THOR: Grading, Discussion, Review **SPOILERS***

Knowles has made that joke himself, about being physically perfect for Volstagg.

It's hard to see anyone doing a better job of playing Thor than Hemsworth did.

 

Thought the movie was pretty good. No where near the first Iron Man, but a lot better than the pointless and unnecessary Incredible Hulk.

And I know it probably drove the comic fans crazy, but the Earth scenes truly WERE the highlight of the movie. Cheesy or no, they were still a lot more fun and engaging than the dreary, overly-serious Asgard stuff. Unless you're already a fan of the character, it was just hard to care that much about anything happening there.

Still though, Hemsworth made for a VERY cool Thor, and it will definitely be fun to see him interacting with the others in the Avengers movie.

 

^

Why ya gotta hate on the Hulk?

 

Best answer, I think - but then it leads me to the other point.

The battle with the Frost Giants and Thor's recklessness. He gets exiled for it. By the end of the movie, he doesn't want the entire realm of Jotunheim destroyed (Btw, major props for naming the realms in the movie - and also the Yggdrasil drawing as well as the end credits - The movie got soooo much right). But what does he learn and how? He learns that when he is cocksure about picking up the hammer, he learns that Odin has done Odin-dickery on the hammer's mojo. He cries a bit, acts sullen, learns Odin-dickery ended up killing Odin, gets "rescued" (even tho' Agent Coulson ain't buying it), has a beer, carries person home, talks to The Chick and that's it - he's seen the light?

I think we missed something there. Something crucial that he is supposed to "see"/"learn"/"experience" on earth? Unless it is Erik Selvig acting heroically to rescue Thor when he doesn't want him anywhere around his surrogate-daughter-figure.

 

While I felt fine with the movie and didn't have that "it's missing something feel" it is alleged via Branagh that there are nearly 30 min of unused footage. Perhaps answers lie there for those with this feeling.

I think him not being able to lift his own hammer was a humbling enough moment. Then sacrificing himself to the Destroyer to save the others was his other "I'm better than I was" moments.

 

Sort of how I felt. All we see of Thor in present-day Earth is his dealing with Portman, etc. in Small Town, Arizona and that's about it and the only "heroic" thing he did there was deferat the fire-blasting robot thingie.

The movie felt confined by this mundane setting on Earth, hell to me it partly felt like the scene in Superman 2 when Zod and his followers dick around in small-town America for part of the movie.

As I said above I enjoyed the movie but I also somehow expected more out of it. Really, it felt like the first chapter in a series of stores which is what I'm sure they were going for in both this movie's franchise and in The Avengers.

But, overall, the story just left me underwhelmed and was really only saved by the cast and the few (Earth-based) action pieces it had. I really wasn't impressed or engrossed with the Asgard (which sounds like the name of a hemorrhoid cream) or the ice-creature stuff because, well, I didn't care about this overly alien realm I couldn't connect to with any sense of reality. The movie, for me, didn't do enough for me to explain what all of this was what it meant, or why I should even care that Asgard would "fall" to the ice creatures.

I'd also argue the ice-planet action piece was a bit OTT mostly with the large creature pretty much changing the entire landscape of the region just to catch Thor. I mean I liked the action, I liked the actors and what they all did and performed but I didn't care about what they were doing or understood why.

The brother (Loki?) I just couldn't buy as a villain as he seemed about a notch or two below Gary Oldman's character in "The Fifth Element" and I'm loooonnnngggg past taking Anthony Hopkins seriously in anything ever again. Oh, he's playing a sneering old man with wild gray hair, yells and pontofocates a lot? That's a stretch!

As I said, the movie is saved mostly by the lead actor, Thor, his troop of PCs and pretty much everything going on on Earth, including the SHIELD stuff. I loved the part where Thor tries a cup of coffee or something at the diner and then smashes the glass on the floor and demands another like he's still in ye olde times.

I wanted more of that. I also think his character development, and love for NP, was a bit rushed considering the events of the movie take place over the course of only a couple of days; inside of which Thor makes such a dramatic, personal, character development he's able to get his hammer back. It would've made a bit more sense for his brother to get control of Aspercreme and use it make life difficult for Thor on Earth and Thor's own need to defend Earth redeems him but he's still banished there, never able to return home -for now.

But, I've no idea how things go in the comics so for all I know what happened in this movie is what's "supposed to happen." Really, it felt like there should be another movie between the end of the first act and the beginning of the third act in this movie.

Again, I had a good time, but also it seems to me it could have been more.

 

Say that again when the Aesir save your ass from the Ragnarok. Again.

 

If Asgard fell to the Frost Giants then there would be no one to protect Midgard from their wrath. I thought this was sufficiently explained.

 

.....

And what is "Midgard" and why should I care about it? This is the problem I see in some movies when trying to appeal to a general audience, when you use unfamiliar terms and words it makes it sort-of hard to really grasp what is going on and why.

 

Midgard is us (Earth).

 

And, beyond fans who might be familiar with the comic book version of Thor, all this should be al least vaguely familiar to anyone who have even a passing knowledge of Norse mythology. It should not be unknown. I mean, it's on par with the knowledge of Mount Olympus, or the Pyramids. High school stuff.

 

^ Exactly what I was thinking. I'm not sure how one could be critical of mythological names that they should have been familiar with in school. Would you rather Marvel make up generic names for these places?

 

High school was fifteen years for me and didn't involve a lot of discussion on Greek Mythology and what we did discuss didn't go into other realms, these other planes of existence or the tree of wormholes (or whatever.)

 

I went to a public school and the Iliad and the Odyssey were taught. There was some discussion of the Greek and Roman religions in history class when discussing those the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that was about it. It was taught because it was information that was pertinent to the study of those ancient civilizations.

Christianity was also touched upon when discussing European and early American history to the extent that it related to those subjects, and it almost couldn't be avoided in English Lit.

Norse mythology? Other than explaining where Wednesday and Thursday got their names, I don't think it was taught at all.

I suspect it's a more localized curriculum.

That being said, I agree that it would be foolish for H'Wood to make up names for places in Norse mythology in a movie based on a comic book based on Norse mythology that used those names.

 

World Tree or Yggdrasil in Norse mythology (yea..i used wikipedia to look up the Norse name lol).

 

Did you repeat each year four times?

 

Where did you go to school? I mean I grew up in the bible belt and I had to learn the basic Greek and Norse Myths and the basics on the classics.

 

My school didn't touch on the Norse, only the Greek.

 

We spent more time on the Greeks but we did cover all of the Norse basics.

 

Exactly.
Right there in first 10min, or less, of the movie.
It was explained that Laufey and the Frost Giants wanted to plunge Midgard into another Ice Age. Claiming the world for themselves.


As for how familiar Norse mythology should be I've found not all schooling is standard. I've come to appreciate that my H.S. covered a wide range of topics in most subjects.

While we focused more time on Egyptian, Greek and Roman pantheons we did cover Norse. We spent weeks apiece on Greek and Roman. About half as much on Egypt and half again as much on Norse. Which come to find out in my adult life was way more than a lot of high schools.

My boss actually did not know Thor was a Norse god, just 'a' god of unknown attachment. So I try to be lenient after learning that from my boss.