Thor II: The Dark World
Oct. 31st, 2013 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn short: an enjoyable and entertaining fantasy movie. Not a must, but just plain likeable.
I had enjoyed Thor back in the day, which I hadn't expected, since the few comics encounters with Thor related characters had left me cold (not least because back then, I was still expecting them to be like the Norse gods; once I've come to accept them as their own characters, I had a much better time). But the Lokimania passed me by, and while yes, the fact that Thor the movie passed the Bechdel test in its first few minutes (due to Jane and Darcy talking about Jane's science projects) was pleasing, I didn't fall in love with Darcy, either. However, I definitely had a good time watching, and this proved to be the case with this sequel as well.
A few impressions, from the negative to the positive:
If you're watching this film because Christopher Eccleston plays the main villain: don't, or rather, not for that reason. All he contributes are cheekbones; for what he actually gets to do on screen, they could have hired a stuntman (with cheekbones). Even the voice is technologically enhanced, not that he has many lines. Basically, he's a generic Evil Overlord and the film is completely uninterested in giving him anything resembling an inner life, let alone layers. Now in this particular film this does not ruin the plot, because the big question for audience was never going to be "will Malekith destroy the universe?" anyway, but "whose side is Loki really on?", and so probably it was the smart thing to do to give the character stuff to the later, not the former. It still feels like a waste of actor.
Otoh, Renée Russo actually gets to do stuff here, as opposed to the first Thor outing. She has a superb scene with Loki in which Frigga gets to be smart, deeply loving yet not excusing, and then she absolutely rocks in her scenes with Jane and Malekith. After which, unfortunately, she dies. There is a good plot justification for it, but still: female character gets fleshed out, then bites it to motivate male character (three guesses which one). (No, not the title character.)
Also on the minus or at least ambiguous side of my personal columm: there is some comic relief stuff re: Erik Selvig which requires him to have an excentricity he never displayed before, and Odin two thirds in needs to have a sudden attack of dumb in order for the plot to get a bit more dramatic. It's not that the Solvig scene in question didn't make me smile or I didn't enjoy the scenes that were the result of Odin's sudden attack of dumb, but it did feel like plot over character.
On to the good stuff: Thor isn't my favourite of the MCU heroes, but early on in this film I suddenly realised I really, really like him. Not least because he's consistently written and acted as having learned from his past mistakes, without suddenly being another person. I like that in my heroes. Also, as opposed to a lot of fanfic where he walks around speaking in capital letters and basically as a child in terms of intelligence and emotion, MCU Thor is actually an interesting case of someone who is neither a genius nor dumb (well, at the start of Thor, he acts dumb due to arrogance, but as mentioned, he then proves he's capable of learning), but has avarage intelligence which he uses better and better due to his emotional maturing.
That, and Chris Hemsworth has a really great smile.
Seriously, though: I really liked Thor here, not least because he does what that over flying hero, Superman, in Man of Steel OUGHT to have done if the scriptwriters had bothered to think about it - once he realises there is a superpowered übermenacing foe there and that fighting him will probably reduce everything to rubble and kill most, if not all of the bystanders, he immediately decides they must lure said foe the hell away from any inhabited places. (This is the same guy who in the big action climax in Thor, knowing he's not as good a fighter in his then state as his friends, turned to evacuating civilians instead. See above re: character continuity.) Also, after trying the hugging-Loki tactic in vain in Avengers and getting stabbed for his troubles (literally), he's handling him perfectly here, prepared for double crossing, not easily provoked, but with ongoing affection combined with awareness of the enormity of what Loki has done. This is also the first of the movies that sold me on Thor and Loki having grown up together in a non-budding-tragedy way, because they have some great sibling scenes here, with sibling bickering that's always been a soft spot of mine.
