Okay X-Maniacs, since I've finished up this week's new comics two days early, I get to review something other than new comic books... So what did I choose? How about the Thor movie that came out earlier this year? So for only the third time EVER here on the blog, I'll be reviewing something other than a comic book/trade. As for tomorrow, I have some ideas, and if those ideas come to fruition, I may just be reviewing something other than a comic book or a movie... But that's tomorrow... For now, the coming attractions are almost over, so I'm going to shut my laptop now and watch me some Thor.
Thor (2011):
What Happened: For being arrogant and all around unlikable, as well as directly disobeying his father, Odin, and invading the realm of the Frost Giants, Thor is stripped of his godly powers and banished to Earth. Sure, there was a bit more to Thor's banishment than that, some of it involving Loki, but come on, you can't expect me to review this movie minute by minute, can you? Anyway, after banishing Thor, Odin sends Thor's hammer to Earth as well, but enchants it so that only somebody worthy of wielding it(ie: not Thor at the moment) could lift it. So Thor lands on Earth, bumps into three scientists(Jane Foster, Eric and Darcy) and basically acts like an ass to them. With Thor acting like an ass, and coming across as rather insane, Eric feels the best bet is to get away from him, but alas, Jane is smitten by Thor and wants to help him regain his hammer, which was being watched over by SHIELD. Thor manages to coerce Jane into giving him a ride out to the hammer site, and after fighting his way through some SHIELD agents finds himself unable to lift his hammer, which leads to Thor sadly surrendering to SHIELD. Meanwhile, Loki learns that he's actually a Frost Giant that Odin took in as his own and kind of flips out about that. Odin ends up falling into the Odinsleep at this time, which leaves Loki on the throne of Asgard. Loki sends an image of himself to Thor and tells Thor that Asgard was nearly at war with the Frost Giants, Odin was dead, Thor's mother hated Thor for his role in Odin dying of a broken heart, and oh yeah, that it was all Thor's fault. Thor is devastated, and decides that he'd live out the rest of his life in exile, which is exactly what Loki wanted. Anyway, for some reason, SHIELD lets Thor leave with Eric(who came to bail him out at Jane's request), and the kinder, gentler Thor serves breakfast to his mortal friends and does other nice acts. Back in Asgard, Loki plots with his birth father, Laufey of the Frost Giants, to kill Odin, thus solidifying Loki's grip on the throne. Fearing treachery from Loki, the Warriors Three and Lady Sif head to Earth to retrieve Thor and try to set things right in Asgard. Afraid that Thor's return could screw up all of his plans, Loki sends the Destroyer to Earth to destroy Thor and anything else in it's path. The Warriors Three and Sif tell Thor that Odin wasn't dead, but was actually in the Odinsleep and that most of the things Loki told Thor were untrue, meaning he didn't have to remain exiled. By this time the Destroyer has begun it's approach, so Thor and his three mortal friends evacuate the town while the Warriors Three and Sif try to beat the Destroyer. Sif and the Warriors fail, and Thor, not wanting to see any harm come to his friends, approaches the Destroyer alone and unarmed and begs Loki to simply kill him and leave everybody else alone. Loki bids the Destroyer to do just that, and it pounds Thor, seemingly killing him... But wait! Since Thor was now worthy of the power of his hammer, it flies to him and revives him, granting him his full power again. Thor beats the Destroyer and declares that he'd head to Asgard to settle things with Loki. After getting a kiss from Jane, Thor and his Asgardian allies return to Asgard and Thor heads towards Odin's chambers. Before Thor arrives though, Laufey enters the chambers of the comatose Odin and prepares to kill him... But is stopped and slain by the timely arrival of Loki! Yes Loki. Thor soon enters the room and is blasted out of it by an angry Loki. From there, Loki heads to the Rainbow Bridge and uses some magic to slowly destroy the realm of the Frost Giants, figuring that act, along with saving Odin's life(from an assassination he orchestrated) would bring him the love of the Asgardians and make him Thor's equal in everybody's eyes. Thor confronts Loki and the two battle, since Thor wasn't going to allow Loki to annihilate an entire race(the Frost Giants) simply to gain some love. Ultimately Thor defeats Loki, but can't figure out how to shut down the magic that was destroying the Frost Giant's realm. With no choice, Thor decides to destroy the Rainbow Bridge, which would save the Frost Giants, but separate him from Earth and Jane. Loki tries to stop Thor from ruining his plans, but in the end, Thor succeeds in destroying the Bridge and the two fall towards the abyss, only to be saved by the timely arrival of the recently awakened Odin. Loki tries to explain to Odin that everything he did was to try to gain Odin's favor, but seeing that Odin still favored Thor, Loki lets go of Thor and falls into the abyss, seemingly perishing as a result. From there, Thor is now a more humble hero, Jane is working with SHIELD to try to reach Asgard and Odin is still the lord of Asgard. This one ends(after the credits roll) with Nick Fury bringing Eric to a secret SHIELD base and showing him the Cosmic Cube(which SHIELD collected after the Captain America movie). Fury figures that a scientist of Eric's caliber may be able to figure out how the Cube worked, and we discover that Loki was actually in possession of Eric's body, and is more than happy to take a look at the Cube...
The Good: Basically everything that took place in Asgard or the Frost Giant realm was good. All of the Asgardians were very well portrayed here, from Thor to Odin to Loki. Speaking of Loki, I tip my hat to the actor who played him because he did an exceptional job. Here's hoping Loki is the main threat in the upcoming Avengers movie. The special effects were quite good, from the way Asgard looked to the battle with the Destroyer. I enjoyed the fact that Loki wasn't exactly pure evil here... Everything he did he did to try to prove that he was as good as Thor, and after learning that he was a Frost Giant, his crazy actions made a lot of sense. To Loki, Odin would never see him as Thor's equal, so he had to do things like save Odin's life, eliminate Thor and kill all of the Frost Giants so Odin had no choice but to see Loki as Thor's equal. Naturally I loved the Hawkeye cameo.
