"Thor: Ragnarok" is Fluffy Fun

I have to admit, I had been feeling the "capeshit fatigue" of late.  It took longer to set in with me than with movie critics, sure, and there's a good reason for that.  When I go see a superhero movie, it's time to turn my brain off and enjoy myself.

That changed with Spider-Man: Homecoming.  This was… a misfire.  Not a bad movie, not a bad Marvel movie, just a bad Spider-Man movie.  Yes, worse at being a Spider-Man movie than Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  Because at least those movies had Peter Parker in them.  But Homecoming had this weird amalgamation of Peter Parker and Miles Morales as its main character, and frankly (since they weren't going to just retcon the Raimi trilogy into the MCU like they should have done if they were clever), they ought to have just gone all in with Miles as the MCU's sole, official Spider-Man.  Then it wouldn't have felt so mixed up and disjointed to have Ned (a.k.a. Expy Ganke) in the movie, and any reference at all to Ben Parker not in the movie.

Hell, the only thing to really like about it was Keaton, but (snowmen aside) when do you ever not like Michael Keaton?  I mean, come on—he was Johnny Dangerously!

But Thor: Ragnarok has done a lot to redeem the MCU in my eyes after the hot mess that was Homecoming.  (I won't comment on the Inhumans; I never read their comic, and I didn't follow Agent Carter or Agents of SHIELD, so I didn't feel the need to even watch the pilot episode.)  Ragnarok is funny—really funny, more so than Guardians I thought—but the humor never detracts from the action or the drama.  It's always a hoot to see Hiddleston and Ruffalo doing their thing.  Hemsworth is fun, Goldblum is a riot, and Cate Blanchett is a showstopper whenever she's there chewing scenery.

But the best part of Ragnarok?  Right up there with Keaton's Vulture?  Tessa Thompson in the Valkyrie armor.  Because, yowza.

Cue Tex Avery wolf noises.

So, yeah, I'm on board again with the genre at least through Infinity War.  But I'm not sure I can say the same for Justice League.  Wonder Woman was an all right film (in a "Thor does the Captain America thing" sort of way), and Gal Gadot has once-in-a-generation movie star charisma; but I finally saw Batman v Superman (the morning before I saw Thor: Ragnarok, in fact), and—yikes.  What were these people even thinking?  And now you have the Justice League trailers giving away (what is probably) Batman's one good joke and showing the Flash looking and sounding a little too much like a caffeine-hopped Sheldon Cooper.

It's just a little bit too on the nose, isn't it?

…Yeah.  Not sure if I'm going to bother with this one.  But here's hoping that there will be a Wonder Woman 2 before the DC Cinematic Universe collapses under the weight of its own bad decisions, right?