Which brings me to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Woobified. To my relief, I enjoyed Loki here as well. I thought the film managed to pull of a believable storyline for him. No, not a redemption arc; he's still not caring for anyone outside of his family, and he's still after the top job, thank you very much. But after Frigga point blank calls him on the Everything-is-always-everyone-else's-fault early on, he actually seems to grow a bit beyond the inner emo teen, and as opposed to Thor the movie, where the emotions were all about "but Dad, I should be the favourite" and of course the shock over realising his true background, this film lets him focus not on his daddy and Jotun issues but on his emotions re: Frigga and Thor (and this is also the first film that really provides some fodder for the interpretation that Loki loves as well as hates Thor). El Hiddleston is reliably good and gets good stuff, too, from sarcastic quips to anger to vulnerability. And as mentioned, there is sibling bickering that's quite different from their high drama scenes in both Thor (though there was a deleted scene that's on the dvd, a conversation between Loki and Thor before Thor's party, that has sibling teasing as well) and Avengers that gives a good impression on what their relationship must have been like through much of their lives together. The "whose side is he really on, and what's he really after?" question, as mentioned, gets the narrative attention the film's nominal main villain doesn't, and it's nicely unpredictable just which way Loki will turn. (Though I could see the very last twist coming, but that's not to the film's detriment, it's simply a franchise thing.)
The other fan favourite, Darcy, gets lots to do as well. Sadly for Bechdelian categories, she does most of it with two male characters since she and Jane get seperated by the plot early on and don't reunite until the grand climax, but then, the spirit rather than the letter of the Bechdel test is what counts, and Thor: The Dark World with Jane, Darcy, Sif and Frigga has four female characters who are all important to the plot, which other comic book movies, err, don't. Sadly. (Well, Sif has less to do than the others but I think I've read that the actress had an accident while filming, plus she gets as much as the Warriors Three.) As far as Jane is concerned, the first and the last third of the film do best by her, with the middle third relegating her somewhat to damsel for plot reasons, but then, one of the people protecting her during the damsel interlude is Frigga (i.e. another woman), and it is during that damsel period that she has what's my favourite scene for Jane as a scientist, which also made me think of Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum that science after a certain point becomes undistinguishable from magic, only in reverse: Jane, on Asgard and with the evil plot McGuffin coursing through her veins and while the Asgardians investigate her with poetical-sounding names is relentlessly curious and figures out what a "soulforge" actually does (it involves Quantum particles). Her reaction to her first transdimensional travel, too, is just as it should be for someone who's defined by her passion for science, and as I hoped it would, the film after the plot McGuffin is out of her and the action moves back to Earth again lets her use her science skills to engineer saving the day.
In other news: all the Earth scenes take place in London, where Jane, Darcy and Solvig are questing for gravitational anomalies. This makes a refreshing change for the MCU; yes, Captain America was nominally set in Europe for two thirds of the action, and the Iron Man films had their Afghanistan, Monte Carlo and Bern scenes, but Thor: The Dark World is the first one to actually use a location that doesn't look as if they only dressed up the studio a bit. It cracked me up that the nine worlds converge over Greenwich, too, because of course they do. And hey, Thor gets to use the Tube (he's lucky it's not a Sunday, I guess *g*)! Also, topical joke of the hour:
Darcy: Don't worry, we're Americans!
Jane: That's supposed to make them like us?
There is the usual Stan Lee cameo, but I have to say, as far as cameos are concerned, there is one which trumps Stan's. Of an Avenger, or rather the actor of one, and I'll say no more. I bet Spoilery Spoil had a blast doing that.
Marvelverse after-the-credits scene: Two scenes this time, one early on after the actor names and the other at the very end. The first one hits at the same thing the first additional scene at the end of Avengers hinted at, while the second one is purely Thor relevant.
I had enjoyed Thor back in the day, which I hadn't expected, since the few comics encounters with Thor related characters had left me cold (not least because back then, I was still expecting them to be like the Norse gods; once I've come to accept them as their own characters, I had a much better time). But the Lokimania passed me by, and while yes, the fact that Thor the movie passed the Bechdel test in its first few minutes (due to Jane and Darcy talking about Jane's science projects) was pleasing, I didn't fall in love with Darcy, either. However, I definitely had a good time watching, and this proved to be the case with this sequel as well.
