I made a point of not reading up too much on this movie prior to watching it and then I almost didn't go, expecting some heavy-handed operatic spectacle which has always been the side of the Thor movies I was least interested in. (Seriously, instead of Thor 1 as it was, give me two hours of that diner scene and I'm good.) Instead, this. Can't say I'm disappointed.
I agree ith a lot that has been said above - the way they handled the Warrior Three almost made me glad Lady Sif wasn't in this, although the movie could have used a few more female characters. The Marvel villain prtoblem continues but at least Cate Blanchett got a lot more to do than Christopher Eccleston. I really liked Skurge's arc. While predcitable, I liked that he completed it without much recognition. Nothing liker the GotG 2 space funeral for that guy, and I didn't miss that one bit.
The humor took some getting used to - it seemed a little too much of the same thing. I read somewhere that the self-deprecating thing and the undercutting of pathos is a specific Maori flavor of humor that Waititi brought into the franchise. But it felt a lot like some of the jokes in Doctor Strange that took some of that movie's thrust. Anyway, there's an understatement here that works great against the operatic bits - much like that diner scene in Thor 1 -, so I guess it's a glass half full for me. It also forces the characters to - often literally - pull themselves up and earn their standing, over and over.