Thor: The Dark World (a movie review post)

 

MCU #8

So it seems that my general feelings about the Thor movies may have changed over the years. You can read my initial reaction to this movie here. Actually, I'm sure any shifting in feelings about the movies has to do with my feelings about the MCU and how it differs from the MU, which is fine and good. It's a much different time and place now than it was in the 60s when these characters where first being born, and the MCU should be reflective of that, not trying to force a forgotten (except by Boomers) culture on us. Back when these movies were being released, I was still reconciling the difference.

Basically, that means I have come to like the Thor movies, overall, more than I did upon their releases, at least these first two. I love Hemsworth in the role and can't think of anyone who could do the job better than him.

That said, I think I still prefer The Dark World to the first Thor movie and the reason is, simply, Loki. Loki is much more... Loki... in this one, which is as it should be. Also, I don't know of anyone who could do Loki better than Tom Hiddleston, though, thinking about it, I wouldn't mind an Owen Wilson interpretation of the character. I guess they provided the next best thing by having Wilson in the Loki TV show.

Anyway... The Dark World.

I think Natalie Portman is better in this one, which, for me, isn't saying a lot. She's the weakest part of the Thor movies for me. I don't know why, but I have a hard time with her as Jane Foster. Or maybe it's the way the character is written. She gives off a very damsel-in-distress vibe that I find off-putting.

On the other hand, I love Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard, so there's that.

Jaimie Alexander doesn't get enough props for her performance as Sif. Sif, in general, doesn't get enough attention. She's a great character, and Alexander is wonderful in the role. For Dark World, in particular, the looks she shoots at Foster are gold. And, yet, when she's called on to save Jane, she does it without hesitation.

The biggest change for me upon looking back at the Thor movies is that I have changed my position on the Fandral situation. Possibly, it's due to my general feelings about Zachary Levi working in my subconscious over time, but I think he's much better in the role than Josh Dallas. Of course, the part calls for Cary Elwes but, then, they would have had to kill Fandral in much the same way that Shakespeare had to kill Mercutio.

The only real failing of Dark World is the dark elves. I think that the white masks are supposed to be sinister. Or, maybe, creepy. They're too close to the comical line. I don't understand the reason for the masks. Maybe they're part of the source material; I don't know, but there's no reason provided for them. Then there's Eccleston as Malekith... Fortunately, the role doesn't ask for more from him because the level of acting provided there is about all he's got.

Speaking of the dark elves, why do they have eyes? This has nothing to do with the movie: It's just an errant thought that went through my head as I was thinking about the masks. They are a race born in darkness, before light even existed: Why do they have eyes? No, see, if they had been eyeless, that would have been freaky. Nightmarish, even.

Final analysis is that I thoroughly enjoyed The Dark World. You get not only the Loki-est version of Loki, but you get to see Thor really coming into his own. A Thor who will stand up against his own father, which is no small thing when your father is Odin, to do what is right and is willing to take the consequences for those actions. It's a complete reversal of the Thor we see in the first movie, a Thor who is rebelling against his father for his own glory and is pissed off that there are consequences.

The new MCU rankings!
1. The Avengers
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Iron Man
4. Thor: The Dark World
5. Thor
6. Iron Man 3
7. Iron Man 2
8. Incredible Hulk (Maybe he's dropping in rank just because he's so much heavier than the other heroes? Norton's ego does weigh a lot.)

SHAZAM! (a movie review post)

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this review, I'm going to say two things:
1. SHAZAM! is good. It's fun.
2. It's by far the best DC movie that Warner Brothers has been able to put together.
So let me go back to point one: SHAZAM! is good. Not great, not even very good, just... good. If I were ranking all of the Marvel (MCU) movies, I'd probably put Iron Man 3 at the bottom of that list; SHAZAM! rises to about that level. Put another way, it's around the level of most of Fox's X-Men movies. Not the best X-Men movies, just the bulk of them. Like definitely better than the dumb Wolverine origin movie.

It feels somehow appropriate to me that the only movie Warner Brothers has been able to pull off with a solid story (since Batman Begins) is with a character DC stole from an independent comic publisher.
But that's not a story for this post, and one you can look up for yourself if you're so inclined.

As with most DC movies these days, they're a little sparse on the origin side of things. Not with Billy Batson, per se, but with everything else. Mostly with anything and everything to do with The Seven Deadly Sins. There's no explanation provided as to what these are other than that, basically, the previous champion, some thousands of years ago, let them out of a box all Pandora style because he failed to be pure of heart. But, without a religious context, none of this make any sense, and they don't provide a religious context other than "Wisdom of Solomon." [And I have to say, if the Wisdom of Solomon is supposed to be one of Captain Marvel/Shazam's super powers, they really don't put it to good use.]

Then there's the wizard... Um... Why? I mean, not why is there a wizard, but why all of it? Why is he the last of seven; meaning, why didn't the wizards do anything about replacing the wizards as they began to die off? How did he come to be the last one? That seems more than a little on the stupid side. And I'm assuming there are seven wizards to stand opposed to The Seven Deadly Sins but, again, why? None of this is explained. Also, he's goofy. It's good that he wasn't in more of the movie.

However, in most ways, the actors make up for the deficits in the story. Zachary Levi is Chuck but on a more epic scale. He's perfect for the role, and it may be DC's first real bit of "nailed it" casting. Well, I think Ben Affleck is pretty spot on for Batman, but I may be in the minority for that. Asher Angel is also great as Billy Batson, though he plays Billy a bit more rough around the edges than Levi plays Shazam. Levi certainly brings a lot more "wide-eyed innocence" to the adult version of Billy than Angel brings to the 14-year-old version. But, you know, that's fine. They were both enjoyable to watch.