A few impressions, from the negative to the positive:
If you're watching this film because Christopher Eccleston plays the main villain: don't, or rather, not for that reason. All he contributes are cheekbones; for what he actually gets to do on screen, they could have hired a stuntman (with cheekbones). Even the voice is technologically enhanced, not that he has many lines. Basically, he's a generic Evil Overlord and the film is completely uninterested in giving him anything resembling an inner life, let alone layers. Now in this particular film this does not ruin the plot, because the big question for audience was never going to be "will Malekith destroy the universe?" anyway, but "whose side is Loki really on?", and so probably it was the smart thing to do to give the character stuff to the later, not the former. It still feels like a waste of actor.
Otoh, Renée Russo actually gets to do stuff here, as opposed to the first Thor outing. She has a superb scene with Loki in which Frigga gets to be smart, deeply loving yet not excusing, and then she absolutely rocks in her scenes with Jane and Malekith. After which, unfortunately, she dies. There is a good plot justification for it, but still: female character gets fleshed out, then bites it to motivate male character (three guesses which one). (No, not the title character.)
Also on the minus or at least ambiguous side of my personal columm: there is some comic relief stuff re: Erik Selvig which requires him to have an excentricity he never displayed before, and Odin two thirds in needs to have a sudden attack of dumb in order for the plot to get a bit more dramatic. It's not that the Solvig scene in question didn't make me smile or I didn't enjoy the scenes that were the result of Odin's sudden attack of dumb, but it did feel like plot over character.
On to the good stuff: Thor isn't my favourite of the MCU heroes, but early on in this film I suddenly realised I really, really like him. Not least because he's consistently written and acted as having learned from his past mistakes, without suddenly being another person. I like that in my heroes. Also, as opposed to a lot of fanfic where he walks around speaking in capital letters and basically as a child in terms of intelligence and emotion, MCU Thor is actually an interesting case of someone who is neither a genius nor dumb (well, at the start of Thor, he acts dumb due to arrogance, but as mentioned, he then proves he's capable of learning), but has avarage intelligence which he uses better and better due to his emotional maturing.
That, and Chris Hemsworth has a really great smile.
Seriously, though: I really liked Thor here, not least because he does what that over flying hero, Superman, in Man of Steel OUGHT to have done if the scriptwriters had bothered to think about it - once he realises there is a superpowered übermenacing foe there and that fighting him will probably reduce everything to rubble and kill most, if not all of the bystanders, he immediately decides they must lure said foe the hell away from any inhabited places. (This is the same guy who in the big action climax in Thor, knowing he's not as good a fighter in his then state as his friends, turned to evacuating civilians instead. See above re: character continuity.) Also, after trying the hugging-Loki tactic in vain in Avengers and getting stabbed for his troubles (literally), he's handling him perfectly here, prepared for double crossing, not easily provoked, but with ongoing affection combined with awareness of the enormity of what Loki has done. This is also the first of the movies that sold me on Thor and Loki having grown up together in a non-budding-tragedy way, because they have some great sibling scenes here, with sibling bickering that's always been a soft spot of mine.
Which brings me to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Woobified. To my relief, I enjoyed Loki here as well. I thought the film managed to pull of a believable storyline for him. No, not a redemption arc; he's still not caring for anyone outside of his family, and he's still after the top job, thank you very much. But after Frigga point blank calls him on the Everything-is-always-everyone-else's-fault early on, he actually seems to grow a bit beyond the inner emo teen, and as opposed to Thor the movie, where the emotions were all about "but Dad, I should be the favourite" and of course the shock over realising his true background, this film lets him focus not on his daddy and Jotun issues but on his emotions re: Frigga and Thor (and this is also the first film that really provides some fodder for the interpretation that Loki loves as well as hates Thor). El Hiddleston is reliably good and gets good stuff, too, from sarcastic quips to anger to vulnerability. And as mentioned, there is sibling bickering that's quite different from their high drama scenes in both Thor (though there was a deleted scene that's on the dvd, a conversation between Loki and Thor before Thor's party, that has sibling teasing as well) and Avengers that gives a good impression on what their relationship must have been like through much of their lives together. The "whose side is he really on, and what's he really after?" question, as mentioned, gets the narrative attention the film's nominal main villain doesn't, and it's nicely unpredictable just which way Loki will turn. (Though I could see the very last twist coming, but that's not to the film's detriment, it's simply a franchise thing.)
