Thor: Ragnarok First Trailer Explained: Asgard Faces Destruction

The first Thor: Ragnarok trailer, explained

Marvel Studios released the Thor: Ragnarok first trailer on April 10, 2017, about seven months before the film opened in U.S. theaters on November 3. The teaser runs on a simple promise: Asgard is about to fall, and the person who might stop it has lost his hammer, his freedom and, for the moment, his temper with an old teammate.

The villain gets the strongest beat. Hela, played by Cate Blanchett, appears in the trailer stopping Mjolnir in mid-flight with no visible effort and then breaking it. That matters because Mjolnir had a record by this point. It had survived the Chitauri invasion of New York in 2012, and in the same film Thor had traded blows with the Hulk without the hammer giving way. A threat that can casually end that run is a new kind of problem for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which had spent years building villains who were dangerous mostly because the plot said so.

The second big image is the arena. Thor is shown on the far side of the galaxy, stripped of his weapon and thrown into a gladiatorial contest, and the opponent walking out to meet him is the Hulk. Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner had last been seen flying away in a Quinjet at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, so his reappearance on a distant planet raised a question that the trailer did not answer: how did he get there, and was he ever coming back as Banner?

Then there is the tone. The score is Led Zeppelin's “Immigrant Song,” from the band's 1970 album Led Zeppelin III, with its famous line about the hammer of the gods. A song that matches a character's weapon this closely sets the film's mood at once: big, loud, tongue-in-cheek and in no hurry to look like the previous two Thor films. Taika Waititi, the New Zealand filmmaker behind What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, was in the director's chair, and the trailer is cut like a comedy that happens to have a world ending in it.

What the trailer shows, shot by shot

The footage opens on the threat to Asgard, with Hela in her horned headdress and the city burning around her. Mjolnir is stopped and then broken by her, which is the image the whole teaser is built around. Thor, for a second, looks like a man who has just learned his best trick has an expiry date.

The trailer then jumps to Sakaar, where Thor is a prisoner. The film's official synopsis describes the situation plainly: Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his hammer, and he must get back to Asgard before Ragnarok, the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization, can happen. Before he can leave, he has to survive a gladiatorial contest against the Incredible Hulk. The Hulk gets his own moment at the end of the teaser, when Thor greets him like a friendly face from work and the Hulk answers with a punch.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki gets a smaller piece of footage, flipping knives. Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie, Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster and Idris Elba's Heimdall are also in the cast. The teaser does not explain any of them; it is built to sell the mood, not the story.

Why Hela looked like a different kind of Marvel villain

Hela is a character with a long comics history; she first appeared in the 1960s as the ruler of the dead, loosely adapted from Hel in Norse mythology. In the film she is Odin's firstborn child, an idea the trailer only hints at. What the trailer does make clear is her scale. Where earlier villains attacked with armies, schemes or stolen technology, Hela shows up and takes apart the hammer that defined Thor.

The choice was good marketing. A hero who loses his signature weapon in the first trailer has something to prove for the next two hours, and the audience is already wondering how he gets it back, or whether he needs it at all. The question of what Thor is without Mjolnir turned out to be the film's central idea.

The setup: Thor, Hulk and the Ragnarok name

Ragnarök is the Norse myth of the end of the world, a foretold battle in which gods, giants and monsters destroy each other and the cosmos burns. Marvel's film uses the word in its literal sense, which gives the title more weight than a usual sequel subtitle. The official story summary says it outright: Thor must stop Ragnarok, and the cause is an all-powerful new enemy.

The film was the third Thor solo movie, after Thor in 2011 and Thor: The Dark World in 2013. The screenplay is credited to Eric Pearson, with a story credit for Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost. Marvel Studios produced it and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributed it.

How the film got to this trailer

The title Thor: Ragnarok was announced in October 2014, and The Dark World director Alan Taylor did not return. In October 2015, Waititi entered negotiations to direct. Marvel had looked at a sizzle reel he put together from clips of other movies, set to Led Zeppelin's “Immigrant Song,” which means the song in the teaser was there from the earliest pitch. Mark Ruffalo's return as Banner was being finalized the same month.

Cate Blanchett was confirmed as Hela in the first half of 2016, and in May of that year Marvel announced Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster and Karl Urban as Skurge. Principal photography began on July 4, 2016, at Village Roadshow Studios on Queensland's Gold Coast, under the working title Creature Report, and wrapped on October 28, 2016. Mark Mothersbaugh was hired to score the film.

The teaser did its job. The first trailer was viewed 136 million times in its first 24 hours, a figure that put it among the most-watched trailers of its moment. Marvel followed it in July 2017 at San Diego Comic-Con, where costumes were displayed and a new trailer and clips were shown, and the studio shot additional material in Atlanta that month, including the post-credits scenes.

Thor: Ragnarok first trailer at a glance

• Trailer release: April 10, 2017, with the film dated for November 3, 2017 in U.S. theaters.
• Director: Taika Waititi, who also provided the motion capture and voice for the rock creature Korg.
• Villain: Hela, played by Cate Blanchett, the film's Goddess of Death.
• Returning faces: Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner and the Hulk, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Anthony Hopkins as Odin.
• New faces: Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster, Karl Urban as Skurge.
• Music: “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin.

What the finished film did with the trailer

The teaser was honest about the main beats. In the finished film, Odin dies in Norway, which frees Hela, his firstborn, and she does destroy Mjolnir. Thor ends up on Sakaar, a junk-strewn planet run by the Grandmaster, and is sold as a gladiator. The fight with the Hulk takes place in the Contest of Champions, and the Grandmaster arranges for the Hulk to win.

Where the trailer is quiet is the ending. Loki, who rules Asgard while posing as Odin, ends up helping Thor, and the two brothers reconcile. Along the way Loki places the crown of Surtur, the fire demon, in the Eternal Flame, which revives Surtur and brings about the destruction of Asgard. Ragnarok happens, as the title promised, but the Asgardians survive it by leaving. That is a sharper turn than the first trailer suggests, and it explains how the teaser could focus so firmly on destruction without giving away the film's final decision.

For viewers who only know the finished film, the teaser is a useful snapshot of how Marvel was selling it. Everything in the first Thor: Ragnarok trailer is still in the movie, but it is arranged to look like a doomsday story, when the film turns out to be closer to a buddy comedy with a doomsday story attached. Thor and the Hulk, Thor and Loki, Thor and Valkyrie: the pairings carry the movie, and the trailer plants all three.

The first trailer gave the clearest signal about what kind of film Thor: Ragnarok was going to be. It was less solemn, more colorful and willing to joke at the expense of its own hero, and the trailer's final shot, a punch from a friend, summed that up in about three seconds. Anyone looking back at the Thor: Ragnarok first trailer today can see the finished film's whole personality in it.

Sources

• Thor: Ragnarok, Wikipedia — cast, crew and release details