Thor demands "another!"—and shows off the comic side Ragnarok would fully embrace
Film Features The Marvel Moment
Thor: Ragnarok was a much-needed lightning jolt to an otherwise woefully mild franchise. The film’s tonal shift—specifically, the idea to lean into Thor’s more latent comedic potential—was not only a welcome departure from its predecessors but also a way to make the all-powerful God Of Thunder more accessible. Ragnarok reintroduced us to a version of Thor who contains multitudes: a being who is somehow both impossibly regal and a bit of an exuberant underdog.
But there is a brief moment in the character’s first movie, 2011's Thor, that feels like a precursor to Ragnarok, one that thankfully lessened the distance between this superhero (and maybe Chris Hemsworth, by extension) and the audience. Jane (Natalie Portman), Darcy (Kat Dennings), and Erik (Stellan Skarsgard) take Thor to a small-town diner for breakfast. There, he is introduced to the nectar of necessity that is coffee, and expresses his approval by spiking the mug onto the ground and loudly demanding “another!” Thor is a man far too large for his surroundings (figuratively speaking, though he’s pretty big guy, too), but his infallible charisma makes that easier to stomach. Even seeing him saunter haphazardly into the road with such unnecessary confidence is hilarious (and he does eventually pay for that tendency when he is hit by a car).
From scarfing down what appears to be his second breakfast to goofily smiling for Darcy’s Facebook timeline, those few precious minutes at this quaint diner highlight the sort of fish-out-of-water (or god-out-of-Asgard, if you prefer) element that makes Thor just a little more human. And while the scene is relevant outside of the chuckles (after all, it does bring him a step closer to recovering his beloved Mjölnir), it also signals a sort of potential that inspires audiences to possibly slog through two films (one of which Hemsworth himself admits is “meh”) just for the hope of seeing that spark once more.
The thing is, Thor could have believably remained one-note. He’s handsome, self-assured, wildly powerful, and capable of handling both the fate of the world and his own host of familial issues. Still, none of that calls for much emotional range or any significant depth. Comedy gave Hemsworth a way to explore the flaws of the hammer-wielding god and enough layers to make his superhuman ability almost secondary. It’s what’s made this round-up of characters so engaging over 21 movies and 11 years: the believable notion that we mere mortals could share a few things in common with such extraordinary beings, even if it’s something as minute as not quite knowing how to function in social situations. This particular scene, even in its brevity, will always stand for the larger potential of every Marvel hero: They are more than what they can do for the planet(s), and they (and we) are way better for it.
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I didn’t mind Thor 2: The Dark World.There, I said it.
SO YOU’RE THE ONE!!!
I’m the other one.It’s… pretty entertaining! It just pales in comparison to a lot of the other MCU content and/or how much better it could have been. It doesn’t bring a whole lot new to the table, recycles several important elements from the first movie, and has a very thin villain (a wasted and unrecognizable Christopher Eccleston). The only real stakes or value-added from it is killing off Frigga, which is such a basic-ass Screenwriting 101 move.
But it does have some fun action sequences, great humor, awesome Thor & Loki material, and a lot of charm from the cast. It’s basically “The Further Adventures of Thor.” If there were a new Thor movie coming out every year or so I wouldn’t mind if a couple of them just kinda treaded water, but the fact that they ended up being very rare (and are such a big production to begin with) is what makes its wastefulness so offensive.
TWO OF YOU???I kid, I kid.While I think it’s one of the weakest MCU entries overall, that largely comes down from bad pacing and a fluctuating tone.Case in point, whenever it’s trying to be “Game of Thrones… in Spaaaaaaace” it’s actually really good, and any time that Hemsworth and Hiddleston are on screen together the whole film just lights up.Unfortunately that’s only half of the movie… the other half is like a lowest-common-denominator version of Doctor Who driven by the phoned-in performances of Eccleston and Portman, and further hamstrung by the braindead “humour” of Stellan Skarsgard in his pants and Kat Dennings just being shrill and dumb.
My favorite way to watch “The Dark World” is actually to pretend it’s an episode of Doctor Who, but the Doctor got replaced by Thor. So instead of a clever techno-babble plan to undo the Aether re-writing reality, Thor just keeps running up to it and hitting it with a hammer.
