Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2011 for Thor, taking the MCU to the realm of gods, far away from our earth.
- Magic = Science? The MCU is three for three with protagonists who are also scientists, and while Thor does have a supporting cast of physicists the focus is very much elsewhere, giving the MCU a depth we didn’t realize it had lacked up until this point. Of course, the film says that magic is basically Asgardian science, but it’s difficult to imagine Thor understanding the physics behind it all. This is definitely the weirdest the MCU has gotten thus far, but it opens up a new corner of storytelling where our adventures don’t necessarily have to be entirely earthbound.
- Speaking of weird... I have to point out that director Kenneth Branagh loads this film with more Dutch angles than most episodes of Batman ’66. As a directorial quirk, it’s such a strange one because it’s applied to scenes on Earth and on Asgard, to heroes and villains, to the mundane and the fantastic. In short, I don’t know what Branagh is doing, especially because his other films like Hamlet and Cinderella aren’t shot this way. Is he trying to demonstrate cinematographically the weirding of the MCU? Or is he saying that our world is just as strange as Thor’s? More research is needed.
- Shakespeare’s Loki. It’s no wonder that Marvel’s most charismatic villain yet ends up taking the lead in The Avengers, and Tom Hiddleston really does steal this film from Chris Hemsworth and his mighty abs. Indeed, it’s Loki who has the more compelling character arc – discovering and asserting his birthright, striving for the love of his father, and reveling in his role as the god of mischief. The only misstep in the film’s portrayal of Loki is his haircut, this strange slicked-back look that doesn’t quite capture the internal mania of Loki. This, true believers, is why God invented sequels, and perhaps why Branagh is a strong fit for Thor – there’s something very Shakespearean about Loki.
- Where have all the humans gone? As we move apace toward The Avengers, I’m looking for points of intersection, and the human cast of Thor – Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard, and Kat Dennings – are a wonderful complement of normalcy to the foreign Asgardian element, but I can’t help regret that we haven’t seen more of them outside the Thor franchise. As Dr. Selvig, of course, Skarsgard has popped up in both Avengers films, but how have we not seen more of Dennings’s Darcy as some of that continuity glue? And while Portman is understandably a busy star, her absence is acutely felt when the Avengers films try to explain away her nonattendance.
- We’ll always have Phil. Thor gives us a glimpse at the man, the myth, the legend that is Phil Coulson. After an obligatory cameo in Iron Man 2, we finally get to see Agent Coulson in his element, proving once and for all that this truly was a man who deserved his own spinoff. The Iron Man films did a good job establishing Phil as the audience’s connection point to the shadowy SHIELD, such that his arrival in Albuquerque in Thor lets us know that things are about to get real. After all, you don’t call in a heavyweight like the Son of Coul for nothing.
1 comment:
Thor, to me, has so far been the weak point in the MCU. This first one especially seems very slight and more a tie-n for The Avengers than a full movie. And I think the pseudo-Shakespearean stuff in Asgard was kind of ridiculous in a pure fantasy comics story, not to mention really clashed with the culture clash comedy on Earth.
Thank god for Loki, because Hiddleston is both just the right amount of likable bad and is knowingly hamming it a bit. Although, it was kind of by default that Loki became the top villain in the MCU because every other bad guy so far has been gone after one film (or in Bucky's case, no longer bad).
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