DVD Review: Thor: The Dark World

Since this film as been out for awhile, even on DVD, I'll liberally sprinkle in spoilers. You have been warned.

First off, Thor: The Dark World (2013) was infinitely better than the original movie Thor (2011), which was just about a total waste of film and time. I know some sort of Thor movie had to be made so this character could be included in The Avengers (2012), but translating the comic book "God of Thunder" into a live action film was always going to be a challenge. Of all the founding members of the Avengers, Thor was most likely to be voted "Should have stayed inside his own comic book."

Somehow, within the context of the Avengers, he isn't so bad, but all by himself in the otherworldly Asgardian realm, he seems ridiculous, and he even appears more silly on Earth among mortals, at least in the original movie.

I think "Dark World" took the right tack this time. It seemed a bit more "Lord of the Rings-ish," which has always played well on both the small and big screen. When you pull a total disconnect from "the real world" and keep Thor (Chris Hemsworth) a larger than life "god" in a sweeping saga of ancient legends and fables, he's more or less "OK" to take in. The tricky part is to toggle back and forth between the fantasy and reality worlds. In this case (as opposed to the previous films), that wasn't so bad either, and it had to be made to work this time, because Thor, in order to be an Avenger, must be perceived as a child of both worlds.

I'm still having trouble seeing Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) as an astrophysicist and somehow, even with her Star Wars background, she is out of place in the Thor films. I did kind of like how Thor took her to Asgard, hearkening back to the Silver Age comic book Thor when he took Jane to Asgard and asked Odin to make her an immortal (Journey into Mystery vol. 1, #125, February 1966). Also, it was inevitable that Jane and Sif should meet and Sif must be asking herself, "What does this little mortal twit have that I don't have?"

Unpaid interns having unpaid interns of their own. Comedy relief. Cute. One wonders how they live.

Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) gone mad and prancing around Stonehenge naked. I guess having a "god" in your brain would do that to a fellow.

Loki (the always impressive Tom Hiddleston) in prison, pondering his fate or just plain being bored. Maybe waiting for his chance to escape (for after all, being long lived if not immortal must make one patient). Who loves Loki and is he capable of love in return? A mother's love, especially an adoptive mother, is iron clad, and Frigga (Rene Russo) is the only one to harbor affection for the villainous Loki in her heart. Fathers, once disappointed by sons, tend to hold them at arm's length and to mask love with anger as did Odin (Anthony Hopkins), yet though Odin would be within his rights, he did not totally banish Loki nor did he have him killed.

I liked the "lunch scene" between Thor and Heimdall (Idris Elba) but my understanding is that Heimdall must always stand guard at the Rainbow Bridge. He doesn't get vacations or even coffee breaks. Who's watching out for Asgard's safety?

Not that Heimdall was much help. I didn't think anything escaped his vision, but the Dark Elves had magic (technology) that defeated even him.

During "the great escape" Thor once again proved Loki is the brainier of the two brothers by far, but then Hemsworth portrays Thor as courageous, noble, heroic, but not particularly bright. I guess when you have guys like Tony Stark and Bruce Banner as part of the Avengers, you have to counterbalance all of those "smarts" with "big and dumb" (and the Hulk can't have all the fun in that department).

The battle scenes reminded me of any action film. Lots of shooting and explosions but it's shooting and explosions that would have been just at home in any movie, even one that was more real-to-life action and non-fantasy. It was actually kind of jarring. Hand-to-hand, swords, hammers, yes. Machine guns and cannons, no.

Loki's seeming betrayal (and it was believable because of who Loki is) and then reversal and then double-cross at the very end was well handled, and the Thor movies would be barely enjoyable without Hiddleston's "Prince of Mischief" gracing their frames. The ploy to get Thor to renounce his claim to the Throne of Asgard for the love of Jane Foster was smooth if not brilliant, and I didn't see Loki replacing Odin in illusion coming at all. This begs the question of what happened to Odin, and now that Frigga is dead (giving her life to heroically defend Jane Foster...hot damn!), who's to see through the mask of "Odin" to find the face of Loki beneath?

Not Thor who's too busy making out with Jane in London and waiting for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) to be filmed.

I watch the Thor movies for two reasons: because they're part of the overall continuity of the Marvel Avengers universe, and the various (two in this film) after end of credits scenes speak of other films to come, as did Sif and company meeting with The Collector as a set up for the movie Guardians of the Galaxy (August 2014).

I suppose I'm not a fan of Thor in film for the same reason I never got into reading Thor in the comic books. He just seems too odd. He doesn't really "do it" for me as a standalone character. Like I said, he's OK in the Avengers where he doesn't have to be the center of attention, at least for very long, but all by himself, carrying a full length motion picture (or long lasting comic book series), he's not for me.