I stand by Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 being decent movies. They pale in comparison to most of the rest of the MCU, but they have a few Marvel moments – namely, the suitcase armor and the portal fight – that make me forgive a lot of their flaws.
I’ve long maintained that TDW’s only real sin is that its villain is collossally boring. I would literally nominate Malekith as the most boring villain in any movie I’ve ever seen. He’s so boring that it basically breaks the movie’s overall cohesion, so even though the rest of the movie is no less than perfectly adequate (and in many cases excellent), its backbone fails to hold it together.
It’s disappointing, because he’s pretty great in the comics. He’s a trickster, causing havoc by using his magic to impersonate other people. That madcap energy was so essential to the character that I wonder why they even bothered to waste the name in the film.The same with the only other significant dark elf in the movie, Kurse. A tragic, menacing figure in the comics, so incidental to TDW that I’m sure most viewers didn’t even realize he’d been named.
I’d love to see a deep dive into how the film conception of Malekith was conceived: Was it the director who told Eccleston to play it dull, or was it Eccleston’s idea, or did the writer(s) do it, or was Feige involved? Etc.
I think since Loki had already been established as using illusion powers they might have thought it would look unimaginative to give them to Malekith. So they went with a completely different kind of unimaginative!
I had the same thought after I posted. It sucks that they couldn’t come up with something more compelling, or better yet use another villain who would’ve fit the warlord type they needed for this film more (while still doing something more creative with whoever they chose).
Malekith, Kaecilius, and Ronan walk into a bar…and they never get served, because they’re too boring for anyone to notice.
It’s kind of neck-and-neck with Ronan the Accuser – who has now managed to be entirely uninteresting in two separate movies – but Malekith might just have the edge.
Ronan’s not great, but at least he has a comprehensible motivation, and has a little more personality than Malekith. Plus, Pace’s performance has more life to it than Eccleston’s.
I don’t know that I’d go that far. The liveliest Pace gets for me is when he reacts to the dance-off at the end, and it’s a marked difference from the rest of the film.
And it sucks again that they didn’t go with something closer to his authoritarian, anti-hero characterization from the comics rather than just making him a generic crazy psycho with a hammer. I’m not sure if it would’ve helped (he’s not that interesting even in the comics) but at least it could’ve been unique if done right. I also disliked how they made him the initial object of Drax’s vengeful obsession, rather than Thanos all along.
And I will forever be puzzled by just how uninteresting Ronan was, given how talented Lee Pace can be. I don’t know if its a case of bad casting, bad writing, bad acting choices, make-up interference or what, but I feel like there’s a version of that character that could have been almost Darth Vader-ish cool, and … we didn’t get that.
Thor 2 is worth it for the scene where it’s revealed that Loki has been covering up his grief breakdown over his mother with an illusion.
A good scene!Also great is the Whedon-penned sequence not long after where Thor’s friends help he & Loki escape. It’s a magical prison break/reverse-heist scene filled with fun action and great gags. Loki cosplays as Captain America!
I enjoy ‘The Dark World’ quite a lot as well. I think with some tighter pacing and a much better villain it could easily have made it into the MCU’s top ten.
i think thor 2’s badness is vastly overrated. it’s way better than the original, has some big laughs and tom hiddleston gives a really great performance. kids these days never had to lie to themselves that spawn or batman forever were good movies and it shows.
I lied to myself about Batman Forever, but I left Spawn knowing I’d been had.
Oh god. I rewatched Spawn last year thinking, “Man this movie was so dope when it came out and I was 10!” And after rewatching it, no. Just no. I will however still defend Batman Forever. It can’t touch what came before it, but it still has its charm and some moments. In those first four Bat movies (‘89, Returns, Forever, B&R) you have Keaton, who was a great Bruce Wayne and Batman, Kilmer who was a lousy Bruce Wayne but a great Bats, and Clooney, who practically IS Bruce Wayne but was a terrible Batman.
I mean, have you tried re-watching The Crow?
It’s the film that solidified Loki’s popularity.Marvel was taken by surprise when he showed up in costume at Comic Con and everyone went nuts – so they did reshoots to add him into more of the film. More Loki=better movie.
If the first couple of Thor movies came out exactly as-is, but pre-MCU (i.e., in the company of such flaming trash barges as the first Fantastic Four movies, Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, X3, etc.) they’d probably be remembered as some of the brightest spots of the era by a wide-ass margin.