The Bad: While I enjoyed all of the Asgardian stuff here, the opposite can be said of Thor's time on Earth... The “comedy” wasn't funny(“Oh look, Thor's been hit by a car... Twice! Now Thor's been tased! Now he's been stuck in the ass with a needle! HAHAHAHA!!!”), and I found Jane, Eric and Darcy to be insanely annoying. It's a little thing, but Earth was never called Midgard... The SHIELD agents simply letting Thor leave, but keeping him under surveillance was bizarre... So he's been trained to be able to out-fight SHIELD's best agents, but we'll let him leave even though we know his cover story was a fake... While I loved seeing Hawkeye in this movie, I hate that he's a SHIELD lackey in the movies... Clint as a renegade? Awesome. Clint as a boot lick? Not as awesome.
The Verdict: Overall, this was a good movie. However, it was really a tale of two movies for me... The Asgardian stuff was great. The Earth stuff was terrible. Yes, I know that we needed to get Thor on Earth so he'd become a more humble hero, but why the hell did everybody on Earth(including Thor) have to be so annoying? Yes, I'll admit that I chuckled at a few of the MANY one-liners and quips, but for the most part the “jokes” made me roll my eyes in embarrassment. Seriously, I was rooting for the Destroyer to kill Thor's mortal cronies... Really, couldn't the Destroyer have at least kill Darcy? Although I'm sure somebody would have made a bad joke about that too... Anyway, I'd recommend this movie simply for the Asgardian parts, and especially the stuff with Loki, which was way deeper than I would have ever imagined. Everything else? Good luck with that. Hopefully you have a better sense of humor than I do...
Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.
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I went and saw this at the cinemas when it came out and have to say I agree, the Asgard parts were brilliant and although I didn't mind the Earth parts that much, they weren't as good. However, it is still Thor and it did set up perfectly for Avengers so I was extremely happy with it. I think Loki is going to be the main villain in the Avengers movie, at least all the trailers and spoilers point to that being the case.
ReplyDeleteNice review dude, further cemented that I have no need to see this anytime soon. Oh and here's some DCnU staff changes.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/11/14/ch-ch-changes-at-the-dcu-for-february/
Agreed with the Loki thing, B-Guymer. Not only does he make the most sense to be the main threat in the Avengers movie, after seeing this movie, I WANT to see Loki as the main baddie in the Avengers movie! He was that good here.
ReplyDeleteWait, you DIDN'T see this movie, JT?! I am shocked! How often is it that I'VE seen a movie and you haven't?! I'll tell you how often, never! :P
With the exception of Marz off of Voodoo, none of the changes mean a thing to mean. As for Marz, with him feuding with Lobdell, and Lobdell being in Harras's back pocket, I can't say I'm surprised.
explain to me the fued between marz and lobdell
ReplyDeleteand no offense to u but i am positive the realm that earth exist in is called midgard in the comics and in real norse legend
good review i liked portman as jane honestly i never found her anoying at all
darcy was anoying but i never found it detrimental to the film as much as u did
but yeah they did the loki storyline in the film flawlessly
and the actor who played thor was perfect in the role to me even when human
Okay, the Marz/Lobdell "feud"... It's been a few months so I may be off on a few things, but I'm sure you could easily double-check stuff on google if you really want to, Movieartman. I'll just give you the broad strokes. After the new Ultimate Spider-Man was announced, Marz posted something on Twitter deriding people who didn't like the idea of making Spidey a black/hispanic kid. Out of the blue Lobdell went back at Marz with something like, "Insulting bigots is like shooting fish in a barrel" or something equally snarky. Needless to say, Marz was surprised by that and I'm not exactly sure how it ended up, but I know a few other comic creators had some fun with it. I think it was Kurt Busiek who tweeted something hilarious like, "I can't wait for that Superboy/Voodoo crossover now!" But I do remember it being really bizarre and out of the blue. You know, like the kind of thing you'd think Lobdell wouldn't have said considering Marz was a co-worker and all. I'm probably missing out on some stuff, but that's how I remember it.
ReplyDeleteAh... My bad... I should have put, "It's a little thing, but Earth was never called Midgard in this movie." Earth is ALWAYS called Midgard by the Asgardians in the comics, so to hear them all talking about "Earth" and not "Midgard" in the movie was kind of weird.
Totally cool, man. I'm sure there were lots of people who liked the Earth characters, but they all just bothered me. Go figure. And yeah, I didn't specifically point it out in the review, but the dude who played Thor did a really good job as well. I mean all of the Asgardians did a really good job, which is probably why I wasn't fond of the stuff on Earth, because the Asgardian stuff was SO strong.
I thought it was okay but felt Branagh's action scenes needed some more work. For example, the Destroyer would hit Thor and Thor would go flying far off because of the force of the impact, and after a couple of seconds would then fly back to the Destroyer to deliver his own blow. It might've been better if we had more fast-paced action with the players standing toe-to-toe, one blow coming right after the other.
ReplyDeleteI actually didn't mind the Destroyer/Thor battle, because the Destroyer is supposed to be mega-powerful. So I could see the Destroyer knocking Thor around and Thor having to rebound back. The Thor/Loki fight scene was more vexing to me, because I can't imagine Loki would ever take Thor on hand to hand, considering Thor's WAY more advanced fighting ability. I liked Loki using magic and illusions on Thor, but trying to take him straight up with his staff def shouldn't have happened. In my opinion at least.
ReplyDelete