THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till release

[Hyperspace05]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I agree with Dennis. There are some great epic shots - but almost all the character moments fall flat. (The coffee scene was amusing, though) Dialog and acting is not impressive at all.

Most of the non-Earth scenes look good. The Earth scenes do not. IMO, of course.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

EW has two pieces up from an interview with Kenneth Branagh. He talks about the film generally here and specifically about the villains here.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I agree with Dennis. There are some great epic shots - but almost all the character moments fall flat. (The coffee scene was amusing, though) Dialog and acting is not impressive at all.

Most of the non-Earth scenes look good. The Earth scenes do not. IMO, of course.

I liked the diner scene.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Excuse me.
Shouldn't Thor seem....
y'know...
regal?
This guy looks like a WWF stringer.

 

[Shazam!]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Excuse me.
Shouldn't Thor seem....
y'know...
regal?

No.

 

[Captain Craig]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

The first trailer was essentially fully of action sequence money shots. Little to go on for Joe Average who needs to know about the character and story.

This second trailer delivers a narrative and shows some energy of the characters.

Somewhat right and mostly wrong.

The teaser is as you described - a teaser - but while the visual design of the thing was cheesy at least it was put together competently and it presented the leads attractively. To use your words, it "showed some energy."

The new trailer tries to deliver a narrative, but that narrative is thuddingly unimpressive. As others than I have noted, many of the effects look cheap and there is very, very little drive or "energy" to it (other than the video-gamish fire coming out of the giant's head). In many ways this presentation is more disjointed than the quick cuts in the teaser, and the flaws of the film are more evident.

Hemsworth's accent is worse than it's been described.

Has any other Oscar nominee made as many missteps in her big year as Portman has this year? What happened with that dreadful romcom of hers?

Thanks at least for putting some explanation into it.
You did leave off the IMO several times cause there is no right or wrong for ones feeling on something.

Many also point out they don't see an issue with the narrative or f/x they've seen.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

The bit of humor I like best in the trailer is Portman's line delivery on, "He said it was... Thor."

Some of the CGI shots look a bit ropey, but they're probably still a work in progress. Hemsworth looks the part, but he's currently the biggest question mark for me in terms of acting ability.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Hemsworth was fantastic in his ten minutes of screentime that he had in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. I don't think I'm worried about Hemsworth. However I have a feeling he'll come off too much like Brandon Routh's Superman and appear like a cipher with little to no dialogue.

I'm most worried about the tone, which is usually one of the most important aspects of any comic-book movie or any movie in general. The tone for Thor so far based on the three trailers (I'm including the leaked Comic-Con trailer as well) seems wildly inconsistent. The scenes on Asgard don't seem sweeping or epic or grandiose enough, and have a sort of cheesy, over-the-top vibe that's disconcerting. What's even more disconcerting is how things get even cheesier and more over-the-top once things get to Earth (I'm sure these sequence of events will be reversed). The humor, most evident in the Earth scenes, seems far too abundant and stereotypical. Kat Dennings' character seems to be an annoying comic relief character that just irks me above anything. I think there was only one comedic moment in the trailer (the diner scene) that I found even remotely funny, and the rest seemed contrived and forced.

If you compare the inconsistent tone and the dumb humor from the most recent Thor trailer to the X-Men: First Class trailer, you'll soon be able to decipher the differences. I think out of all the comic-book movies coming out this year, and out of all the trailers for those respective movies, the X-Men trailer did the best job at successfully showing off the kind of movie X-Men: First Class will be without an inconsistent tone and without stupid one-liners. It was sleek, sinister, and had a serious tone throughout that was consistent. I don't mind some moments of humor or one-liners in trailers- after all, both trailers for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight ended with one-liners- but I guess the amount of just simply unfunny humor in the last Thor trailer makes me believe the filmmakers aren't taking the material as seriously as they should.

Now, I will definitely sit down in a theater come May and give Thor a proper shake, but I'm very worried for its chances, and I have a feeling it will end up being mediocre, but then again I've been wrong before.

 

[flemm]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I'm most worried about the tone, which is usually one of the most important aspects of any comic-book movie or any movie in general. The tone for Thor so far based on the three trailers (I'm including the leaked Comic-Con trailer as well) seems wildly inconsistent.

Well, obviously I have no idea whether or not the film will turn out to be any good (though I am increasingly optimistic), but the mixture of tones strikes me as a non-issue for the simple reason that the whole film is built around "two worlds," the epic scale of Asgard and the very mundane setting on earth to which Thor has some difficulty adapting (which at times will be played for humor), but which he ends up discovering is worth protecting and even falling in love with (via Natalie Portman's character).