I’ve never “liked” Spawn, it looked below average when I first saw it. Batman Forever I will defend as a goodish comic book film. Even though Jim Carrey is OTT, the whole film works for me.
I like it better than Iron Man 2.
I even liked it better than First Avenger!EDIT: Wait, are we talking about the first Thor, or Dark World?
I liked Dark World better than Iron Man 2, which is not really defending it much. I liked Avengers more than both of those.
It is better than Iron Man 2 in the fact that it tells a story from beginning to end and understands what its themes are.
Which also puts it above everything in the DCEU except for Wonder Woman.
Most do.
Faint praise.
I think everyone agrees.
Everything is better than Iron Man 2.
I think Iron Man 2’s badness is vastly overrated…
Me neither.
It kept me entertained on the elliptical, at least.
I’m right there with you. I’ve enjoyed the entire trilogy.
Thor 2’s redeeming feature for me is the Thor Loki dynamic. Just watching the two of them on sort of the same side really perks up the movie. I would easily say it is easily one of the MCU’s worst but (with the exception of Hulk which I never saw) even the bad movies have a lot of redeeming features (so not really that bad just sadly kind of average).
My issue with Dark World – which I actually like just fine and think has some cool sequences, including Heimdall’s most badass moment – is that it’s one of the entries in the MCU (Age of Ultron being the other most notable) where the balance between telling its own story vs. setting up events in the bigger MCU feels too weighted towards the latter. Even though some pretty notable events in Thor’s personal story happen, the movie still feels like it exists mainly to introduce another Infinity Stone. That’s probably due to the fact that even after multiple viewings, I couldn’t tell you what Malekith is trying to accomplish beyond providing a Macguffin. The plot of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie similarly revolved entirely around getting an Infinity Stone in play, but that never felt like the only point of the movie, as it does in Dark World. Dark World is an entertaining movie that falls a bit short in justifying its own existence as a standalone story. It feels like a chapter.
Excellent summary.
I agree. I love the Loki stuff in Thor 2, especially his reaction to the death of his mother, and his double-triple-quadruple fakeouts at the end. It helps sell him as a multidimensional character rather than just a tricksy bad guy.
Being in the bottom tier of MCU movies still means you can be fairly entertaining. Even Iron Man 2 isn’t a total stinker.
One of the largest problems in Thor is that the love interest has an annoying sidekick. To solve this issue, the sequel gives her annoying sidekick an annoying sidekick. It’s sidekick inception, and it was inexcusable.
The Marvel Moment for Thor 2 should clearly be Darcy saying “Mew Mew!” as the hammer flies by them.
Or the worthiest coat rack in existence, or really the whole thinking with portals gag that makes up the final action set piece.
Done.
I don’t think Thor: The Dark World is a very good movie, but it’s no worse than Ant-Man, even as an action-comedy. I feel like Marvel Studios churning out smash hits has warped a lot of pop-culture-oriented critics’ perceptions about the importance of structure to developing characters.
It had some real cool textural stuff like Yggdrasil with the galaxies nestle din its branches, or the Norns as healers. A perfect blend of the techno-magical world of the Asgards.
Portman is the main problem in both the 1st 2 Thor films. That and a reluctance to go full Thor. As Marvel would go on to embrace the comedy more think how much of a waste the MCU Volstagg character is. Marvel just didn’t have the guts to make the supporting cast (Warriors 3, Sif, etc) actually fun yet. I suppose they thought it would make it hard for the audience to buy into the film. Too concerned with grounding the film in some version of a recognizable “real world” and not realizing that its the characters themselves that will do a far better job of grounding the film.
i like it better than the next one. my whole family hates the third movie.
Fun fact: Broxton, Oklahoma, the location where the Earth scenes in Thor are set, was actually the location of Asgard for a bit in the comics after the Thor came back to life after breaking the Ragnarok cycle. Odin later put it back where it was supposed to be at the start of the event Fear Itself.
Except the scenes were set in New Mexico.Though this would have been a much better idea. I blame August Osage County for making Hollywood not want to acknowledge modern or future Oklahoma, as seen in Ready Player One.
Except RPO is set in Ohio.
The book is set in Oklahoma City! I only know this because when I first read it, I thought it was a prophetic text about being a Midwestern nerd (which I deeply regret), and because Oklahoma newspapers were pretty desperate to write about how we were connected to the film when it came out.