I'm glad I watched Thor: The Dark World but I wouldn't pay to watch it again, nor would I add it to my film collection. It was good, basic entertainment and it completed my view of the Marvel Universe related to the Avengers, but now that I've seen it and filled in the knowledge gaps, it's time to move on.

Finally, The Avengers!

Warning. This film has been out long enough for me to not worry about revealing spoilers, which I do freely in my review. If you are one of the few people who haven't seen it yet, just keep in mind, I hold nothing back.

I'm probably one of the last people on the planet to see The Avengers (2012). Usually even a very popular film and especially one so "hyped" as this one has been contains a few flaws, but frankly, I couldn't find any. The Avengers just rocked.

I actually wasn't worried about the action sequences because the Marvel films know how to do action. I was worried about continuity, plot holes, and an imbalance in characterization. It's tough to get that many different lead characters into one film and not favor just one or two. The various Star Trek: The Next Generation films such as Star Trek: First Contact (1996) carry this flaw. Typically Picard and Data take the lead and all of the other characters play second fiddle.

I was worried that, in the case of the Avengers, Tony Stark/Iron Man (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) would dominate the screen since he seems to be the strongest personality. Fortunately, I was wrong. I was wrong, happily wrong, about a lot of things.

Of all of the Marvel films about each of these individual heroes, I'd have to say the Avengers was the strongest of them all.

I only saw the film a few hours ago, so I'm still trying to put the experience back together again in my head. The film is long (official running time 143 minutes) and there's almost no let up in the action. Even when a scene involves more dialog, there's usually a lot going on with various verbal gags and it's tough to keep up with all of the changes.

I was worried about teamwork between the actors and having their roles "compete" with one another, but at only happened within the context of their characters. It stands to reason that as strong individualists, it would be difficult to get Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, the Black Widow, and Hawkeye to merge as a unified fighting team and this is exactly how it was played. They fought more among each other during the first half of the film than they did against their primary antagonist Loki. Of course Hawkeye was off the hero list for the first half of the film, having been compromised by Loki, but Jeremy Renner still played him as a brilliant tactician in addition to his role as archer/assassin. He very nearly brings down SHIELD's flying headquarters (literally).

The film also showcased Natasha Romanoff's (played by the beautiful and talented Scarlett Johansson) vulnerable side, which never meant that any part of her was weak. However she got to be human in this film. The relationship between her and Barton/Hawkeye was explained with relative brevity but enough that it was satisfying. I'm glad that the Black Widow and Hawkeye were played as both strong, skilled, and highly intelligent. The original relationship between them in the early 1960s Tales of Suspense comic books (which first featured Iron Man before he got his own title) was highly unbalanced, with her as the femme fatale Soviet spy and him as the angry, misguided, not particularly bright, but still heroic archer. It really didn't work as a romance. The only thing here that I wasn't convinced about was that Johansson's Black Widow was actually Russian. She's like an American spy who happened to know Russian but who was best as kicking ass.

In spite of or maybe even because of his role as the classic "good guy" hero, Captain America emerged as the leader of the Avengers. No mean feat given the dominance Downey brings to the role of Stark/Iron Man. By the time the main battle with the "army from hell" begins in New York City, you can believe it when Cap starts giving orders and everyone lets him take the lead. I was afraid the film makers wouldn't "get it" and ignore this very vital part of Cap's involvement with the Avengers in the comic books, but amazingly, Hollywood got it right.

Thor's appearance caught me a little by surprise at first since, with Bifrost having been destroyed at the climax of the Thor (2011) film, he was effectively trapped in Asgard. However, a short bit of dialog between Thor and Loki and the problem was solved and without seeming too quick and cheap. From that point on, the God of Thunder was present and accounted for as part of the "Avengers initiative." However, if there was a single hero in the film who I didn't connect to quite as well as the others, I'd have to say it was Thor. I don't know exactly way. His whole "this planet is under my protection" role didn't quite "make it" with me for some reason.

Speaking of gods, I rather liked that the film makers allowed Captain America to retain a faith in God. It was only expressed in a single line of dialog, but it's completely consistent with who Steve Rogers would be given that he is an American raised in the 1920s and 30s. Being flash frozen for 70 years and reanimated in the 21st century wouldn't automatically turn him into a politically correct, culturally consistent icon of our morally relativistic world. The conversation between Cap and Phil Coulson confirmed that now, more than ever, we need a basic, foundational hero like Captain America. We may think we've gained a lot since the middle of the 20th century, but we've lost a lot, too.

