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THE SPOILER-FREE BIT:
The kids and I caught Thor 3D at the weekend. This is the first 3D movie I've seen at a cinema and I found the process somewhat distracting from my enjoyment of the movie. In some places it worked well, but for the main part it interfered with my engagement with the actual story. I'd have been much happier with Thor 2D.
3D aside, I had fun watching the movie. It was a great blockbuster and an enjoyable way to spend some time. It may be attacked as something of a mish-mash, with some loose plot ends and pacing flaws, and these are fair criticisms, but even if the sum of the parts didn't exceed the whole there were some pretty damn good parts in there. It's a worthy piece to rank alongside the Iron Man movies.
I actually felt Thor was about ten minutes too short, with a few of the combat/action scenes needing another act each to ramp up the threat an extra notch and to give Jane Foster a reason for being in the movie.
Let's look at the detail, with some middling spoilers from here on...
The good:
Brannagh doesn't shy away from delivering the Lee/Kirby Asgard. It's a shiny Kirby realm eternal that looks spectacular. The main characters all look pretty good (Volstagg is a bit thin) and most are dressed in their Kirby or Simonson outfits. Even Thor's much-depreciated leather outfit manages to catch the intention of the original costume and works pretty well on screen.
The hammer makes wonderful metallic noises when it whomps things.
There's a reasonable trade-off between Asgardian Shakespeare-speak and modern English. When the Asgardians get cross they tend to speak more "olde-worlde".
SHIELD is presented quite ambiguously, with a meaty role for Agent Coulson. Special Agent Barton was a very pleasant surprise and his personality seemed spot on.
Sif, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg are all well portrayed and each has a strong role in the first half of the movie. And there's a great line where a SHIELD observer warns that "Xena, Robin Hood, and Jackie Chan have just arrived". The initial mission featuring these four, Thor, and Loki does a great job of defining each of them.
Thor himself has a genuine story arc as he goes from being Flash Thompson to becoming a true hero. The moment where he finds he's not worthy to lift Mjolnir is a great dramatic turn and beautifully sets up the payoff where he can heft the hammer. The actor managed to carry off the quiet scenes as well as the heroic ones, demonstrating a real range.
The "map" of the Nine Realms is very well done.
The post-credits sequence offers a direct lead-in to the Avengers movie, reveals that Loki might be behind the formation of the team, and sets up a potential tie-in from the Captain America movie too. Another "Oh my!" ending.
The bad:
The movie shies away from baldly admitting that these guys are Norse gods, or that they live in a magical realm. If you want to believe that these are aliens who were mistaken for gods by Vikings and that their power comes from very advanced super-science you can do. It's one area where the script feels like it lost confidence in its ability to draw its audience along; which given it blatantly includes frost giants, the Casket of Ancient Winters etc.seems odd.
Balder is on holiday. No sign of him anywhere in this movie.
Jane Foster, a scientist interested in dimensional physics in this version, appears not to have anything other than a default superhero girlfriend personality. All the funny remarks and great play-off expressions go to her female friend. Jane not being a brave compassionate nurse/paramedic robs the character of one of the personality drivers that could explain Thor's attraction to her. And she's pretty much the only main character who doesn't have any contribution to make to solving the threat in the story.
Sam Jackson didn't seem that excited about his 45-second screentime and seemed to phone in his Nick Fury. The impact of his appearance was lessened because we'd not seen him at all before the post-credits sequence to set him up.
Somewhere in the plot meetings somebody accidentally edited out the bit that explains why Odin needs a snooze and why he might faint suddenly in the middle of a conversation with Loki. The essential two lines of exposition just aren't there.
The indifferent:
It's great that Loki gets more motivation and more development than the average superhero movie villain. However, on a first viewing I was left uncertain about what was going on in Loki's mind at any given time; a natural featrure of Loki, you might say, but when it leaves me puzzled as to why he's doing what he's doing even after the film's ended it's not a good thing. I applaud offering Loki some depth, but I could have used a few more depth markers. Why did Loki decide to commit genocide on the frost giants including his true father?
The battle scenes were well done but the two big set-piece finale battles both felt too easy for Thor. When you put Thor up against the Destroyer it should require a supreme effort; this was just a tough fight. Thor didn't even rip his cloak. Then the last battle with Loki felt a little anticlimactic. They stand on the rainbow bridge and have a spear and hammer fight with some minor illusion trickery. I didn't feel it served the drama. Meanwhile, the ice giant invasion of Asgard and the bravery of the Warriors Three and Sif in, um, taking Heimdall to hospital, happened entirely offscreen. These fights needed to be better storyboarded with better pacing.