The other fan favourite, Darcy, gets lots to do as well. Sadly for Bechdelian categories, she does most of it with two male characters since she and Jane get seperated by the plot early on and don't reunite until the grand climax, but then, the spirit rather than the letter of the Bechdel test is what counts, and Thor: The Dark World with Jane, Darcy, Sif and Frigga has four female characters who are all important to the plot, which other comic book movies, err, don't. Sadly. (Well, Sif has less to do than the others but I think I've read that the actress had an accident while filming, plus she gets as much as the Warriors Three.) As far as Jane is concerned, the first and the last third of the film do best by her, with the middle third relegating her somewhat to damsel for plot reasons, but then, one of the people protecting her during the damsel interlude is Frigga (i.e. another woman), and it is during that damsel period that she has what's my favourite scene for Jane as a scientist, which also made me think of Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum that science after a certain point becomes undistinguishable from magic, only in reverse: Jane, on Asgard and with the evil plot McGuffin coursing through her veins and while the Asgardians investigate her with poetical-sounding names is relentlessly curious and figures out what a "soulforge" actually does (it involves Quantum particles). Her reaction to her first transdimensional travel, too, is just as it should be for someone who's defined by her passion for science, and as I hoped it would, the film after the plot McGuffin is out of her and the action moves back to Earth again lets her use her science skills to engineer saving the day.
In other news: all the Earth scenes take place in London, where Jane, Darcy and Solvig are questing for gravitational anomalies. This makes a refreshing change for the MCU; yes, Captain America was nominally set in Europe for two thirds of the action, and the Iron Man films had their Afghanistan, Monte Carlo and Bern scenes, but Thor: The Dark World is the first one to actually use a location that doesn't look as if they only dressed up the studio a bit. It cracked me up that the nine worlds converge over Greenwich, too, because of course they do. And hey, Thor gets to use the Tube (he's lucky it's not a Sunday, I guess *g*)! Also, topical joke of the hour:
Darcy: Don't worry, we're Americans!
Jane: That's supposed to make them like us?
There is the usual Stan Lee cameo, but I have to say, as far as cameos are concerned, there is one which trumps Stan's. Of an Avenger, or rather the actor of one, and I'll say no more. I bet Spoilery Spoil had a blast doing that.
Marvelverse after-the-credits scene: Two scenes this time, one early on after the actor names and the other at the very end. The first one hits at the same thing the first additional scene at the end of Avengers hinted at, while the second one is purely Thor relevant.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-31 07:59 pm (UTC)In fact, my recollection is that a lot of American moviegoers were taken aback to see LA as LA in Iron Man.
Avengers is the one that has a weirdass scene in Germany that I can never decide if it looks German or not.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-31 09:20 pm (UTC)after Frigga point blank calls him on the Everything-is-always-everyone-else's-fault early on
But this was Loki essentially saying it to himself, wasn't it? Which I suppose says something too.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 06:49 am (UTC)Also I don't think we've ever seen anyone do a projection when they weren't actually in the same room? Not to say it's impossible, but I don't think there's a precedent for it.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-01 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-02 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-02 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-02 05:19 pm (UTC)BUT what you describe sounds interesting in a very different way, and I do wish it had been included given the importance of mother-son relationships in the film. Plus Thor's Avengers line of "he's adopted", while funny in that moment, didn't ring very true for the character as a whole.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 04:24 am (UTC)