Thor 2 long and massively spoilery review
So about Thor 2!
My broad review is that this movie forked over a heap of fannish catnip, which makes me very happy as a fan, but was kind of a mess and badly written, which drives me mad as a writer. So a lot of this is going to be critical! If that will harsh your buzz, give it a miss!
The main problem is it was so enormously exposition-heavy. It felt like it was trying to be a second-rate LOTR instead of playing to the strengths of Thor.
With Thor, I really missed his fun fish-out-of-water bits, of which there were really only Thor hanging up his hammer and then the cute but totally wrong story-wise getting on the subway. (Thor, why are you riding the subway 3 stops when the universe is at stake?)
We also needed to care about Frigga a lot more, and by "we" I actually mean "the writers of this movie". It was such a classically crap fridging. We didn't get enough of her beforehand, she had a few token generic wife-and-mom lines and five passes of sword-fighting and then she was dead. Dear writers: you can't just play the "you killed our mommy!" card and sit back in satisfaction like your work here is done. (Or rather, you can! If you want to SUCK.)
In particular I badly wanted a scene of Frigga talking to either Odin or Thor about Loki and his fate. I didn't need her being sympathetic or poor-Loki, I just needed to see all of them having some kind of feelings about him/their family's destruction, as something to be a mirror of and connect to Loki's scene with the mom-illusion he made (which was seriously great and incredibly painful).
And then when she was dead, they stepped on everyone's grief. We had Thor howling and 3 seconds of Odin bowed over her, then this massive funeral afterwards that was long and very pretty and a great spectacle but not personal. We don't even hear Loki find out, and his trashed cell just looked juvenile, not a reflection of agony.
Also, seriously, Loki gets told she's dead by a random guard? He's not allowed to go to her funeral? I get it, Odin is a cold bastard, but that is beyond extreme. And having the guard tell him was a giant waste. Have THOR tell him! Have Thor come down and Loki lightly is all, so, having some trouble with escaped prisoners? and Thor is all, Loki, and Loki's face stills, and we see them grieve TOGETHER for a moment.
Oh, and then the intercutting of the whole sequence of treason/escape back and forth with the planning conversation was especially terrible, it was like, amateur hour writing. NONE of that exposition was necessary. Just have everyone do what they're going to do. If a viewer can't follow it, fix the SCENES.
Plus Odin's bizarro "we're just going to sit here defenseless until they come back and then all die to stop them!" thing was only matched by Malekith's bizarro "well you wouldn't tell us where you stashed Jane so we're going to run away and sulk for a while and let you reorganize your defenses before we reattack!" thing.
The long stretch of the escape where Loki was yapping at Thor endlessly was -- like, I love the IDEA that Loki and Thor fall back into their old sibling rhythm given half a chance, and I could sell it to myself as Loki's been in solitary confinement for months now only talking to his own illusions and can't help himself, but they didn't sell it to me that way?
Instead it felt like the writers wanted comic relief, and they wrote an exaggeration of the old rhythm from the first movie. The Captain America cameo was simultaneously the best thing in the movie and also just didn't belong there, although hello, Loki/Steve Rogers fic, I expect to see a sudden influx of you.
With Jane, it was way too much moping from HER, too. Also, the "why didn't you call me" bit made me seriously want to punch the writers in the nose. I also roll my eyes massively at how the aether didn't seem to affect her at all either during/after, except to make her conveniently asleep so we could have the Thor/Loki scenes, and how she didn't get to make any kind of deliberate use of it. The writers literally used her as a bag to transport it from the cell into Malekith's hands, and she did nothing scientific other than poke the glowy red thing which might as well have been stamped with a neon sign saying BAD IDEA DO NOT TOUCH.
I was grateful for the in-movie explanation why she was spelunking in abandoned buildings in fancy clothes and heels and more elaborate makeup than I wore to my wedding. :P
OK now the good parts:
WHOOOOOOOOO the ending! Loki on the throne! I knew immediately in the death scene that he wasn't going to stay dead (because I was confident that I would have heard the shrieking of fandom while locked in a dark closet IN SPACE), but my initial assumption was that he'd faked his death in order to avoid them hunting for him and putting him back in the cell. Then when the guard came back to Odin -- did they have Tom Hiddleston do a voiceover for the guy? It seemed like it! -- I was all, ooo, he's snuck back into Asgard? and then the final scene, omg, DELIGHT.
