Thor – It’s Raining Men!
By Roz Young, May 10 2011
I debated for awhile what to call this movie blog. I like “It’s Hammer Time” or “Me Thor, You Jane” but the WoWer in me wants to call it “Thor-ium, I’d Mine That”. Regardless, we went to see the God of Thunder last night in his debut movie before the Avengers ruin everything. If you don’t want to keep reading, the general consensus is that Thor is better than Iron Man 2, but not as good as the first Iron Man. Also, Chris Hemsworth is crazy hot without a shirt on. More on this later.
You know the drill, spoilers ahead. Ye be warned. First of all, I want to comment on the 3D. Not good, generally. One person with us thought the live action stuff looked great, but it seemed like something was just off for most of the movie. The text was shadowed funny and the distant scenery didn’t seem to line up quite right. It caused most of us to take our glasses off and do a WTF look around. In this day of the 3D line ups, you can’t eff that stuff up. Other than that, the movie looked very pretty. I expected nothing less from Kenneth Branagh. The scenes in Asgard are working hard to look and feel epic and hey, it’s nice. I get it, they are gods. Anthony Hopkins plays a great Odin.
So, what about on Earth? Kind of lame. In comparison to the fantastic realm of the gods, the few square kilometres the rest of the movie takes place in out in New Mexico are lacking. I realize it’s a small town and Jane, the astrophysicist (played by Natalie Portman, who is, as ever, lovely and adorable), needs to be somewhere with low light pollution as she tracks aurora disturbances, but srsly? We no see anything else? They elude briefly to other encounters with S.H.I.E.L.D. and I was kind of hoping to actually see something about the new Hulk (anyone have any news on this? I hear Mark Ruffalo. Ooo.) but... it’s not his movie. Just like it’s not Jane Foster’s movie and I was hoping to see her do her scientist thing a bit more. Instead we saw a heck of a lot of Frost Giant fighting. But not on Earth. The final battle there was a bit disappointing.
So, it’s Thor’s movie, and we see a lot of Thor. Alas, Chris Hemsworth (who you all might remember as Kirk Senior in the latest Star Trek reboot) is only really topless the one time. You get a great ogle though and the man is completely cut. We talked before about the work required to get a superhero body and this guy needed to not only be a hero, but a God. Kudos sir. Just. Yes.
Fans of comic books will, I think, be happy to know that it’s Loki as the villain in this movie. Which just makes great sense and clearly, he’ll be back. Story of Thor’s life. I think given the material, Thor is about as good as it could be. It’s fun and entertaining and thank sassy molassy Kat Dennings is around to give us some feminine comic relief. As usual, I would like more love story. And gore. The perfect Roz movie would appeal to no one.
Lastly, I would like to point out that these Avenger movies are setting awfully high standards for us women scientists. Liv Tyler played the biologist in the newest Hulk and now NP is a physicist. I’m not saying that we’re not an attractive bunch, but it’s a lot to ask of a lady to be that smart and have time to look spectacular while you’re doing research at all hours of the day. It’s not like we’re all gussied up waiting for a sexy god to fall from the sky at our feet and fall madly in love with us. We’re up to our elbows in experiments! Also, on the women front, are they planning on making ANY female Avenger movies? {editor's note: Marvel is considering a Black Widow stand alone movie} Or have all the women been delegated to highly intelligent love interests? (Yes, yes, I know that Thor is buddies with a female warrior, but it’s not her movie either!) I also wonder if Natalie thinks she made the wrong choice. Not that her ballet man isn’t cute too, but... She could have the God of Thunder.