THOR

By Lowkey. 30/04/11, 10:02 am

I have argued about this movie with some folk over Twitter already, might as well make it official.

I thought it was vapid.

But it had a hot main character and pretty special effects, you say. But it's just a comic book movie, it's just supposed to be fun to watch, you say.

Okay, so my favourite movies are Brick and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. But my other favourite movies, the ones I watch repeatedly, are Van Helsing, the Fast & Furious franchise, and Iron Man 1&2. Just "fun" movies. Nice, simple storylines with almost-stereotypical characters. Fun.

What they don't have and Thor does, and the spoilers kick in here, are:

Loki the whining "i just wanted to be good enough & also evil" second son whose only character motivation is knocked into our head repeatedly in case we missed it, and not that good to begin with. I may be slightly hurt that my favourite god, who is supposed to be god of fire & mischief and have red hair got turned into a whinny bastard. That may have started with the comics - but for the first few minutes I actually went "awwwh yeaaah, they've made a real character out of Loki despite my wors------ no."
A fecking Astrophysicist "female lead" who has, in her super important book of facts she needs for her research, a doodle of some planets and who appears to fall in love with Thor because he's cut. She has no personality. She's a cheap plot piece.
A godling who has been arrogant and selfish and warlike for some thousands of years suddenly becomes a Good Guy - okay, this was always going to happen, but did they have to so blatantly smack us over the head with it? To go from needing to be fighting to - cliche of cliches - saving the children?

I loved the Gatekeeper, but he's always been my favourite Norse deity after Loki. And my space-obsession can't help but enjoy the idea of the rainbow bridge being this crazy thing that shoots folk across the universe. It's just... I enjoyed the last few comicbook films, so I was kind of excited for Thor, only to sit there considering leaving the cinema to get some icecream.

Thoughts & opinions?

By firecat70. 30/04/11, 03:37 pm

I couldn't disagree more. I loved it. I thought it was all kinds of awesome. I did not want to leave when it was over (btw, don't - there's a preview for the next movie at the end).

I thought Loki was really well done. He is essentially a shape shifter and he did that continously (both physically and with which side he was on). He was a mischevious prat who did things just because he thought it would be interesting which is total Loki style. I did get a bit sick of his whinging (daddy issues much?) but they had to make him dislikeable.
I thought Jane Foster was charming. When I first saw her character I though 'Oh great. Of course he has to fall in love with a sexy human. OF COURSE'. But I was glad she was there by the end of it. She was goofy, but also portrayed as very smart. I also liked the fact that she was obviously attracted to Thor (dem abs!) - it's nice to see the female gaze in a Hollywood movie. I loved how it was the man, not woman, as the sexy character - I liked that none of the female characters were really sexed up.
I don't really see how else they could have made Thor go from the king of arrogance to chillaxed dude in one movie. Plus, I get the feeling he is going to relapse a wee bit in the next movie. Got to take two steps backwards to go one step forwards and all that.
I agree that the Gatekeeper was amazing. He was so cool!

By Lowkey. 30/04/11, 04:06 pm

firecat70 wrote:: ... but they had to make him dislikeable.

In which parallel universe do you want to make any character, even a villain, "dislikeable"? It's always 100% more effective if we believe in the villain's motives and can see where he's coming from. You don't have to like him but as far as I'm concerned disliking a villain is a crap state of affairs. Besides the only way we actually see him being mischievous is that one of Thor's cronies offhandedly mentions that he's "always been mischievous". I don't know, I had such high hopes for him, as I do for most villains based on my favourite mythological characters.

firecat70 wrote:: She was goofy, but also portrayed as very smart.

Uh, where? They said she was an astrophysicist. Maybe they told us she was smart, but nowhere do we actually see her being especially genius. "Showing not telling". See "I DON'T HAVE TO START FROM SCRATCH" because she has her notebook. With pictures of planets in it. Doodled.

firecat70 wrote:: I liked that none of the female characters were really sexed up.

I will give you this one. But they weren't much use, either.

I mean, it had its good points, I'm sure; I just thought that (even?) as comic movies go it was underwhelming and empty.

By Le_Saboteur. 04/05/11, 06:15 am

Ithurial wrote:: [size=11] In which parallel universe do you want to make any character, even a villain, "dislikeable"? It's always 100% more effective if we believe in the villain's motives and can see where he's coming from. You don't have to like him but as far as I'm concerned disliking a villain is a crap state of affairs.

I'm not going to go into most of what you've said, except for this; you can think of a character as well-written even if they are not an easy character to like. Dislikeable does not necessarily mean a bad character. His character in this film is a pretty faithful portrayal of Loki from the comics (or at least from the Ultimate universe)- devious, envious, power-hungry and conflicted. You might think him bad, but a fair amount of your criticism seems to stem from your love of the Loki from Norse myth.

I thought the film was good. And it wasn't just the 'hot actor' and 'pretty special effects' as you so delicately put it; it was fun. I didn't find it empty at all. I thought it was a great representation of the comics- characters moreso than story- and the actors all did a great job of bringing that to the screen. The story was not at all convoluted (whereas the traditional Thor comic universe history is a bit crazy; like every other big-name franchise) and it was easy enough to follow for people that aren't fans. The dialogue was a bit tired in some places but it was pretty solid- not as quick as Iron Man, but then, they had Tony Stark to work with. This movie had its own kind of charm- boisterous. It being a pretty film and Chris Hemsworth being a babe are not the only good things about this movie.

Also; how should they have portrayed Jane being smart? I can't imagine there are too many astrophysicists in a typical theatre sitting.

By Kitty of Doom. 08/05/11, 08:45 am

I haven't read any of the comics but I did enjoy the film. I liked how they made Loki quite skinny, sharp and dark because it made him look hungry. I liked how they didn't make him wild because this interpretation allowed him to make a more complicated plan.

Spoiler:

Having said that, Loki quickly became my favourite character here.
I did find myself wondering exactly how the horses were able to gallop down the very smooth and presumably slippery rainbow bridge though. That and how they expected Odin NOT to notice the giant white light shooting out into space when they went to Bifrost.

Within 20 minutes I found myself seeing an idea for writing and spent the rest of the film working it out while watching but that's actually good because it prevents me from overanalysing too much like I did with the bridge scene.

By yummas. 08/05/11, 11:38 am

I get this movie is to understand who Thor is, but aren't most these new marvel films just really long advertisements for the avengers movie?

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