Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea
I don't understand what the problem is, why it's so hard to accept the existence of the mystical, the magical in a "reality", especially a fictional one.
I'd expect non-fans to have that problem...but I don't understand the reticence from "fans", who supposedly have better imaginations and are accustomed to suspension of disbelief.
It's not difficult to understand at all. Marvel's comics have all kinds of things co-existing in it partly because at first realism was of no concern, and then because of careful efforts to integrate the various, disparate portions into the shared universe (and still, that doesn't always work) as a mosaic.
The films are presented much of this to audiences for the first time, and are as such building from the ground-up, without decades of hodgepodge fantasy to give the shared universe its inertia. To borrow Darko Suvin's term, each film introduces it's own 'novum', that new element which requires the suspension of disbelief. Most of the time, novum will build off each other: so movie Iron Man's villains use weaponry based on the same technological principles, or Spiderman's are a result of scientific experiments gone wrong like himself (and why the sudden addition of an alien to the third film felt jarringly out of place, regardless of the comic book), Superman's silver-screen foils are kryptonite and other Kryptonians, etc. For Thor, the novum (yes, I know the term ought to be SF-specific, humour me) is the confirmed existence of at least one pantheon of deities.
When it comes to the Avengers, however, one is trying to incorporate multiple novum into the same narrative; and while Iron Man, Captain America and Hulk are, if not related, then still within the same language of science-fiction, Thor brings in a completely different sort of novum, based in the language of fantasy. The audience is being asked to suspend disbelief from multiple directions, to accept unrelated divergences from reality, to embrace a narrative that speaks the language of two different genres (and we recall that the general public is not as fluent is either language as we can be expected to be)--that certainly does raise the concern about cognitive dissonance. I'm not saying it can't be done, although I can't think of any examples offhand (that is, I thought LXG incorporated its sci-fi and fantasy elements well, but it wasn't well received); I am saying that it needs to be done cautiously. Presenting each element in their own film first is the right approach; the audience will already have accepted each character's particular novum, and now just has to accept their co-existence. The Ultimates method is also a good idea, I'd say, particularly since Thor is outnumbered by science-fiction characters; and the disbelief of onscreen characters would be a way of winking at the audience, of making them complicit in the secret of Thor's true nature, a more subtle way of inviting their approval.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
) putting him into the universe that's been created. I have faith in Whedon's ability to combine the mystical with the real, which is why I think he's a perfect choice for The Avengers. But still, out of all the films, I'm more wary of Thor than anything else.
) that it's sheen might be hurt.