The Overdue Comedy of <i>Thor: Ragnarok</i>

When Marvel Studios released the original Thor in 2011, it was their trickiest franchise to date: This time the hero was not an irradiated Earthling or a guy in a metal suit, but a surfer-blond extraterrestrial who also happened to be a Norse god with a magic hammer.

Wisely, the studio chose to forego (as the comic eventually had) his alter ego as a with a walking stick that could suddenly make him—boom!— the God of Thunder. (Way too .) But the franchise has been a balancing act from the start. The first film had the that one might have expected from its director, Kenneth Branagh; the second capitalized on the realization that its titular hero, played by Chris Hemsworth, was than his Asgardian adopted brother and nemesis, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).