Mark Strong is fine as the villain. The character has no real depth, so it's not like he had to do more than just be menacing. I don't think anyone else could have done anymore with the role than he did. Well... Maybe Nicolas Cage; he has a certain kind of crazy that might have gone well in the role.

And not be spoilery, but look away if you don't want to be spoiled.

I think the biggest failing of the movie is the ending. DC/Warner Brothers seems to be intent on having huge mega-battle endings. Like ending Wonder Woman with a battle with the God of War. It was an unnecessary jump that I think hurt the film. And, so, like that, SHAZAM! ends with a battle wherein he creates the whole Shazam family. The movie does no real setup for it, and it ruined a confrontation that should have come down to Shazam against Dr. Sivana. There was no need for the too large battle with all of the Sins and the added... shazams? It didn't make the ending better. It was just added muddle.

But, you know, all of the stuff after the beginning of the movie and before the ending is great! Don't let it sound like I thought it was a bad movie. It wasn't. It was totally fine and enjoyable and worth seeing on the big screen if you want to see it. It's a step in the right direction for DC. It's small, but it's a step.

We're Not Worthy (a pop culture post)

Okay, so, probably, we are. Worthy, that is. After all, no one's gonna turn you away from a movie you're paying money to see, right? Well, at least not very often. Unless the theater is full. Anyway...

I don't know how I get off on these things. Okay, that's not true, but... Look, quit interrupting and let me get on with the review, okay?
Good.

As I alluded in my review of Iron Man 3, I've suffered a bit of a paradigm shift in my approach to the Marvel Studio movies. See, they did such a great job of adapting the comics, initially, I expected them to keep doing that. Iron Man And Captain America are excellent adaptations of the source material, almost perfectly capturing the tone and feel of the comic characters. Thor is also very good at that, although not quite as good as Cap and Iron Man. So, for a while, I expected the Marvel movies to continue to "adapt" the comics, staying true to the source material across the board.

But it's more like that was just the opening they used to create the Marvel Movie Universe, which is not quite the same as the Marvel Universe of the comics. So, in Iron Man 3, we get a Mandarin who is the front man for a terrorist group rather than a super villain, and, in Thor: The Dark World, we get Malekith after the Aether rather than the Casket of Ancient Winters. And, after some amount of consideration, that's okay. More than okay, actually.

It's more than okay, because Marvel is re-creating what they did to create The Avengers, right now, with their Infinity Stones sub-plot. It's just introducing a piece at a time as they build up to something bigger. In The Avengers, we got our first view of Thanos and his attempt to take control of the Tesseract, which, in The Dark World, is revealed to be one of the six Infinity Stones, artifacts predating the origins of the universe. And, also on The Dark World, Malekith is after the Aether which is another of these "stones" although it actually takes on a fluid form.

This all sounds like it's leading up to an Infinity Gauntlet kind of scenario,

which would be pretty darn cool and pretty darn cosmic. The fact that Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out next year only strengthens the case for all of this. I would expect another of the Infinity Stones to show up in that one.

Of course, none of that actually relates to whether Thor: The Dark World is any good in and of itself.

Actually, Thor 2 is better than Thor. This one just seemed more "Thor" than the first one, although I don't have a good reason for feeling that way because there was an awful lot of Thor-ness about the first one, too. Maybe, it was just that this one flowed more smoothly whereas the first one definitely seemed to have its "Earth" parts and its "Asgard" parts as separate things. If you're doing Thor as Thor (not Thor trapped in the body of a mortal), he definitely needs to have the full range of being Thor.

And there were a lot of cool moves with Mjolnir in this one, things like Thor leaping off of balconies as the hammer came whizzing over the building and into his hand. They definitely did their best to show the connection between Thor and the hammer.

The acting was great, even Christopher Eccleston, whom I'm not particularly fond of as an actor (Doctor or not). His range seems to be quite small, but his role as Malekith was a good fit as it didn't require a lot of emotion and even less facial expression. Zachary Levi also did a pretty good job as Fandral, although, as partial as I am to Chuck, I think he didn't quite fill out Josh Dallas' shoes. There was just some ineffable quality about Dallas that made him more Fandral. Portman, also, seemed to wear the role of Jane Foster much more easily in this one, so that was nice.

The thing that really made the movie work, though, was the chemistry between Hemsworth and Hiddleston. Even when not onscreen together, they pulled off the roles of warring brothers perfectly. The sibling rivalry was perfect. There's this one moment where Thor is about to hit Loki (hey, it's not really a spoiler, okay (well, kind of, but, well, deal with it)) and Thor pulls away saying, "Mother wouldn't want us to fight," and Loki smiles and says, "But she wouldn't be shocked." The relationship is perfect.

The movie also has a bit more humor in it than the last Thor, and it's not all at the expense of Darcy this time, though she does have her moments. The only real negative I'd say the movie has is that the humor breaks the tension a little too much every so often. But those are only minor bumps on the road and barely memorable once past them. It does pull you right back in.

Overall, the movie has an epic feel to it that seems appropriate to a story about gods, and it does it while keeping the movie personal. That all by itself is quite an accomplishment. So, yeah, I think Thor 2 is a step above the first one, something that's not all  that common with a sequel. It doesn't make it up to the level of the first Iron Man or Captain America movies, but it does surpass both of the Iron Man sequels. If you've been following the Marvel movies at all, you certainly don't want to miss this one.