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Thor: Ragnarok

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Finally watched this last night with my brother.

It was perfectly okay. 😑

Hela was, IMO, a waste of a perfectly good character concept. I wanted to like her, but she was written so...shallowly?
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Why would you expect the personification of imperialism to be deep?
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Come on. I know that Ragnarok very much had its Message To Tell about anti-colonialism and coming to terms with the sins of the fathers, and that's cool and all, but I don't see why that necessitates a stale cardboard cut-out of a villain.
 
Mechasaurian said:
Come on. I know that Ragnarok very much had its Message To Tell about anti-colonialism and coming to terms with the sins of the fathers, and that's cool and all, but I don't see why that necessitates a stale cardboard cut-out of a villain.
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I mean Hela isn't really intended to have much to her beyond the narrative instigation. She's just there to start the plot off and provide a suitable final battle for Thor to show that he has grown as a person.
 
Mechasaurian said:
Come on. I know that Ragnarok very much had its Message To Tell about anti-colonialism and coming to terms with the sins of the fathers, and that's cool and all, but I don't see why that necessitates a stale cardboard cut-out of a villain.
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well they also had to do the whole thing on gladiator planet, have Thor learn that you can't always just win because you're a hero, fit in a mini arc for both Loki and Bruce Banner, introduce Valkyrie...

I assume they just didn't have room. Hela's just not important enough to develop, she's more a plot mover than a significant character- she has no arc.

like sure maybe the movie would have been better if she had one, but then it'd be three hours long at minimum.
 
VolantRedX said:
I mean Hela isn't really intended to have much to her beyond the narrative instigation. She's just there to start the plot off and provide a suitable final battle for Thor to show that he has grown as a person.
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So she's a boring central villain. Glad we agree. :V

Chloe Sullivan said:
well they also had to do the whole thing on gladiator planet, have Thor learn that you can't always just win because you're a hero, fit in a mini arc for both Loki and Bruce Banner, introduce Valkyrie...

I assume they just didn't have room. Hela's just not important enough to develop, she's more a plot mover than a significant character- she has no arc.

like sure maybe the movie would have been better if she had one, but then it'd be three hours long at minimum.
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The makers of the film made the creative choice to take at least as much time - and considerably more effort - characterising the Grandmaster than Hela, despite him being a silly parody of a character who is beyond being taken seriously. As a result, he not only has more personality, he actually functions better as a "personification of imperialism," thanks to traits such as his squeamishness in referring to his slaves as "slaves."
 
My problem with Hela is that she represents the filmmakers undercutting two of best aspects of the movie in a way that seems borderline intentional.

One is Hela as a really entertaining space viking girlboss, with swagger not unlike that of the more beloved Disney villainesses. The other is Thor Ragnarok confronting legacies of conquest in western society. Both are good in isolation but end up almost cancelling each other out. The colonialism is fobbed off on Hela as the bad person who did the bad thing while the person most responsible for the conquests who ordered it is let off easy. And because Hela is the singular symbol of everything wrong with Asgard with parallels to real world atrocities, her girlboss-ness is disavowed and she just dies a standard villain death.

I don't conclusively think that this is an intentional attempt to blunt the anti-colonialism message while putting out a cool female character for representation points and then throwing them away. But if it was on purpose it would be a really slick and considered way to do it.
 
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Reveen said:
My problem with Hela is that she represents the filmmakers undercutting two of best aspects of the movie in a way that seems borderline intentional.

One is Hela as a really entertaining space viking girlboss, with swagger not unlike that of the more beloved Disney villainesses. The other is Thor Ragnarok confronting legacies of conquest in western society. Both are good in isolation but end up almost cancelling each other out. The colonialism is fobbed off on Hela as the bad person who did the bad thing while the person most responsible for the conquests who ordered it is let off easy. And because Hela is the singular symbol of everything wrong with Asgard with parallels to real world atrocities, her girlboss-ness is disavowed and she just dies a standard villain death.

I don't conclusively think that this is an intentional attempt to blunt the anti-colonialism message while putting out a cool female character for representation points and then throwing them away. But if it was on purpose it would be a really slick and considered way to do it.
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"Cool villain representing Bad Stuff" is kind of the norm these days? I don't think Hela was there at all for representation, she was an obvious choice given Marvel Thor as an evil Asgardian they could use to represent the sins of the past and Cate Blanchett sold the shit out of it.
 
Hela wasn't especially deep or complex, but I thought she was fun and appropriately threatening. Given all that was in the movie, it worked for me.
 
Mechasaurian said:
So she's a boring central villain. Glad we agree. :V


The makers of the film made the creative choice to take at least as much time - and considerably more effort - characterising the Grandmaster than Hela, despite him being a silly parody of a character who is beyond being taken seriously. As a result, he not only has more personality, he actually functions better as a "personification of imperialism," thanks to traits such as his squeamishness in referring to his slaves as "slaves."
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Thats just a side effect of casting Jeff Goldblum
 
What annoyed me was they rolled up to perfectly fine characters into one. If you're gonna introduce a long lost sister then use the right one
 
They might have to pay Neil Gaiman a extra fee to use Angela, and we all know Disney dislikes that...
 
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