Leaders must make us laugh. It’s like men found out—after intense declarations and smouldering eyes failed to do the trick when it came to women—that the fastest wooing is wit-based. Ponderous speeches and jerky heroism are all very good, but a majestic protagonist who occasionally slips on a banana peel is irreplaceable. Thor: Ragnorak is a superhero movie, which gives us a goofy god. The joke is always on Him. His people and his audiences follow him to the riskiest precipices just for a laugh.
Thor doesn’t get all serious about the humour business with sophisticated new age banter or a tragic subplot like in Deadpool, where the sound of someone’s popcorn could cost you complicated witticisms between the lead pair, Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin.
Thor moves along very James Thurberishly, with each scene morphing into some other seemingly on-the-spot imagined up preposterous scene until the story is the sum total of many an awry imagination. With Chris Hemsworth just about staying this side of hamming, there’s a cartoonish and vampish Cate Blanchett whose makeup team seems to have relied heavily on crayons and a Tom Hiddleston in his lean-mean comic couture.
If, like me, you have wandered into the theatre without flashbacks of former franchises, the film could resemble a cinematic version of Pierre Bayard’s book How to talk about books you haven’t read. You know how you can say James Joyce’s Ulysses is so like Odyssey without having set eyes on either book. Thor enables audiences to knowledgably refer to all other characters—the Incredible Hulk, for instance, and Hela, the God of Death—as familiar folks.
And the Valkyrie, Tessa Thompson with such smudged eyes, may take herself seriously, but she tumbles down in a drunken mess when we first meet her. Thor’s failings are divine. A hero who knows he cannot stop an impending haircut with lofty allusions to sacred relatives, who then pleads in a tiny voice, but is still sheared. Empty-handed, hammer blown to smithereens, father dead, siblings vile, but forging on with one-liners, that’s the mighty god of thunder for you. Or, as Jeff Goldblum calls him: ‘sparkly’.
True to their Marvel Studios roots, the hero here is anti-heroism too, giving him ample scope for stand-up comedy. Pairing him with Mark Ruffalo’s Banner is a punch-line in itself. How magical to see the ex-Mr Hulk go all girlish on us; when asked to be part of a newly named gang called Revengers, he seems unsure in his own delicately slapstick way.
Any lord, god, guide, guru, god-man, minister or mentor who is trying his best to keep us in splits is obviously not taking his halo too seriously. Whacky deities can get away with anything. If only the concerned captains of all countries added a ha-ha to their vocab, the readiness to get a joke, or at least developed a sense of humour, voting would be a tickle. As Thor says to his people who are now space migrants: “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people.” Brotherhood above borders, relationships over real estate...Here’s to a new map, inclusive and droll. Only gods with giggle fits need apply.
Shinie Antony
@shinieantony