The Hulk. Mark Ruffalo played both Bruce Banner and (wearing a motion capture suit) the Incredible Hulk. Of the three versions of the Hulk in film, Ang Lee's miserable failure (2003), the subsequent Incredible Hulk (2008), and his current incarnation in the Avengers' film, Ruffalo's Banner/Hulk is the best. That's saying a lot since Edward Norton is a brilliant actor who throws just about everything into not only his characters, but the films they appear in (to the point of continually rewriting/reinventing the films), but Ruffalo brought his vision of both Banner and the Hulk into the Avengers.

I remember reading that during the filming of the "Hulk" scenes in the Incredible Hulk TV series (1978-1982), Bixby refused to watch those sequences because he wanted to be able to react as Banner with true surprise and shock at the aftermath of the destruction caused by the Hulk. Obviously, Ruffalo chose a different path and it really works. Even the Hulk's face resembles Ruffalo's and you can see the personality that is shared between Banner and the Hulk. This is especially important when the Hulk is expected to act as part of the team since otherwise, he's just a mindless engine of destruction. However, Ruffalo plays the Hulk as both exceptionally dangerous to his allies while also somehow accepting them as his allies (although the Black Widow didn't fare so well in her first encounter with the Hulk and even Thor didn't escape the Hulk's "grudge" during the battle in New York).

It was just slightly overly sentimental when Agent Phil Coulson ended up playing the part of "the gipper." I understood that his death was to be the final inspiration that brings the Avengers together as a team (although only Tony, Steve, and Natasha would have been aware of it), but it did represent a small weakness in how the film was developed. It's only just a little schmaltzy though and was only a tiny blip of an issue in an otherwise overwhelmingly brilliant film.

I do have to give actor Clark Gregg (Coulson) his due. Often overlooked as a bit of comedy relief in the other Marvel films, he was truly "badass" when facing down Loki single-handedly, with only an experimental weapon he had no idea would even work. It was almost unfair that he had to die, but once he's gone, you suddenly realize how much you loved him.

Tom Hiddleston continues to be amazing in the role of Loki. He is wonderfully evil but with an apparent "monkey on his back" which is particularly noticeable in the beginning of the film. Who did give him his army anywhere and what sort of deal did he make in exchange for the technology of the tesseract and rule over Earth? We don't find out until the end of the film (past the credits) and if you weren't a Marvel comic book fan from the 1970s or later, you'd have no idea of what the scene really meant or why that big, ugly guy smiled at the mention of "death."

Loki lives on to fight another day, but it took the Hulk to bring him down in a scene that had the audience cheering.

So much happened in The Avengers so fast that I know I missed a great deal. This is one of those films that you have to see again and again, not only to keep the adrenaline rush going, but to try and catch all of the subtle details that you couldn't possibly have picked up on during a single viewing.

If by some miracle, you haven't seen this movie yet, I can't recommend it highly enough. Most films are never quite as good as the previews and trailers make them seem, but The Avengers was even better. It's a super hero classic.

Addendum: I know I didn't mention Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, but this review is long enough. If you want to find out more, see the movie.

DVD Review: Thor, or How Sibling Rivalry Can Really Go Bad

Finally got around to viewing Thor (2011) which is the last film I needed to see before seeing The Avengers (2012). What can I say. It's OK. Not great. Not horrible. Just OK. Kind of like a bowl of lukewarm porridge. I felt almost exactly the same way after viewing Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Oh well. Ho-hum.

By the way, this review contains a ton of spoilers. I figured it can't hurt that much, since the film's been out awhile and anyone interested in The Avengers movie must have seen it a bunch of times by now. Just warning you. Proceed at your own risk.

I know the film makers tried to successfully merge the doings in Asgard with those on Midgard (Earth) but it was always very jarring to go from one universe to another. Of course, you could say that was on purpose, since the Asgardian realm is so much different than plain ol' planet Earth, but after reading some of the film's trivia at IMDB, I saw that the film's look and feel were supposed to successfully merge the two worlds. Oh well.

I know Natalie Portman wanted to be in this film, and it's not exactly like her appearances in the various Star Wars movies were so high brow, but I felt her talent was rather wasted here. On the other hand, Anthony Hopkins played Odin and he's practically the nexus of all wonderful and classical acting experience in the universe embodied as a man. Marlon Brando played Jor-El in the first Superman film (1978) starring Christopher Reeve, so I guess I don't really have much of a point here. Just sayin'.

