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.)

Thor (a movie review post)

 

MCU #4

I believe Thor may have been the first of the MCU movies I reviewed on here, back when my movie reviews were less movie reviews and more... I don't know. Commentary on experiences? You can go back and read it here if you're so inclined. It seems even then that I had some kind of beef against the Hulk movies.

Of the trio of Avengers origin stories, I think Thor is the weakest. I say this based purely on the fact that both Iron Man and Captain America present origins that are very close to their comic book origins. Thor, however, diverges from his. I am much more easy with that, now, than I was a decade ago. Thor's actual comic book origin is too... I think it's a bit of a wish fulfilment. Too Arthurian. But I'm not going to get into that right now. [But I think it must be related to how many Boomers I've known for whom Thor was... not just their favorite super hero, their only super hero: "Do you read comics?" "No, but I read Thor." It's fucking weird, man.] The movie origin is... I'll just say it: better. It makes more sense and certainly fits into the context of the MCU in a way that the comic origin would not have.

I hadn't heard of Chris Hemsworth before this movie, but he was a great choice. I don't know of anyone who would have been a better choice, in fact, so, you know, just pointing out Marvel's excellent casting choices again. And Anthony Hopkins... well, I think there were probably other choices for Odin, other actors who could have done it with just as much... authority?... as Hopkins but, if you can get Hopkins, get Hopkins.

Then there's Tom Hiddleston... You know, he's rather understated in this movie. I don't know if he just hadn't worked himself into the skin of Loki yet or if the writers just hadn't realized his full potential. At any rate, it's a little weird looking back and seeing him so much in the background. But still fully a manipulator. Hiddleston is good in this movie. Maybe very good? Later, he becomes great, and I can't imagine anyone else in the role, now, but, at the time... Look, clearly, he didn't make much of an impression on me when the movie came out. I didn't mention him at all in my original review.

I love that the Warriors Three and Sif have such a big role in the movie. Other than Josh Dallas, as Fandral, the casting is good. Dallas was popular at the time, but that role should have gone to Cary Elwes; I don't care how old he is. I'm not really an Elwes fan; I don't think he's a good actor, but he has particular roles he can play, and this one should have been his. 

Also, Kat Dennings is awesome as Darcy. She was certainly a surprise, and I'm glad Marvel has kept her around.

Then there is Natalie Portman... She is my point of ambivalence in this movie. I think she is a really good actress, but... I don't know. There's nothing wrong with her performance, and she has good chemistry with Hemsworth. It's just... her. 

Anyway...

As a character in the MCU, Hemsworth as Thor is one of my favorites. His range is one of the broadest of the various characters, called on to be both goofy and deadly serious. And a wide range in between. Thor was an excellent start to that.

Current MCU rankings:
1. Iron Man
2. Thor
3. Iron Man 2
4. Incredible Hulk (Hulk is seriously just going to visit a new number every week. Thanks Norton.)

You Know You've Made It When... (part 2)

Sometimes it's good to ask questions. My last post on Lego minifigures inspired a friend of mine to go into research mode and look for figures that I may have missed, and he came up with some. It made me feel a little inadequate, actually, because I didn't even think to check for most of these guys.

First, though, the fails. The Lego fails, that is. Here are some ones that at least one of us checked only to find out that a very obvious character has never been made into a minifigure.
1. Sallah:

Despite being in half of the Indiana Jones movies, Sallah was never made as a minifigure. John Rhys-Davies does appear as this minifig, though:

Rhys-Davies did do the voice for this one, so I guess he can get partial credit for it:

2. Jane Foster:

Despite having more than a dozen Avengers related Lego sets, Jane does not appear as a minifigure.

Natalie Portman does appear as this figure, though:

3. Galadriel:

Explain to me how, exactly, Galadriel

does not get made into a minifigure while

Irina Spalko gets a figure in three different sets (while Sallah has none!). If I was Cate Blanchett, I'd feel robbed.

Also, a retraction. As I was working up this post, I realized that I was in error about Chris Evans.

The Fantastic Four have not, yet, been made into physical minifigures, although I could have sworn they had some sort of Lego set out several years ago with their flying car. When the FF re-boots, soon, it will no longer be Evans as the Torch, so it still won't count for him. He got robbed, too!

But there are a few new editions to the list of actors made into two different minifigure characters!

1. Ryan Renolds

2. Ben Kingsley

(Again, really? Nizam from Prince of Persia gets a figure but Galadriel doesn't?)

3. Alfred Molina

Another Prince of Persia figure on the list? Seriously? And he gets one from Raiders of the Lost Ark, too!

Which brings me back to my question of how the heck does Sallah not have a figure? Satipo, here, dies in the opening sequence of Raiders, but Sallah doesn't get one? I smell a conspiracy! Or a rat! Or Denmark!

But that's not all! Because there's also

Which gives Molina three different characters in three separate movies which may just make him the greatest actor of all time! Except, then, there's

4. Warwick Davis. Davis has been four different characters in two different movie franchises, though two of the movies from one of the franchises were 15 years apart. Who's greater, Davis or Molina? I guess you will have to decide. Here are Davis' figures:

5. Gary Oldman! And, really, how could I forget him the first time? I feel so bad. I love Gary Oldman! And he was by far the best thing about the Nolan Batman movies.

And he's also

Well, there you have it. The best actors who have ever lived. Or something like that. If I ever get a movie made out of any of my books, I'm going to make sure I'm some side character, some vital side character, so that if they ever get Lego sets, I will get to be a minifigure, too! Now that's the DREAM, folks!

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.