So, really, the contrasting tones are a necessity. That's nothing new in itself, of course, on the contrary that's par for the course for a movie with fantastical elements (either sci-fi or fantasy): there is generally a character or group of characters who are on the boundary between the two worlds and who often have a bit of an ironic or humorous perspective on the more serious or epic elements of the storyline. Pippin and Merry in the Lord of the Rings, for example, but really most stories of this type have some element of that. The contrasting tones is an important ingredient.

 

[DWF]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

If you compare the inconsistent tone and the dumb humor from the most recent Thor trailer to the X-Men: First Class trailer, you'll soon be able to decipher the differences. I think out of all the comic-book movies coming out this year, and out of all the trailers for those respective movies, the X-Men trailer did the best job at successfully showing off the kind of movie X-Men: First Class will be without an inconsistent tone and without stupid one-liners. It was sleek, sinister, and had a serious tone throughout that was consistent. I don't mind some moments of humor or one-liners in trailers- after all, both trailers for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight ended with one-liners- but I guess the amount of just simply unfunny humor in the last Thor trailer makes me believe the filmmakers aren't taking the material as seriously as they should.

The funny thing is that both Thor and X-Men: First Class were written by the same writers Zeck Stentz and Ashley Edward Miller. Here's what Miller said about Thor.

"Thor's powers are godly, yes...But at the end of the day, he's a man... Odin sends him to Earth because he's not perfect. He's brash, arrogant. Even over-confident...he also bleeds. He struggles. Life kicks him where it hurts the most... You want to feel Thor's rage when he rages. You want to see him fight like hell, and take as much as he dishes out -- maybe more. You want to have a visceral reaction to the guy, and what happens to him. You don't want his adventures to be clean and antiseptic. You want to see the dirt, and grime and blood. You want to feel every bone crunching moment of every fight. And when he unleashes the storm, you want to feel like you're seeing the power of a GOD at work."​

Ashley Miller, co-writer of Thor, about the project

You might til the movie comes out to judge it.​

 

[Venardhi]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I shall hear no more lies about the loverly Kat Dennings. I'll take you on one at a time or all at once to defend her honor.

Mmm. . . Natalie and Kat. . . together at last.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I like what I've seen so far. I don't expect it to be as epically boring as The Dark Knight at any rate.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Could those complaining about Hemsworth's accent enlighten me as to how someone from the fictional & fantastical world of Asgard is supposed to sound?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Could those complaining about Hemsworth's accent enlighten me as to how someone from the fictional & fantastical world of Asgard is supposed to sound?

Not like an Australian trying and failing to do an English accent (which is quite obviously what they're using for Asgard - as is often the case in films dealing with fantasy worlds and ancient times - given what we've heard of Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hiddleston).

 

[O'Dib]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Maybe Thor spent his childhood with Trolls, which skewed his accent a bit.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Maybe Thor spent his childhood with Trolls, which skewed his accent a bit.

Or he went to boarding school in Australia.

 

[flemm]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I remember reading at some point that the Asgardians will have a language or dialect of their own, though I'm not sure how that would be worked into the movie exactly. Anyway, Hemsworth sounds good to me from what we've heard, though I'm willing to defer to Kenneth Branagh where the nuances of the accent are concerned

 

[Aragorn]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

I remember reading at some point that the Asgardians will have a language or dialect of their own, though I'm not sure how that would be worked into the movie exactly.

When we hear them speak, it's English, but when human characters in the movie hear them, it's their native language?

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

Could those complaining about Hemsworth's accent enlighten me as to how someone from the fictional & fantastical world of Asgard is supposed to sound?

Not like an Australian trying and failing to do an English accent (which is quite obviously what they're using for Asgard - as is often the case in films dealing with fantasy worlds and ancient times - given what we've heard of Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hiddleston).

Thanks to the influence of Australian soap operas, many young English people sound Australian now anyway - the raised inflection at the end of a sentence? That sounds like a question?

 

[flemm]

Re: THOR-starts shooting Jan2010: Updates, Rumors & Casting till relea

When we hear them speak, it's English, but when human characters in the movie hear them, it's their native language?

I dunno, could be I guess. Or maybe the Asgardians have some way of making themselves understood, whether or not the listener speaks their language (but maybe it doesn't come across as very idiomatic in translation). One of Thor's traits in the comics is his odd and generally rather flowery speech pattern, which writers have done various things with over the years. So, logically, the movie will probably do something with this as well.

Just as a guess, I expect some of the early scenes in Asgard will establish what the Asgardian language actually sounds like (probably vaguely nordic or scandinavian), along with whatever conceit allows us (and the characters on earth) to understand them throughout the rest of the movie.