Here come the men (and women) in black. Okay, first things first: If Tessa Thompson doesn’t get to cover Will Smith’s OG Men in Black theme song for the end credits of this spinoff / reboot / whatever we’re calling it this time, I am going to be DISPLEASED. But in all honesty, turning this thing into a Thor: Ragnarok reunion just guaranteed a blockbuster hit — and we are, as the children say, here for it.
This year, Marvel Studios is celebrating 10 years of the MCU — an impressive length of time, to be sure, but even more impressive given the number of films they’ve released since 2008. (Black Panther is the 18th movie, FYI.) The game-changing studio is celebrating this milestone all year long, starting with a massive class photo (Academy Awards-style) in which they’ve assembled all 79 stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s so many familiar faces, in fact, that we had to crop some of them out in the above photo.
In the Norse mythological tradition, the term Ragnarök refers to a great series of cataclysmic events through which the slate of Earth may be struck completely, wiped clean, and started anew. It’s like a slightly more optimistic version of the apocalypse, wherein two survivors will begin again in a purer, kinder world. So when Marvel revealed that the third installment in Thor’s solo series of films would be titled Thor: Ragnarok, everyone knew what was up. This is not Thor: Day at the Beach or Thor: Light Picnic. In the parlance of “the streets,” it’s going down.