What an odd choice to change in the movie. It’s not like Columbus is drastically different or instantly recognizable like New York or LA.
Exactly. I would bet good money that the Oklahoma City skyline has not forced its way into anyone’s memory after those five seconds of it in “Logan”.
This would be where one would normally make an “Oklahoma City has a skyline?” comment, but I suppose anything more than three stories rising out of that flat expanse of prairie would look like Burj Khalifa.
In all seriousness, between the Devon Tower, Bank of Oklahoma building, and Skirvin Hilton, there are at least a few pretty interesting looking landmarks that make up the skyline.
I’m guessing the studio thought setting it in OKC would have the audience expecting everyone to talk all twangy-like, but Dayton allows everyone to be all accentless Midwestern.
Hey! We got Twister!And that one show with Holly Hunter. I think.
And a realistic depiction of Ohio at that.
Except RPO is set in Ohio. If I recall correctly, in the book his trailer tower is in OK and he eventually moves to Ohio to be closer to the OASIS servers. I think they just streamlined that for the movie.
At the conclusion of Avengers:Endgame, I expect that Asguard will be relocated to the cliff in Norway where Odin died
I hope you’re right, cause now I will be really disappointed if that doesn’t happen.
Did I misunderstand the opening of Infinity War? I thought the Asguardians were wiped out by Thanos?
Half were wiped out by Thanos
I was under the impression he destroyed everyone on the ship as they were escaping to Earth. No?
He broke the ship in half. Half of it was allowed to escape, with half of the refugees, led by Valkyrie (which is why she’s alive for Endgame, per the character posters).
Really? Do they say that in the film somewhere? Also, wouldn’t breaking the ship in half cripple it?
They don’t say it, but we can see the two halves, & the directors confirmed it later.
Unless I’m mistaken their were two Asgardian ships, or at least two parts of a ship, and he destroyed one of them.
Counterpoint- no one wants to go to Oklahoma.
See, if Tracy Letts didn’t make it seem like we all have horrible, downtrodden, vindictive, and occasionally incestuous family lives, we could have hidden the truth that we’re all just painfully boring for another decade!
The tornadoes and fracking earthquakes probably aren’t helping. I feel like it’s right on the verge of becoming Dustbowl 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Dustbowl 2 does make me excited for the long lost Steinbeck manuscript to reemerge and finally get published:“Raisins of Fury”.
True story: Until I was about 14, I thought The Grapes of Wrath was related to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Then I found a copy lying around in the school lobby and read the back cover and thought “Dust bowl? What the hell is this?”
First Dust, Part 2?
Here I thought it was going to be Bloody Brony.
The earthquakes have lessened considerably, or they just stopped reporting them….
Vampires want to go to Oklahoma, as seen in Near Dark.
I’ve actually heard tell of a person who is proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.
I believe that’s the state motto.
I blame August Osage County for making Hollywood not want to acknowledge modern or future OklahomaJim Inhofe makes me not want to acknowledge Oklahoma.
That damn snowball haunts my nightmares.
Except the scenes were set in New Mexico.Though this would have been a much better idea. I blame August Osage County for making Hollywood not want to acknowledge modern or future Oklahoma, as seen in Ready Player One.
I believe this was the story where the word “Asgardian” refuses to catch on. “Horsey head guy, he’s a Thor. Lady with the sword, she’s a Thor.”
I was sorely disappointed they didn’t do that following the events of Thor Ragnorock. It would have made for a great AGENTS OF SHIELD story arc. I can just imagine all these Asguardians milling around the Broxton DMV.
The movie is set in Punete Antiguo, New Mexico.
Unfortunately, between Thor:Ragnarok and GotG, Marvel has decided that all heroic aliens are ripe sources of comic relief. These guys are supposed to face down monstrous threats to the entire galaxy (or possibly even BE those threats), not just handling uncomfortable situations on one little planet for their friends. It works for Thor because he was always the irresponsible outsider of his Royal Family, and he also has a long history of interaction with humans, though that was a long time ago from our perspective. Humanizing other aliens turns them into Star Trek’s one-note humans with funny noses. GotG and Ragnarok are great films, but there isn’t a single alien in them outside of Thanos who isn’t (at one point or another) played for laughs. That shouldn’t be universal. Part of the MCU’s success is that different films have been handled as in entirely different genre styles. It would be a shame if all “cosmic” films have to become screwball comedies.Note: I have not seen Captain Marvel yet. I do not know if that film helps or hurts this observation.