So, this movie's a strange beast, flawed by very watchable, different from other superhero fare but sometimes uncertain because of it, strong in many places but lacking in some key battles, excellent in offering character yet occasionally failing to convey motivation. I'd recommend seeing it. I'd watch it again myself. I'd really like to see Thor 2 learn from this start and put all these elements together again with those tiny tweaks to take it from good to great.
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The most Avengery Avengers out there right now are the ones in the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes TV series. I’ve been favourably impressed with how well the creators seem to understand the characters – personalities, motivations, visuals, and movement styles. I’ve been dazzled by seeing such faithful representations of so many weird and wonderful Marvel characters.
And now the series is back. Herein are spoilers for episodes up to #24 “This Hostage Earth†(that sounds familiar). I’ve yet to watch the other two episodes recently broadcast in the UK.
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One of the nice things about the animated series is that it’s not afraid to mine quite diverse eras of the comic’s history and to draw in a few unexpected surprises from elsewhere. Hence “The Casket of Ancient Winters†should have really had a Walt Simonson credit somewhere. Although the original storyline did include the Avengers and even crossed over into their book for one issue it mostly played out in Thor’s title. I don’t think Maleketh the Dark Elf even appeared in Avengers. Still, this mystical threat serves to allow some good interaction between Thor and Iron Man, and their episode-long arc is about them coming to a grudging respect and understanding of each other. The Panther continues to be the diplomat/politician of the group. Nice to see brief cameos of Torch and Thing.
“Hail Hydra!†is the first episode I felt perhaps relied too much on knowledge of backstory. In very short order a new or casual viewer needed to be filled in on Hydra (who were the enemy in World War 2, since Nazis still can’t be depicted in any show that the studios hope to sell to German TV stations), on AIM, on the defection/betrayal of the Black Widow, on Cap’s world war 2 status, on Bucky, on SHIELD, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill, and on the cosmic cube. At least. Even then, the shock ending – the cube snatching Bucky to the present day? – didn’t really make clear what had happened or who this person was. However, Cap’s interactions in this episode were excellent, from his confidence in Hawkeye’s ability to make impossible shots to his comments to the Hulk: “In my day we had a word for what you are: hero.†And weakened Cap was properly indefatigable against Baron Struker. Special mention goes to Hawkeye’s classic Ant-Man delivery arrow.
“Ultron-5†and “The Ultron Imperative†were the payoff on the long-running Ultron plotline. This story was actually set up better than the comics original; a benefit of hindsight. Ultron had already been built up as formidable in previous adventures. All beats were right, including Hank’s angst, Ultron’s reactions to Jan, and the growing threat of a rapidly-evolving and very personal menace to the team. That said there seemed to be one beat absent. Why bother guest-starring Jane Foster early in the story if you’re not going to show her reaction to Thor’s apparent death? Maria Hill was just as annoying in this episode as she is in the comics, a mixture of arrogance and ignorance supposedly justified by told-not-shown tuff-girl competence, so I guess they got that characterisation right too. The good stuff far outweighed the not-so-good though, and Thor even got to say “Ultron, we would have words with thee.â€Â
And so to “This Hostage Earthâ€Â, in which Loki’s plans seem to be finally panning out. I’m hoping this is the arc that will reveal that Loki was behinds the breakouts in the first episode. The best things in this episode were the villains. Each was well characterised, each had a moment, and none were underplayed. This is the way to go; the Masters of Evil are the varsity of baddies and they should be a threat. I’m unclear where Grey Gargoyle went after the pre-credits sequence but the rest really got their licks in. Zemo was scheming at his Nicieza best, planning to double-cross gods when it was convenient and prepared with the kit to do it. The map of the nine worlds was a nice touch. The only downside of this episode was that it was more a Justice League-style “team split up on solo quests for the seven maguffins†scenario that a typical Avengers plot (ignoring for now the Avengers/Defenders war), so we didn’t get as much inter-team interaction as we usually enjoy.
Best things about the series so far are: Cap, inspiring, commanding, and straight from Lee/Kirby; Hawkeye, brash, bigmouthed and brilliant; Jan’s dialogue, ranging quite properly from ditzy to heroic. Worst thing about the series so far: Lack of the real flesh-and-blood Jarvis.
IW
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