Nearly seven months through 2017, I’ve felt like the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok has been the best one seen this year. It had the right combination of spectacle, surprise, and humor. (Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” driving the action certainly helped, too.)
But it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Marvel may have topped that first preview with the new Ragnarok trailer shown at Comic-Con. With that first trailer covering the initial premise and revealing the surprise of the Hulk being in the movie, the new look at Thor: Ragnarok focuses a bit more on the characters.
In particular, we get a sense of what has been rumored and reported for quite some time during Ragnarok‘s production, that this is largely a buddy movie featuring Thor and Hulk. But there are plenty of more surprises in this new trailer regarding the Hulk, as you’ll see. Check it out:
Director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople), along with Ragnarok’s costume and set designers, are significantly influenced by legendary Marvel artist and Thor co-creator Jack Kirby. The bright colors, crackling energy and towering, tightly packed cityscapes with grand architecture look like they were taken right from a Marvel Comics page. (Meanwhile, the battle between Hela and Valkyrie with her fellow warriors look like a Frank Frazetta painting come to life.)
This looks unlike any Marvel movie seen before, as if it all takes place on the cover of a prog rock album.
With the goddess of death Hela (Cate Blanchett) taking over Asgard, Thor needs to return to his home and save his people. Exiled to the planet Sakaar, where he’s forced to fight in gladiator matches, Thor and Hulk join forces with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to escape.
At some point, Hulk turns back into Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for some witty banter about who’s tougher. But the standout moments of this trailer come when Banner is in his larger, greener, raging form. Sporting a crew cut, we see Hulk take on a giant Fenris wolf and hold a conversation with Thor.
During Marvel’s Comic-Con presentation, Ruffalo explained that Hulk has stayed in that form for two years, wanting nothing to do with Banner. Along the way, he developed a vocabulary, but it’s like that of a two-year-old. All the better to take on giant fiery demons like Surtur, which we see at the very end of the trailer. (And if you were a fan of Walt Simonson’s Thor comics in the 1980s, Surtur looks like one of his epic splash-page images brought to the screen)
Ultimately, however, this is a Thor movie and by the end of this film, it looks like he gets his thunder back. (That probably shouldn’t be a surprise.) Does he do so without his hammer Mjolnir? That would be intriguing in a man makes the hammer, not the other way around story development.
Thor: Ragnarok descends from the skies into theaters on Nov. 3.
Check out the new #ThorRagnarok #SDCC poster that just debuted in Hall H! pic.twitter.com/SjlqSHH2sX
— Thor (@thorofficial) July 23, 2017
