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the_dala at 05:49pm on 16/11/2013
the_dala at 05:49pm on 16/11/2013"Thor: The Dark World" was so chock full of things I love that I spent the whole two hours (a nice trim running time for an action film these days) grinning like a loon. I shall list them for you, followed by a few things that didn't work so well.
BANTER! So much awesome banter. Thor and Sif and the Warriors Three, Jane and Darcy, the other folks in the science gang - really, everything out of Darcy's mouth qualifies. Most important, of course, being Thor and Loki. Oh my god, how much fun does Tom Hiddleston have playing Loki? I'm not even a Loki stan, but he is just a joy to watch. And he had has such wonderful chemistry with the cast, particularly Rene Russo and Chris Hemsworth. Just like in Avengers, every time Hemsworth seizes Hiddleston by the head or neck, I think they're gonna make out. I don't ship it really, but it is still glorious. And that death scene (even though it's obviously not going to take) was genuinely touching.
LONDON (even when it's taking a beating yet again). And my favorite part of London, no less. St. Paul's is my favorite building, but my favorite place is Greenwich, going back to a beautiful day during my study abroad time when I wandered around the Naval Academy and the Cutty Sark and the Maritime Museum and the Observatory. I just adore Greenwich and am perfectly content whenever someone chooses to film there ("On Stranger Tides" just goes steadily downhill after those scenes). I'm just glad they didn't throw a mock-up of the Cutty Sark in there to get destroyed, because I might've burst into tears in the theater.
MORE DARCY. And Selvig, and Heimdall, and Frigga, and all the characters that so charmed me in the first one. True, there could've been even more Warriors (though I wonder if they cut at least Sif's role back because of Jaimie Alexander's injuries?). And I didn't understand at all why Hogan got sent offscreen for all but thirty seconds. But everybody else was just delightful, including poor Chris O'Dowd.
(Except for Odin. Who is still a dick.)
ASGARD. There was definitely a more established sense of it in this film - it felt like a real place where people lived. How great were the spacey-Viking-y anti-aircraft guns? And the flying barges? Even if the average warrior was about as good a shot as an Imperial stormtrooper, and the Asgardian nursing brigade appeared to be made up entirely of ladies. And it looked great. The funeral scene was breathtaking, maybe the best scene of that kind since the lighting of the beacons in RotG. I may have to see it in 3D just for that.
The climax. I tend to get bored when action films roll around to the inevitable destructo-fest, and a good deal of variety is the only way to fix that (all the different types of fighter in Avengers to follow, for example). The plot device of stuff randomly disappearing and reappearing really worked in this one; it was engaging, never got stale, and allowed for some fun unexpected moments like Darcy dipping Intern Ian like a boss, ahahaha. Which reminds me -
The FUNNY. Selvig running naked around Stonehenge. Selvig and his tighty whiteys. Darcy's everything. That moment when Fandral knocks out the dudes on the boat and the "Guys, I know kung fu" is obviously if silently implied. THOR ON THE TUBE. That lady just telling him where to go like it was only a little bit weird, and then stumbling into his incredible chest, and his little smirk. Just the right amount of meta. That was my favorite bit of comedy aside from -
STEEEEEVE. MY FAVORITE AVENGER HI CAP HOW ARE YOU IS IT MAY YET. According to IMDB, Hiddles put on a Captain America suit and Chris Evans then riffed on his impression. I can see that, and it looked like a total blast. Just twenty second of pure awesome. Also it made me ship Cap/Thor a bit?
And now the things that didn't excite me as much:
Natalie Portman. Just...I've liked the actual writing for Jane, and she has cute moments (like when she was analyzing the soul-table-thing), and I want to ship Thor/Jane. I just wish they had cast somebody else. Portman and Hemsworth have zero romantic chemistry, their size difference weirds me out in a way it doesn't with other similarly disproportionate couples (she looks like a child next to him), and she spends far too much screen time with her mouth hanging open like a fish. I wonder if all the stuff with the directing changes and Portman initially refusing to come back had an effect on the writing for her, because Jane was completely passive and useless for the whole middle bit of the movie. She finally did stuff again at the end, but I was getting worried there for awhile.
The villains were not all that interesting, but whatevs, Christopher Eccleston.
I was disappointed that they killed off Frigga just when she was finally getting to be badass. It's not a huge point of contention for me, and I didn't think it fell as far into fridging territory as it could (Christopher Nolan I am once again looking at EVERY MOVIE YOU MAKE). Still, why couldn't it have been Odin? Would anyone truly miss his cranky old ass? I'm curious to know if Loki really killed him at the end or just sent him somewhere funky.
