The latest outing for the totally ripped Aussie God of Thunder and his big swinging hammer was quite the campest film I can recall seeing. At least that is since Guardians of the Galaxy (the first one, not the second, which was just shit).
Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok is a cinematic version of this norty lollipop: ‘With real fruit taste’.
Thor, love him and his guns to bits, is a very dull, earnest, ponderous character – especially with Hemsworth’s ‘Norwegian’ accent which sounds like the Swedish chef from The Muppets trying to do Arnie.
And this despite the big hammer, lightning and the divine, spectacular sporno bod – displayed in the nowadays obligatory topless, sexily-lit-from-below-scene.
Short of getting naked and oiled up for the whole movie—which would make the action scenes a little slippy—he desperately needs camp relief. Tom Hiddleston, playing his ‘Trickster’ brother Loki (with an RSC – i.e. ‘gay’ to Americans – accent), has provided it in previous iterations, but perhaps because of the camp competition in the form of Guardians of the Galaxy, here he’s got serious backup in the form of Cate Blanchett & Jeff Goldblum (he dubs Thor ‘Sparkles’) – and the Guardians style art direction provide that in glittery, dayglo spades.
In fact, it’s difficult to decide who is the campest out of this bunch of campers – though perhaps Blanchett wins because of that hat and the fact that as she reminds us, repeatedly: ‘I’M THE GODDESS OF DEATH!’.
But the campest scene in a supercamp movie must be when Thor and his brother Loki visit Earth (image at top), apparently disguised as a bickering gay couple on their way to The Eagle to use separate back rooms.
There is also another twisted bromance – between Thor and Hulk. At one point they are living together in a jock penthouse, owned, like their asses, by the queeny Goldblum character. They bond, but are super-competitive, in a bro-ish way.
This competitiveness obviously has a sexual dimension. After soaking in the hot tub, Hulk moves to step out, and the God of Thunder who is full-clothed, is suddenly terrified at the prospect of seeing Hulk’s pee-pee and pleads “NO! NO!” Hulk ignores him. A shaken Thor then complains “that’s in my brain now”. Though it seems it was there all along, dear.
We can speculate that Sparkles – sorry, Thor – is especially preoccupied because a) Hulk’s tool is probably even bigger than Thor’s hammer and b) His hammer has already been crushed to painful smithereens in the hand of a cackling Cate Blanchett/Goddess of Death.
Thor’s reaction to seeing Hulk’s monster meat is played for nervous laughs and gets them in the cinema. But depends on a very American disavowal. Of course, everyone wants to see Hulk’s mutant, green, CGI penis.
We don’t, alas. But I guess there’s always the next instalment.