I still think the first Thor was underrated. It was funny, but also a little operatic with that Ken Branagh vibe, it brought the stakes down to one small town in New Mexico… good stuff all around.The only weird bit watching it now, is Thor’s makeup. They made him weirdly pale, and it’s so unnatural. Thankfully by Avengers they figured out the look.
They definitely hadn’t quite figured out his hair/beard. The too-blonde eyebrows are particularly distracting.
Well, I mean, he’s supposed to be Nordic. “Nearly translucent” is kind of their thing.
Yes! The eyebrows are a key part of it. I think they did go a shade too light on his foundation, too. Like someone thought, “Well, he’s a Norse god so he should be blond hair/eyebrows and light skin.” Then the next couple they just let him go with his natural skin tone.
I saw that screengrab at the top of the article and thought “Why’s he look like that? That’s not what he looked like for the whole movie, right? I’d definitely remember that.”
I agree! I still think The First Avenger is the most-underrated of the films, but folks forget when this came out that Marvel was still thinking in terms of “different genres of films for each of the different heroes” — so they wanted a Shakespearean family drama with superheroes directed by one of the leading Shakespearean actors/directors (Brannagh) and starring one of the other leading Shakespearean actors (Hopkins), surrounded by just a bunch of likable and quality actors…… and we got exactly that. It also has a very small cameo for Hawkeye, but one which (in like 2 minutes of screentime) establishes what Natasha tells us in The Avengers, that he’s not a shoot first, ask questions later guy — and he can read someone pretty well at a distance.
I think the acting is largely fine to good (aside from Portman, who has a rare ability to make sure everyone watching knows exactly how much she hates the material she’s been given to work with) and they do a nice job establishing Thor as a character, but the story itself is really thin and it has one of the most extreme examples of the typical Marvel problem of underwhelming action set pieces, especially the climax.
I think that’s mostly fair on the underwhelming action, but I also think that wasn’t the point of the movie (in much the same way there weren’t a lot of huge, action set-pieces at the end of The First Avenger either beyond a fairly standard WW2 bunker/aerial assault).As for the story, I also disagree with that because it’s a “who am I?” character piece (answer: “not 24601!”) about a boy who thinks that fighting is the answer to everything, becoming the man who realizes this may not be true — but also that sometimes you need to fight.It’s somewhat bittersweet, as most Shakespearean tragedies are, because he finally finishes this arc in Thor: Ragnarok… just in time for everything to be taken away from him. Which explains him in Infinity War.
You know, I was fine with Portman in the first one. It’s the second one where her eyes are screaming “I’m a serious actress and I’m contractually obligated to another kiddie franchise?” In ABSOLUTELY EVERY FREAKING SHOT!
She seems mostly bored in both of them, but yeah it was worse in 2. Though so was everything else. I think she has since admitted that she phoned it in because she was pissed they fired Pattie Jenkins.
The First Avenger is the most-underrated of the films You’re right, I guess, but not at my house. It’s hands-down my favorite.
The First Avenger has been in my top 3 MCU movies since it came out. I love it.
For the production design ALONE it is in the MCU’s first rank.
Branagh’s mojo really makes it, for my money.
I dunno – I think for me Branagh’s “mojo,” and in particular the endless Dutch angle shots, actually distracted from Hemsworth’s staggering personal chemistry. And I don’t like how Branagh directed Tom Hiddleston as Loki – if it weren’t for The Avengers and Joss Whedon seeing the character’s potential, nobody would have missed Loki after his apparent demise.Still, though, I do think that you either have to go full Branagh or full Waititi with Thor – otherwise, you end up with The Dark World and nobody wins.
No one would’ve missed Loki? Revisionist history. He was a standout in that and people loved him immediately.
The Loki in Thor was very pretty (I mean, come on, Hiddleston), but the way Branagh directed him, his character was stilted and muted – particularly in light of how much more freedom Hiddleston had to play him in The Avengers. Loki didn’t become a real standout until Whedon got his hands on the character, because let’s face it, in Branagh’s hands Loki wasn’t really a trickster as much as he was simply a betrayer. Branagh doubled down on Loki’s tragic backstory and didn’t let him have any fun. He didn’t look like he was enjoying himself until the first moments in The Avengers.
