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Reply Subj: So, have any of our posters around the world seen Thor yet? Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 at 03:00:29 pm EDT (Viewed 954 times) | |||||||
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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