It was made even more awesome by what a complete dick Odin was in this movie. Also it totally hit my buttons that went into Balancing. I now want to write the story where [redacted because I'm going to write it].
I loved so much that Thor actively refused the throne and left at the end. I came away from it feeling he was just emotionally crushed by then -- Frigga gone, Loki gone (he thinks) -- and retreating in desperation to something that feels good, and that he failed to recognize that Odin wouldn't in a billion years have let him go because he so desperately needed to get OUT of there.
I also loved that Loki carefully gave Thor exactly what he wanted to hear in that conversation, measured out perfectly to the gram of plausibility -- Odin not actually approving but giving Thor love anyway (which actually, I'm also sure in Loki's bitterness he might well believe Odin having that much unconditional love in him for Thor).
The Loki/Thor scenes in general made me happy. The one moment on the hovership where they start fighting and Thor says, she wouldn't want us to fight and Loki says, but she wouldn't be surprised, to me that was the one moment in this movie where they were real, in the Velveteen Rabbit sense.
(Although to complain AGAIN oh my god, writers, how do you miss the obvious infinitely better reply to "I wish I could trust you" which is NOT the clunk of trust my rage but, DUH DUH DUH, "so do I".)
I loved Loki's fighting, and that he took out the invincible bad dude with his own weapon, and also hey they totally did provide an explanation for why Jane could punch him in the face and not be breaking her hand! At least, I'm considering the aether responsible for it in my head.
I like that Loki likes Jane and I totally look forward to Loki/Thor/Jane threesome fic. :D
So basically, they gave me a bunch of scenes to inspire fic, didn't contradict any of my headcanon, and ended the movie on a scenario that is flat-out catnip to me, so I'm actually happy with where I am fannishly, but it was not a great movie. (Also, the movie theater near me now has RECLINERS and reserved seating, so you can go have a drink at the good bars across the street and roll in 5 minutes to showtime, as indeed we did, so it was a pretty nice night anyway!)
All in all -- I still prefer my version of Thor 2, which I had a fit and half wrote about a year ago and will try and finish up and post at some point soon. :>
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My broad review is that this movie forked over a heap of fannish catnip, which makes me very happy as a fan, but was kind of a mess and badly written, which drives me mad as a writer. So a lot of this is going to be critical! If that will harsh your buzz, give it a miss!
The main problem is it was so enormously exposition-heavy. It felt like it was trying to be a second-rate LOTR instead of playing to the strengths of Thor.
With Thor, I really missed his fun fish-out-of-water bits, of which there were really only Thor hanging up his hammer and then the cute but totally wrong story-wise getting on the subway. (Thor, why are you riding the subway 3 stops when the universe is at stake?)
We also needed to care about Frigga a lot more, and by "we" I actually mean "the writers of this movie". It was such a classically crap fridging. We didn't get enough of her beforehand, she had a few token generic wife-and-mom lines and five passes of sword-fighting and then she was dead. Dear writers: you can't just play the "you killed our mommy!" card and sit back in satisfaction like your work here is done. (Or rather, you can! If you want to SUCK.)
In particular I badly wanted a scene of Frigga talking to either Odin or Thor about Loki and his fate. I didn't need her being sympathetic or poor-Loki, I just needed to see all of them having some kind of feelings about him/their family's destruction, as something to be a mirror of and connect to Loki's scene with the mom-illusion he made (which was seriously great and incredibly painful).
And then when she was dead, they stepped on everyone's grief. We had Thor howling and 3 seconds of Odin bowed over her, then this massive funeral afterwards that was long and very pretty and a great spectacle but not personal. We don't even hear Loki find out, and his trashed cell just looked juvenile, not a reflection of agony.
Also, seriously, Loki gets told she's dead by a random guard? He's not allowed to go to her funeral? I get it, Odin is a cold bastard, but that is beyond extreme. And having the guard tell him was a giant waste. Have THOR tell him! Have Thor come down and Loki lightly is all, so, having some trouble with escaped prisoners? and Thor is all, Loki, and Loki's face stills, and we see them grieve TOGETHER for a moment.
Oh, and then the intercutting of the whole sequence of treason/escape back and forth with the planning conversation was especially terrible, it was like, amateur hour writing. NONE of that exposition was necessary. Just have everyone do what they're going to do. If a viewer can't follow it, fix the SCENES.
