians now pepper their speech with such words and terms as “Mischeeveeeous”, “OK”, “Let’s go look”, “Hi” and - most unforgivable of all for this setting - “Oh my God”. It almost feels as though the Asgardians have been hanging out in trendy L.A. coffee shops. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that I’ve yet to fully enjoy a film which features Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/Hulk and so, while his presence isn’t the reason for me not enjoying this one, it wasn’t a particular help. </blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?