I know there had to be some way of explaining Thor, Asgard, Bifrost, and everything else without saying it's out and out magic, but it was a little hard to buy that the "Rainbow Bridge" that leads from Asgard to Earth was really something called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, AKA a "wormhole." I guess you can call the Asgardians, Frost Giants and the like all super-dimensional beings who exist in domains outside of normal time-space...except Thor said you could see them all using the Hubble telescope. So Asgard is just something that exists in normal space, out there somewhere.

I think I like "super-dimensional" better.

I know everyone tried really hard, but the characterization wasn't all that great. Natalie Portman as astrophysicist Jane Foster was played like a dippy school girl with a crush on the high school football quarterback. I liked Chris Hemsworth. I think he looked the part. I just wasn't amazingly impressed with his performance, and I really wanted to be.

Clint Barton (played by Jeremy Renner). He has a brief appearance in the film as a SHIELD sniper who prefers a bow to a high-powered rifle and scope. It explains (sort of) how he'll end up in the Avengers but Barton was always a bad boy in the comic books, right on the edge of being a criminal and heading toward prison (he first appeared as a pawn of the communist agent the Black Widow in the early 1960s, manipulated into attacking Iron Man). Hard to believe he starts out as a government agent rather than a well-meaning but easily conned rogue.

Sif (played by Jaimie Alexander). Nada. She didn't even look like a goddess. Heck, she didn't even look convincingly like a mortal female warrior. I just didn't get the feeling she could kick anyone's ass. She wasn't regal. She wasn't a goddess.

I know Thor is supposed to be the most bad ass god of them all, but it seemed as if he was about a thousand times more powerful than any other Asgardian around him. In the initial fight sequence in Jotunheim, the other gods including Loki seemed no more powerful than some really tough human martial arts/sword and sorcery types, while Thor flew around like Superman, smashing everything in sight. You'd think if everyone in Asgard was considered a "god" and was nearly immortal (Odin seems to age so they can't *really* be immortal), the "warriors three," Loki, and Sif would have been closer to Thor's own abilities (especially Loki, since he fights Thor to a stand still in the film's climax).

Agent Coulson (played by Clark Gregg) was an asshole. In the first two Iron Man films, he was sort of likable if not entirely competent, but in Thor, he was an absolute jerk, especially when taking away all of Jane Foster's (and her fellow scientists) toys. Also, I always had the impression that SHIELD knew exactly who they were recruiting for the Avengers, but Coulson had no idea how Thor was connected to the hammer and he thought Thor was some sort of "Soldier of Fortune" merc. Coulson got on my nerves fairly early and stayed there throughout the film. At least he evoked an emotion in me. Most of the other characters didn't.

I know that in the 21st century, it would be considered poor form to create an entire race of white people, but I was a little surprised to see Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano playing Hogun and African-British actor Idris Elba playing Heimdall. The Asgardian legends are Nordic legends, so I thought I'd see a lot more blonds in Asgard. Of course, if we reverse causality (which we have to here) and say the Nordic people observing the Asgardians fighting the Frost Giants on Earth mistook these super-dimensional beings for gods, then it makes sense that they'd recreate the gods of Asgard in their own image, depicting them in their legends as racially unmixed (blond hair, blue eyes, all white). That means in real (movie) life, Asgardians could look like just about anyone, as long as the men were buff and the women were beautiful.

The one thing I didn't really anticipate and did like in the film was Loki's motivation. In the beginning, he wasn't such a bad guy. Sure, he was jealous of Thor, but I can see why he'd believe Odin favored Thor at Loki's expense. Loki liked to get into a bit of mischief every now and then (and he is the god of mischief after all) but nothing serious. He really did love his parents and wanted to be a good king of Asgard (as opposed to Thor who started out as an arrogant prick). Discovering that he was "adopted" and a Frost Giant to boot, really reset his clock. Adopted kids, especially those who are adults before they are told they're adopted (or find out by accident as in Loki's case) almost always are shocked and sometimes pissed off that mommy and daddy didn't tell them the truth. It just added to Loki's complexity and his desire to take Thor down a peg...actually a lot of pegs, since he tried to kill his older brother.

In the end, Thor has to destroy Bifrost to keep Loki from committing genocide, shattering the link between him and Jane. Loki is lost when he deliberately lets himself fall into space. No apparent connection to Thor's return to Earth or Loki's return as the villain in The Avengers is apparent (save for the "real" ending after the credits when we get a brief glimpse of Loki in some SHIELD labyrinth).

I'm glad I saw the movie if only because it's a set up for The Avengers film and to fill in any gaps in my knowledge base. That said, there are better films out there I could wasted a couple of hours on. I just hope The Avengers movie doesn't leave me feeling as "blah."

Oh well.