Thor: Ragnarok – Valkyrie Aiding The Escape
Valkyrie – or, Scrapper 142, as we’re initially introduced to her – spends the first act of Thor: Ragnarok being the excellent character that Thor must convince to help him if he’s to escape from the planet Sakaar with Hulk. During this process, we learn that she’s a former member of the Valkyrior – an all-female warrior force, sworn to protect the throne of Asgard. She’s been eking out an existence on Sakaar ever since the Valkyrior last clashed with Hela, the Goddess of Death, and she slaughtered most of Valkyrie’s fellow warriors. We also learn that she’s an enemy of Topaz (Rachel House), who’s a bodyguard of The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), who runs Sakaar.
Agree to help she does, and the end of act two is where she really reveals her true self, as she aids the heroes escape from Sakaar, and helps inspire a revolution among those enslaved there. She arrives at the meet point in her full battle dress, and proceeds to pilot the group out of the confines of The Grandmaster’s facility – with Topaz and a number of other vessels in hot pursuit. Valkyrie understands that, in order to allow their ships to escape, she is going to have to get up close to the enemy vessels – so she leaps from her ship and performs the most incredible feats of aerial parkour, eventually defeating the relentless Topaz.
At one point, Thor decides that he should leave the relative safety of the ship and lend a hand. “I should help her,” he says – and leaps from the ship, too. But Valkyrie has already done the bulk of the work, and the two leap back down in their vessel, and escape.
Get Out – The Sunken Place
Jordan Peele’s feature-length directorial debut, Get Out, is bursting with great moments. That the film also has one of the Best Movie Moments of the year is testament to the incredible talent at work in this project – in every department.
The Sunken Place sequence is almost certainly the most iconic moment because, not only do the performances hit exactly the right tone and story beats at that point in the narrative, but it’s also the moment that the reality of the story comes crashing in, and essentially takes us out at the knees. Why? Because we’ve never been presented with this subject matter, in this way, in this modern-day setting before.
Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) – a young black photographer – has travelled deep into the wealthiest, leafiest, whitest suburbs with his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). They’re set to spend a weekend visiting Rose’s family: her neurosurgeon father, Dean (Bradley Whitford); her hypnosis-specialising psychiatrist mother, Missy (Catherine Keener); and her medical student brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). The apprehension Chris feels at the prospect of meeting the Armitage family is not entirely dispelled by the warm reception he receives, and a lingering sense of unease begins to build during his stay at the house.
When he crosses paths with Missy one night, as he sneaks back into the house after smoking in the garden, she persuades him to join her for a hypnotherapy session. With the premise of curing his tobacco addiction – and also proving the efficacy of the method to the sceptical Chris – Missy invites him into her office and into her comfortable client chair. She gently needles Chris for information about his background and family, before making him relive the highly traumatic loss of his mother, during his childhood, when she was killed in a hit-and-run.
Missy – in her eerily calm and measured tones – latches onto the guilt Chris feels over his mother’s death, and uses it against him. She suddenly instructs him to “sink,” and Chris finds himself tumbling through a terrifying abyss, in which he feels no connection, and is utterly alone, while his body remains in the presence of Missy. Chris remains in The Sunken Place for what feels like a painfully long time before, just as suddenly, he wakes in bed with only a vague sensation of something having occurred, and a sudden feeling of revulsion about smoking.
At the point in the movie in which The Sunken Place sequence occurs, we do not yet know the true nature of the Armitage family, nor their ultimate intention. We only understand that they make Chris feel a sense of unease. The moment that Missy tells him, under hypnosis, to “sink” is the moment that the full horror of his situation hits us – even though it’s still some time yet until the real detail of the Armitage plan comes to light.
The horrific realization comes from this act of consumption and colonization – of this white woman seizing upon the experience and pain of a young black man, using it against him, and then disconnecting him from his own sense of self in service of her own agenda. It’s surely as brutally honest and accurate a depiction of abject cruelty as has ever been screened in theatres, and it hits its target with formidable accuracy.
The entire concept of The Sunken Place – and its use in a narrative context – is an example of outstanding filmmaking. From the moment it happens, the entire film stems from that word: “sink” – and its hideous power stays with us long after the end credits have rolled.