Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been searching for the other Infinity Stones for the last two years when he decides to return home and discovers Loki (Tom Hiddlestone) is impersonating his father Odin. Loki and Thor go to Earth in search of Odin only to discover Odin’s death will unleash Hela (Cate Blanchett) from her prison. Hela is the Goddess of Death and Thor’s older sister. She banishes Thor and Loki to the planet of Sakaar. Thor faces Hulk in the Grandmaster’s arena of Champions while Hela lays waste to Asgard as she takes control of her former home. Thor must find a way back to Asgard to save his people and stop Ragnarok.

THOR: RAGNAROK is an enjoyable sequel with plenty of Easter Eggs to the Thor and Hulk comics and the other Marvel movies. Sakaar has production design inspired by Jack Kirby art from his cosmic Marvel stories. The plot is rushed where it wraps up the plot from the end of the last one rather too quickly before diving into the main plot dealing with Hela and Ragnarok while it also takes a detour of Thor and Loki being trapped on the planet of Sakaar where Thor must battle the Hulk and bond with him (before planning an escape to go back to save the people of Asgard. The production design, humor, and action are fantastic, but the story is very muddled as it has to wrap up the previous movie, tie-in with the next AVENGERS movie, and introduce new characters and show what happened to Hulk/ Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) since the last AVENGERS movie. The movie lost some scenes and had some stuff reshot with the movie starting at 160 minutes down to 90 minutes before ending up with the final running time of 130 minutes. Overall, the sequels to THOR have been a mess storywise and trying to play around here and there. It is a fun movie with plenty of humor even though it rushes through a few things to get to other scenes in the movie. It is an enjoyable movie which you will watch if you enjoyed the other movies from Marvel Studios (or generally a fan of the Marvel Comics).

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Feature audio commentary with director Taiki Waititi

Five deleted and extended scenes (with optional audio commentary) which don’t include some of the deleted shots seen in the two theatrical trailers, the noodle bowl scene shown on the internet (which means it might be a digital exclusive scene), and the original scenes of Thor and Loki looking for Odin in New York (before they decided to have part of it take place in Norway during reshoots)

Gag Reel

Five featurettes on the movie:
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH YOUR INNER THOR- a featurette on the origins of the movie and making of it
UNSTOPPABLE WOMEN: HELA & VALKYRIE- a featurette on the strong women characters of THOS: RAGNAROK
FINDING KORG- a behind-the-scenes look at director Taiki Waititi going mocap to play the character of Korg
SAKAAR: ON THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN AND UNKNOWN- a look at the production design of SAKAAR and how the look of that world was inspired by the comic book art of Jack Kirby
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY- a look at the various bits of story from the early THOR comics and the Ragnarok comic book storyline that helped inspire the story for THOR: RAGNAROK

MARVEL STUDIOS: THE FIRST TEN YEARS- a look at the evolution of the characters and storylines for the various marvel characters leading up to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

8bit PREVIS SCENES FOR the SAKAAR SPACESHIP BATTLE and the FINAL BRIDGE BATTLE

TEAM DARRYL which is a sequel short where Darryl gets a new roommate after Thor moves on

The movie in standard definition on DVD and a code to download/ stream a digital copy of the movie

FINAL ANALYSIS: THOR: RAGNAROK is the most enjoyable movie of the THOR series with stunning production design and plenty of humor mixed with the feel of Marvel comic book action. The behind-the-scenes extras are about average with Marvel missing to include all of the deleted scenes on the blu-ray disc and the theatrical trailers (the only trailer for any Marvel Studio release is one for BLACK PANTHER which plays before the main menu). I would love to see another THOR movie if it is fun as this movie sequel.

This review is ©3-13-2018 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. -Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

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