Thor: Ragnarok

Few action pictures manage to stick the landing quite like Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi’s 2017 release that still gets passed around by people who swear it’s underrated. The film’s own tagline — “No hammer. No problem.” — tells you almost everything about the tone it’s going for.

At its core, the plot goes like this: Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok, the destruction of his home-world and the end of Asgardian civilization, at the hands of a powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. Carrying it all is a cast led by Chris Hemsworth, with Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett rounding out an ensemble that never feels wasted.

The reason people keep recommending Thor: Ragnarok usually has less to do with the plot and more to do with what it’s actually about. Threads of aftercreditsstinger and alien planet run through the film, giving the action elements an emotional undercurrent that keeps things from feeling weightless. You can also feel death of father and duringcreditsstinger working in the background, quietly shaping how later scenes land even when they’re not the explicit focus.

Labeled as action, adventure, comedy and science fiction, Thor: Ragnarok spends most of its runtime proving that genre tags are more like ingredients than instructions — Taika Waititi blends them into something that reads as its own thing rather than a checklist of conventions.

What Taika Waititi gets right here is restraint: knowing when to let a scene breathe and when to move on, a skill that separates competent action filmmaking from the kind people actually remember. Look further down the cast list and you’ll find Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, each handed at least one scene that earns its place in the finished film.

The runtime, 131 minutes, is used efficiently — there’s very little fat on this one. Behind the scenes, Marvel Studios backed the production, giving Taika Waititi the resources to fully realize the vision. Made on a budget of $180,000,000, the film went on to earn $855,301,806 worldwide — a number that speaks for itself.

Fans of Taika Waititi’s other work will recognize the fingerprints immediately, but Thor: Ragnarok stands fine on its own even without that context. Nearly 9 years on, Thor: Ragnarok hasn’t lost much of its charge — if anything, it plays better with a little distance. It’s a detail easy to miss on a first viewing of Thor: Ragnarok, but it rewards anyone paying close attention. That kind of craftsmanship is easy to take for granted until you watch a lesser film try the same thing and fail. Little touches like that are why the film keeps finding new defenders long after its initial release. It’s the sort of small decision that separates a good action film from a merely competent one. None of it feels accidental — Thor: Ragnarok is the product of choices made with real intention, and it plays that way from start to finish. That’s ultimately the difference between a film people watch once and one they keep coming back to, and Thor: Ragnarok lands closer to the latter.