Spoiler Review: The Good and Bad
I saw the movie and loved it. As the title implies, there be spoilers here so unless you've seen it or don't care to be spoiled TURN BACK NOW!!!! The tl;dr is that I really dug it.
The Good:
As usual, the Thor/Loki dynamic is top notch. Their relationship has evolved in really interesting ways, especially by the end.
Odin's farewell was really touching. He actually expressed love for BOTH his sons and Loki looked heartbroken when he said this.
Hulk vs Thor is so badass. At first, I wasn't so excited since we already saw a Thor/Hulk fight in Avengers but looking back, it wasn't as brutal as it could have been. There was a nice back and forth here with both of them smashing the hell out of each other. It was nice that Thor had a hammer for most of it, too and his power returned briefly so we could get a semblance of a classic Hulk/Thor battle. They even poked fun at Black's Widow's lullaby and the Loki ragdolling. Loved Loki shouting "Yes, that's how that feels!".
The movie looks gorgeous. There were a lot fo great shots, the sets looked amazing, and I generally loved the look of it. Ditto for the music.
The opening fight with Surtur, Hela's battle against Asgard, and the climax were all really well done. Oh, and the escape from Sakaar. Really, all the action scenes.
Goldblum really was at peak Goldblum here.
We finally get some character development from Hulk. We always get things from Banner's POV, but we rarely get to see Hulk's personality outside of him breaking stuff.
Valkyrie was really fun and witty. The trailers didn't do her justice.
Heimdall acting as the leader of the rebellion was not expected. They always find awesome things to do with him in these movies.
Carl Urban and Cate Blanchet were fun to watch as always.
I liked that Tony Stark can still manage to be a dick to Thor even when he's not around (the "Point Break" bit on the quinjet).
Lots of great easter eggs like Thor threatening to decapitate Loki with Mjolnir (straight from Simonson's run) to Loki unleashing Surtur at the end (straight from Norse myth), to references to the past movies (the Tesseract, the fake Infinity Gauntlet, the Casket of Winters, etc.) Oh, and I'm 100% certain Loki pocketed the Tesseract.
The Bad
A lot of the jokes fell flat for me. I still chuckled here and there (the aforementioned "Point Break" joke for instance of Stan Lee's cameo were good), but I was surprised since I usually like Marvel's sense of humor and I loved Waititi's humor in Flight of the Conchords and What We Do In The Shadows.
As much as I like Cate Blanchet, I wish we got more Hela backstory. I felt like we could have gotten more of Asgard's darker days.
The pace at the beginning was a little rushed. It felt like we went from Surtur's realm, to Asgard, and then to Dr Strange's place in about 20 minutes.
I HATED how the Warrior's Three were unceremoniously killed off. Thankfully, Sif wasn't in the movie, so I guess she was spared. I always really liked her.