Overall, I was massively entertained. I quite liked the original, but they did some really interesting stuff here. I need to see it again.
BANTER! So much awesome banter. Thor and Sif and the Warriors Three, Jane and Darcy, the other folks in the science gang - really, everything out of Darcy's mouth qualifies. Most important, of course, being Thor and Loki. Oh my god, how much fun does Tom Hiddleston have playing Loki? I'm not even a Loki stan, but he is just a joy to watch. And he had has such wonderful chemistry with the cast, particularly Rene Russo and Chris Hemsworth. Just like in Avengers, every time Hemsworth seizes Hiddleston by the head or neck, I think they're gonna make out. I don't ship it really, but it is still glorious. And that death scene (even though it's obviously not going to take) was genuinely touching.
LONDON (even when it's taking a beating yet again). And my favorite part of London, no less. St. Paul's is my favorite building, but my favorite place is Greenwich, going back to a beautiful day during my study abroad time when I wandered around the Naval Academy and the Cutty Sark and the Maritime Museum and the Observatory. I just adore Greenwich and am perfectly content whenever someone chooses to film there ("On Stranger Tides" just goes steadily downhill after those scenes). I'm just glad they didn't throw a mock-up of the Cutty Sark in there to get destroyed, because I might've burst into tears in the theater.
MORE DARCY. And Selvig, and Heimdall, and Frigga, and all the characters that so charmed me in the first one. True, there could've been even more Warriors (though I wonder if they cut at least Sif's role back because of Jaimie Alexander's injuries?). And I didn't understand at all why Hogan got sent offscreen for all but thirty seconds. But everybody else was just delightful, including poor Chris O'Dowd.
(Except for Odin. Who is still a dick.)
ASGARD. There was definitely a more established sense of it in this film - it felt like a real place where people lived. How great were the spacey-Viking-y anti-aircraft guns? And the flying barges? Even if the average warrior was about as good a shot as an Imperial stormtrooper, and the Asgardian nursing brigade appeared to be made up entirely of ladies. And it looked great. The funeral scene was breathtaking, maybe the best scene of that kind since the lighting of the beacons in RotG. I may have to see it in 3D just for that.
The climax. I tend to get bored when action films roll around to the inevitable destructo-fest, and a good deal of variety is the only way to fix that (all the different types of fighter in Avengers to follow, for example). The plot device of stuff randomly disappearing and reappearing really worked in this one; it was engaging, never got stale, and allowed for some fun unexpected moments like Darcy dipping Intern Ian like a boss, ahahaha. Which reminds me -
The FUNNY. Selvig running naked around Stonehenge. Selvig and his tighty whiteys. Darcy's everything. That moment when Fandral knocks out the dudes on the boat and the "Guys, I know kung fu" is obviously if silently implied. THOR ON THE TUBE. That lady just telling him where to go like it was only a little bit weird, and then stumbling into his incredible chest, and his little smirk. Just the right amount of meta. That was my favorite bit of comedy aside from -
STEEEEEVE. MY FAVORITE AVENGER HI CAP HOW ARE YOU IS IT MAY YET. According to IMDB, Hiddles put on a Captain America suit and Chris Evans then riffed on his impression. I can see that, and it looked like a total blast. Just twenty second of pure awesome. Also it made me ship Cap/Thor a bit?
And now the things that didn't excite me as much:
Natalie Portman. Just...I've liked the actual writing for Jane, and she has cute moments (like when she was analyzing the soul-table-thing), and I want to ship Thor/Jane. I just wish they had cast somebody else. Portman and Hemsworth have zero romantic chemistry, their size difference weirds me out in a way it doesn't with other similarly disproportionate couples (she looks like a child next to him), and she spends far too much screen time with her mouth hanging open like a fish. I wonder if all the stuff with the directing changes and Portman initially refusing to come back had an effect on the writing for her, because Jane was completely passive and useless for the whole middle bit of the movie. She finally did stuff again at the end, but I was getting worried there for awhile.
The villains were not all that interesting, but whatevs, Christopher Eccleston.
I was disappointed that they killed off Frigga just when she was finally getting to be badass. It's not a huge point of contention for me, and I didn't think it fell as far into fridging territory as it could (Christopher Nolan I am once again looking at EVERY MOVIE YOU MAKE). Still, why couldn't it have been Odin? Would anyone truly miss his cranky old ass? I'm curious to know if Loki really killed him at the end or just sent him somewhere funky.
Overall, I was massively entertained. I quite liked the original, but they did some really interesting stuff here. I need to see it again.
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