Thor - a (sort of) proper post
The end.
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OK, just kidding. Though honestly, what more do you need? A full disclaimer before I go into a more detailed post behind the cut - I am pretty sure that my vastly positive impression of Thor was influenced by the fact that Chris Hemsworth as Thor is pretty much what my physical ideal of a man looks like - despite the fact that this LJ is drama-zone and is knee-deep in various appealing Asian drama stars, my personal paragon of manly attractiveness is a blond, blue-eyed, Viking-looking guy. Don't ask. Long story. Has been this way since high scool and I am too old to change now. So to actually see that on screen for two hours - ummmmm. Yeah.
Clearly, getting Kenneth Branagh to direct was a genius move because KB, with all those Shakespearean adaptations under his belt (his Hamlet is my favorite Shakespeare adaptation ever), knows how to do operatic and larger-than-life and make it believable and grand and not ridiculous and overblown.
If you think about it, all the stuff on Asgard (a fantasy, Viking-type world where people quaff and wear shiny helmets and go berserk), was begging to turn into another Zardoz or Flash Gordon - a silly cheesefest that would be ripe for parody. Instead, somehow it's grand and epic and engrossing. Tbh, I preferred Asgard bits to those set on earth (though the fish-out-of-water stuff was pretty funny). If I had my druthers, I would have preferred to have the whole movie set there. It would have been the most awesome mythology-meets-fantasy thing ever.
Of course, part of my preference for Asgard part of the story might have been that Natalie Portman was absent in those. I have nothing against NP and I didn't dislike her character or anything, but I wasn't particularly impressed by her either. She just didn't register. The writing for the romance was the movie's sole weakness and NP and Chris Hemsworth didn't have the world's greatest chemistry, the kind of chemistry which would overcome the shortcomings of romance as written and make me believe that they fell irrevocably in love in the course of a couple of days.
I would have so much rather seen Thor paired with Sif (who is apparently his ultimate OTP in the comics? Now I feel cheated), who is this awesome warrior woman who can demolish armies and takes flack from nobody and is apparently a good friend of his. Oh well, I suppose that's why fandom and fanfic exist.
My favorite scene was Thor in 'jail' after failing to retrieve Mjolnir. Probably because until then, even when he was banished to earth, he was so confident and cocky and energetic and then he's just...destroyed. When Loki shows up and he looks up at him and asks him whether he can come home, he's like this lost little boy and it sort of broke my heart.
So yeah, CH is ridiculously, inhumanly hot, but he also can act. Yay!
I really liked the bildungsroman aspect of this. Unlike a lot of superhero stories, this wasn't about an average person aquiring power. It was about a powerful person losing it and learning humility and he limitations and fragilities of others by being bound by those same limitations. Daddy Odin was clearly a proponent of tough love if Thor got his hammer and powers back by asking Loki to kill him getting killed by Loki's monster in exchange for Loki sparing the people of the town. I suppose that way the lesson will stick?
After the movie ended, my main thought was 'screw The Avengers, I want to see Thor 2!!!!!!' Though it would be pretty funny to see Tony Stark and Thor butt heads. Can the Universe even contain two such egos in one place?
To conclude as shallowly as I began:
