Thor

A theater in Richmond was still playing Thor, so we went and watched it. We had the entire showing to ourselves - woo! It was doubly awesome because we got to give the movie its proper heckling without irritating anyone else. We enjoyed it. It was a fun little summer film, just about right for a 95-degree day, but for the big names associated with it, I was kind of expecting more. Kenneth Branagh can usually direct, and J. Michael Straczynski can usually come up with a story without massive plot holes. Natalie Portman... still can't do a convincing love scene, though these weren't nearly as bad as Star Wars 1 and 2. Ah, well.

The main plot was the redemption of Thor from pride to humility. It mostly worked. As Lars over at Brandywine pointed out, even wanting a hero to be humble instead of proud is straight out of Christianity and not Norse at all, but the movie is all the better for it. His change of heart was kind of sudden. Oddly, they downplayed the redemptive moment by ascribing a lot of his bad manners to a cultural difference - he had really beautiful manners, very courtly and old-fashioned, with just a minor problem of smashing coffee cups to show his appreciation, and it was not consistent with his pride issues. However, we like Thor better at the end than the very beginning, so some progress occurred.

The secondary plot was Loki's descent into evil. Again, it was kind of sudden and didn't make much sense to me. I really liked him better than Thor for the first half, until he started lying and conniving. I'm still not sure what he was really up to. If it was pure trouble-making, then the back-story hindered it.

Then there was Odin. For such a wise king and father, why did he fail so spectacularly with his sons? He never corrected Thor's pride until it was time for a dramatic exile. As for Loki, if Odin adopted him to be a kind of peace child, it would have been good to, you know, work him up to that role. Tell him he was adopted and he loved him anyway and he had an important job in life. Train him. Not tell him he was fit to be king and spring the adoption news on him after he figured it out for himself and Thor was out of the picture and thirty seconds before falling into a coma. Whatever. Odin woke up just in the nick of time and saved the day, remarkably perky for someone who'd been mostly dead all day.


Moments we mocked:

-When Natalie Portman took Thor home and lent him her ex-boyfriend's clothes. He and his long blond hair and manly shirtless chest struggle into a pair tight black jeans. He looked like a rocker. Incidentally, later on he was wearing different jeans. Maybe the boyfriend left two pairs?

- The warrior chica, Sif's, high-heeled combat boots. Well, obviously. If you were going warmongering on an ice planet, you'd need high heels too. Actually, I kind of liked Sif. She was competent in battle and a good friend, had a personality of her own, and she didn't wear a ferret-skull belt. She had a seriously awesome flying stab that nearly took out the droid, but Loki reanimated it anyway. Her outfits were mostly good and she didn't fall in love with anybody.

-Pretty much every attempted dramatic moment, especially the ones with daddy issues. Why are you having daddy issues? You've got a decent, if imperfect, father. And a decent mother. Can we get on with the plot please?

Moments we loved:

-Thor brought home Natalie Portman's coworker, dead drunk. "What happened?" she asks, reasonably concerned. In best Norse fashion: "We drank. We fought. He made his ancestors proud."

- The coworker, still drunk: "I still don't believe you're the god of thunder, but you ought to be."

-The scene where the researchers meet Thor and the ditzy college assistant tased him. "What? He was freaking me out." Hee!

-Natalie Portman accidentally ran over Thor with a truck. Twice. He was fine.

-The scenes on Earth. They were set in a fictional small town in New Mexico, and I recognized that mountain they used in the background shots. It's Santa Fe Baldy, the same view you get from I-40 along there between Santa Rosa and Cline's Corner. So I looked into it, and yes! They filmed in Galisteo, which, sure enough, has about the same view of that mountain, but a little bit closer to it. Sigh. I also loved the little town, and the retro Route 66 buildings, and the gorgeous airy observatory building, and the sleek trailer home. Warm fuzzy.


For the movie, they tried to meld very distinct visual aesthetics, part sleek futuristic superhero and part Lord of the Rings-style knotwork and archaisms, and then laying it alongside the relaxed New Mexican scenes. Sometimes the combination worked pretty well. Odin's armor, I thought, did a very good job being Norse and superhero. Jonathan liked Thor's armor better than I did. Some of the Asgard sets were pretty good, almost like Star Wars meets Rivendell, with chunky modernist fountains and ethnic Norse art scattered around. I felt like Asgard and the frost giants' world were too heavily CG. I'm still not sure what they were trying to do visually by choosing New Mexico to illustrate Earth - it's another very distinct style. Maybe I'm over-thinking this.

Anyway. We enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think we're likely to buy it. It was a fun date movie.