Thunder and Lightning and Smoke and Mirrors

.

I find myself in a state of mind that would give Thor a righteous boner - I am at war with myself. On the one hand I really enjoyed everybody in Thor. I thought Chris Hemsworth struck a fine (emphasis on fine) balance with the braggadocio tipping into outright silliness that Thor needs. He made a far more appealing hero to me than Entourage-Man Tony Stark. I thought Natalie Portman was charming, even if she was just basically playing Natalie Portman. I'm okay with that, I like Just Natalie Portman. And I liked Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings as her science friends (and how refreshing was it for there to be two lovely ladies being friendly with each other in a superhero movie? Two! My god!) 

I loved Anthony Hopkins showing up and undoubtedly making a couple of million bucks to bellow a couple of times - I do believe one of his actual lines was "ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!" - and then take a nap for the rest of the movie. I even found myself smiling at the reappearance of Rene Russo, someone I haven't thought of once since she wore that slinky see-through dress in The Thomas Crown Affair. She even got to brandish a sword for a second! That was exciting. I love it when women in long flowing jewel-encrusted gowns with piled-on ringlets get all stabby. And I really really dug Tom Hiddleston as Loki, with his slightly less than Michael Fassbender features and kick-ass curved-horn helmet (do you think I could pull one of those off? Like, riding on the 7 train?).

And yet, didn't it really feel like the script needed another couple run-throughs? Like this was just a n early sketch. As if there were entire pages that said, "They Talk About Things For Awhile Here" or "Frost Giants Lurk Here" or "We Swoop Above Asgard For Half An Hour Again Here."

Speaking of Asgard, fuck you Asgard. God. You know, they had SO MUCH MONEY to play with on this movies and that city was so boring to look at. Was there anyone on the streets ever? There was nothing exciting about it, nothing that I felt like I hadn't seen that before.

That's actually my main problem with almost everything except the delightful cast - there wasn't anything that I felt my eyes pop over. There was nothing like seeing Spider-Man swing through the streets of Manhattan for the first time. When the SHIELD Agents joked that the Robot Protector was one of Tony Stark's I nodded in agreement. The Frost Giants (and that Frost Balrog of theirs) were dully designed - they're basically an exact copy, minus the wings, of the bad guy from Jeepers Creepers. And it doesn't help that everything in that Ice Kingdom was the same color and so dark as to be indistinguishable. And I didn't even see it in 3D so there's no excuse for the glasses darkening things here - I can only imagine how murky those scenes must've been with the glasses on.

Of all unexpected things, my favorite bits were the jokey bits. Chris Hemsworth smashing his cup at the diner, Chris Hemsworth getting hit by the car that second time, his drinking night with Stellan Skarsgard (I actually wish we'd gotten to see more of that). The battles didn't seem well-thought-out at all and were shot in close up too often - the one or two times the camera pulled back to show us what the hell was going on I breathed a sigh of relief, but then back tot he indistinguishable blur. It struck me afterwards that, looking at the trailer for Tarsem Singh's Immortals on the big screen before this movie, that I already feel more satisfied by what Tarsem's shown me there in just two minutes than the images Branagh & Co. were able to conjure up.

All this sounds angry, doesn't it? But that's not entirely where I stand. Because I liked everybody so much, and even if I was waiting for the to do something that bowled me over for two hours and never much got that, I enjoyed their company. Like Hemsworth's performance I thought the film nailed the simultaneous bombastic-jokey tone that a Thor movie would die without. When it was over I thought to myself, good god I can't wait to see what Joss Whedon does with the characters from this movie that transfer over to The Avengers! He'll have something for them to do.

.