Plus Odin's bizarro "we're just going to sit here defenseless until they come back and then all die to stop them!" thing was only matched by Malekith's bizarro "well you wouldn't tell us where you stashed Jane so we're going to run away and sulk for a while and let you reorganize your defenses before we reattack!" thing.
The long stretch of the escape where Loki was yapping at Thor endlessly was -- like, I love the IDEA that Loki and Thor fall back into their old sibling rhythm given half a chance, and I could sell it to myself as Loki's been in solitary confinement for months now only talking to his own illusions and can't help himself, but they didn't sell it to me that way?
Instead it felt like the writers wanted comic relief, and they wrote an exaggeration of the old rhythm from the first movie. The Captain America cameo was simultaneously the best thing in the movie and also just didn't belong there, although hello, Loki/Steve Rogers fic, I expect to see a sudden influx of you.
With Jane, it was way too much moping from HER, too. Also, the "why didn't you call me" bit made me seriously want to punch the writers in the nose. I also roll my eyes massively at how the aether didn't seem to affect her at all either during/after, except to make her conveniently asleep so we could have the Thor/Loki scenes, and how she didn't get to make any kind of deliberate use of it. The writers literally used her as a bag to transport it from the cell into Malekith's hands, and she did nothing scientific other than poke the glowy red thing which might as well have been stamped with a neon sign saying BAD IDEA DO NOT TOUCH.
I was grateful for the in-movie explanation why she was spelunking in abandoned buildings in fancy clothes and heels and more elaborate makeup than I wore to my wedding. :P
OK now the good parts:
WHOOOOOOOOO the ending! Loki on the throne! I knew immediately in the death scene that he wasn't going to stay dead (because I was confident that I would have heard the shrieking of fandom while locked in a dark closet IN SPACE), but my initial assumption was that he'd faked his death in order to avoid them hunting for him and putting him back in the cell. Then when the guard came back to Odin -- did they have Tom Hiddleston do a voiceover for the guy? It seemed like it! -- I was all, ooo, he's snuck back into Asgard? and then the final scene, omg, DELIGHT.
It was made even more awesome by what a complete dick Odin was in this movie. Also it totally hit my buttons that went into Balancing. I now want to write the story where [redacted because I'm going to write it].
I loved so much that Thor actively refused the throne and left at the end. I came away from it feeling he was just emotionally crushed by then -- Frigga gone, Loki gone (he thinks) -- and retreating in desperation to something that feels good, and that he failed to recognize that Odin wouldn't in a billion years have let him go because he so desperately needed to get OUT of there.
I also loved that Loki carefully gave Thor exactly what he wanted to hear in that conversation, measured out perfectly to the gram of plausibility -- Odin not actually approving but giving Thor love anyway (which actually, I'm also sure in Loki's bitterness he might well believe Odin having that much unconditional love in him for Thor).
The Loki/Thor scenes in general made me happy. The one moment on the hovership where they start fighting and Thor says, she wouldn't want us to fight and Loki says, but she wouldn't be surprised, to me that was the one moment in this movie where they were real, in the Velveteen Rabbit sense.
(Although to complain AGAIN oh my god, writers, how do you miss the obvious infinitely better reply to "I wish I could trust you" which is NOT the clunk of trust my rage but, DUH DUH DUH, "so do I".)
I loved Loki's fighting, and that he took out the invincible bad dude with his own weapon, and also hey they totally did provide an explanation for why Jane could punch him in the face and not be breaking her hand! At least, I'm considering the aether responsible for it in my head.
I like that Loki likes Jane and I totally look forward to Loki/Thor/Jane threesome fic. :D
So basically, they gave me a bunch of scenes to inspire fic, didn't contradict any of my headcanon, and ended the movie on a scenario that is flat-out catnip to me, so I'm actually happy with where I am fannishly, but it was not a great movie. (Also, the movie theater near me now has RECLINERS and reserved seating, so you can go have a drink at the good bars across the street and roll in 5 minutes to showtime, as indeed we did, so it was a pretty nice night anyway!)
All in all -- I still prefer my version of Thor 2, which I had a fit and half wrote about a year ago and will try and finish up and post at some point soon. :>
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth (
comments)