Thor is better than its reputation. I think Kenneth Branagh and Anthony Hopkins’s contributions are overlooked, and they do actually elevate the material. Odin is a genuinely interesting character who can be both harsh and distant, but also truly loves both of his sons. You can tell how Branagh and Hopkins’s background with Shakespeare clearly influence their choices with the character, and it makes Loki’s betrayal that much more heartbreaking.By contrast, in Thor 2 Odin is just some gruff asshole. It’s almost like he’s a completely new character.
I just re-watched THOR last night and yeah, something about his face seemed so off to me and I couldn’t place what it was.
I remembered really liking the first Thor the first bunch of times I watched it, but I found it pretty mediocre when I rewatched it last month. It’s not awful by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s kinda weirdly paced and lower stakes than a movie about a god should be.
“lower stakes than a movie about a god should be.”I’d argue this point, as it’s a movie literally about the fate of the world…just not THIS world.
On the one had yes, on the other hand he just needs to punch a magic robot.
Well, no… he needs to get over his arrogance, find his humility, take an interest in people who aren’t as fabulous as he is, and learn the sacrifice that makes a great leader. So that he can earn his hammer back. And then punch a magic robot.
That’s one of the things I like about it. So many movies assume that the destruction of a planet only matters if it’s Earth. This one says, “Yes, they’re frost giants and for most of the movie they’ve been antagonists, but it’s still not a good thing for genocide to happen to them.”
I appreciate the small town stakes, but it kinda sucked to go from the opulence of Asgard (which would’ve been ripe for exploration) to a dirt patch in the middle of New Mexico.Especially since that dirt patch featured like two locations so the town never felt like anything more than a backdrop.
I liked Thor 2 fine. It’s fun to watch both 1 and 2 in succession.I go back and forth as to which MCU film is my least favorite. If the Norton Hulk counts, that’s definitely it. If that one doesn’t count, I guess I could say Iron Man 2 or Thor 2 but — I still watch those a bunch anyway.
It’s a tie between Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World for me. The Incredible Hulk while not brilliant has just enough humour and plot to lift it above those two films.
The only thing that bothers me is that the film looks so much cheaper than Iron Man, which came out a couple years before. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the movie, but the cheapness of some of the effects pulls me out of it.
I’ve watched it enough to tag the main problem with Thor as tonal dissonance. Branagh knew how to make the scenes in Asgard properly Shakespearean, but neither he nor the script really knew what to do with Thor once he hit Earth and lost his powers. And the result is just jarring, quite literally at times.The arc of Thor and Jane on Earth should have been about two radically different people falling in like with one another. Not romance. Friendship. It should have been about how Thor is a charming, likable lunk, but he’s also spent literally over a thousand years being told he’s the greatest, he’s Odin’s heir, he’s entitled, and so on and so forth. He’s not bad or malignant in any sense (and it would be a misuse of Hemsworth’s megawatt charisma to try), but he does have just enough frat-boy privilege to enjoy fighting for fighting’s sake, rather than purely for the sake of protecting that which is worth protecting. And he needed a buttoned-down friend like Jane to call him out on that privilege. Similarly, Jane Foster currently has no character aside from “studies wormholes”, but you could do worse than leaning into Portman’s reputation as a spastic live wire to create a character that is hard-charging because she’s frequently underestimated, but nevertheless desperately in need of Thor’s bon vivance.What we get instead is a romance that emerges mainly because Foster keeps hitting Thor with his car. It’s slapstick, which, hey, Hemsworth is certainly game for. But it’s not a story. And as a result, it just derails everything related to the drama of the Asgard subplot.
Funnily enough, I feel like we got a decent friendship arc of the type you’re talking about with Thor and Selvig – Selvig was low-key the emotional center of that whole movie. He may not be the most memorable thing about it, but take him out of the movie and it doesn’t really work.
Also thankfully they got rid of that awful Fabio wig.
I’d love to see an oral history of Thor given how publicly pissed off Branagh was at the time about studio meddling and aggressive editing, and that coming from an experienced Hollywood director. From what Whedon and Wright have said about their own projects, it seems that conflict didn’t phase Marvel Studios one bit. An in-depth look at this movie might shed some light on how their process developed.
yeah I loved the operatic feel of the first one, and missing some of that is my only tiny criticism of Ragnarok. He’s a character that could easily be The Buffoon of the group but to Hemsworth’s credit he’s very delicately rode that line and kept it from going too far.
