Thor Ranknrock (or whatever it was named)
After all the praise this got, I decided to watch this despite thinking the first 2 Thor movies were unwatchable un-riffed. My take-you put Micheal Bay in charge of a super hero movie and this is the crap you'd get. Give it a Queen soundtrack and it was Flash Gordon 1980 level camp and I despised campy 1980 Flash Gordon.
I do slightly envy you. I wish I had no concept of what a Michael Bay movie was like too.
Michael Bay movie = explosions and loud noises in place of character and plot develop = Thor 3
I'm starting to think you didn't actually see Thor: Ragnarok. You realize if a movie has explosions it doesn't mean that it DOESN'T have character and plot development, right? Because I think it has tremendous amount of character development and exploration, particularly for both the Hulk and Bruce Banner. The other thing is that while there's no problem with disliking the movie (though it is an opinion that causes me no end of confusion), it's a pretty false equivalency.
Bay and Waititi are radically different storytellers. Bay wants to portray a 13 year old boys idea of cool (or at least a 13 year old boy from the 90's) at the expense of good taste with a lack of empathy for collateral damage and an obsession with the bodies of young women (apparently, in one of the Transformers movies he goes into GREAT detail about laws regarding sex with minors, which is SUPER creepy). Also, the guy loves jokes with racial stereotypes.
Waititi seems interested in stories about characters being pushed out of their comfort zones and becoming stronger for it (a common storytelling technique, but I feel based on the three films I've seen by him, he's really interested in watching characters adjust to their new situations and stumble through them comedically before gaining some new tools). Though a lot of people die in Thor: Ragnarok, it plays one of two ways: that things have actually gotten serious or things have gotten blackly humourous. I certainly have noticed very little leering from the camera in the movie.
I'll accept that you might dislike both or that you might even think that Bay is better (an opinion that's hard to wrap my head around, but fine). But despite the fact that they are both directors who have made big Hollywood action movies, their approaches are radically different.