The REAL test of this fully operational movie studio will be Thor: Ragnarok.

Well, the days when Marvel/Disney could laugh maniacally and turn obscure comic book intellectual properties into endless streams of cash have certainly come to a middle: “Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios‘ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opened to an estimated $145 million in 4,347 domestic theaters this weekend, an average of $33,368 per location. …Combined with the domestic gross, the estimated global weekend of $269 million contributes to a global overall sum of $428 million after 13 days of play.” There’s a reason why they made sure to note that there was going to be a third movie; the Mouse already knew that this one was going to be a monster. Call it science, call it art, call it arcane powers granted through a sorcerous pact made with supernatural forces, but the writing was literally on the wall for this one.

Which is why I’m interested to see how Thor: Ragnarok does. That particular cinematic thread of the MCU has always been somewhat hit-or-miss; the first two weren’t bad films, either one of them, but they weren’t entirely in-sync, either.  I think that they’re going to aim for fairly broad comedy this time, weirdly enough (it’s called Thor: Ragnarok, after all): director Taika Waititi has a name for funny, and is actually the person who did those Team Thor videos. Which suggests to me that said videos may have been designed to market-test how people would react to the character’s silliness being ratcheted up a notch or two.

Because this is the Mouse that we’re talking about. Those guys routinely do this sort of thing for kids’ movies all the time. Now it’s our turn! …Which I am frighteningly kind of OK with, as long as they do a good job of it.