‘The Incredible Hulk’ and, for all their charm and humour, the first two ‘Iron Man’s, took the superhero genre very seriously – and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially after a long history of movies treating superheroes with vague embarrassment. ‘Thor’ is the first one that’s willing to say, “Superheroes are big and kind of silly and fun – like this!” And I’ll always love it for that.
Yeah Thor is a good film, not as great as Ragnarok but still good.
Watching Thor, it’s hard to believe Chris Hemsworth would go on to anchor Infinity War with his comedic timing and emotional range. Thor’s not a terribly impressive movie, but it has some funny moments, some cool visuals in Asgard, the MCU’s best villain until Thanos showed up on the Asgardian refugee ship and a couple nice sentimental moments.
I’m not alone in thinking Thor is the star of IW am I?
Fuck no. One of my favorite moments in the whole movie is when he shows up with Groot and Rocket Rabbit, and Banner is just like “oh you guys are really fucked now!” As much as the “forge” scenes bugged me for getting almost everything about forging/casting wrong, it’s worth all that for him finally returning to earth.
I really want Cap to take center stage in Endgame but I hope its not to the detriment of Thors screen time.
Chris Hemsworth would go on to anchor Infinity War with his comedic timing and emotional range. Each succeeding movie featuring Thor has taken more advantage of Hemsworth’s skill as a comic actor. He gets perfectly (as do the writers) that Thor is noble, sure of himself (a tad arrogant) and also – kinda dim. Not an idiot by any means: a college athlete who never had to attend classes, basically. In Ragnorak he proposes a team, and the only name he can think of is “…the… Revengers..” His attempts at heroic speech often go wrong – “he’s never fought me.” “yeah he has” “well, he’s never fought me twice.” When told he’ll be killed he says “Only if I die.” He’s sweet and a hero and all, but you kinda wouldn’t want him on your side at Trivia Night.[My favorite Hemsworth-as-Thor acting moment is when Cap manages to almost move the Mjolnir in Age of Ultron. Packed into that glance is befuddlement, shock and a touch of fear – plus relief that Cap can’t lift it and that no one noticed that he almost did. I might be reading too much into that seconds-long bit, but I don’t think so.]
No there was definitely panic in his face for a minute.
One of my favorite examples of ditzy characters is Bubbles from “Powerpuff Girls”. She likes to spend her time coloring and talking to squirrels, but she’s far from stupid and is perceptive in a way Blossom and Buttercup aren’t. She’s the heart of the team, in the sense she has the purest emotions, whether it’s rage or happiness.Thor’s the same way. Really, Thor wears his heart on his sleeve. He has no guile. He’d be a terrible poker player, whereas Loki would be a great one. But that guileless sincerity is what makes the character in contrast to the idealism of Steve Rogers or the cynicism of Tony Stark.
The Thor = College Athlete analog is Tim Tebow.
Of course, I always read Cap in that scene as going, “Oh, I moved it. I’ll just… act like nothing happened and walk away. That way no one will feel bad.”
What I like about the humour with Thor is that it’s consistent to the character. It never feels like they make a significant change or have him play too dumb just for the sake of a joke. (And he’s clearly not actually stupid; he studied Groot on Asgard, and the “All words are made up” line is reasonably insightful.) The comedy mostly comes from Thor just being entirely himself, regardless of the context, and that includes often going with his first, not necessarily great idea.
No, I think that’s pretty much all there. Chris Hemsworth is a good actor, and he did that bit really well.
To me, it’s less that he’s a bit dim, and more that he just never had to bother – but give him time *and a reason*, and he’ll put in the effort and work it out. One of the small moments I really liked in the first Thor movie was when he woke up in the hospital tied to the bed – he tries to use strength to break free, realizes he can’t and panics, but then pauses to think and reevaluates his strategy. In Ragnarok, sure, he can’t think of a clever name of the top of his head (which is funny), but he manages to actually out-think Loki.
But we already know that Thor attended his classes. He did take Groot as an elective, after all.
“You could’ve sent an electronic letter—email?”“Do you have a computer?”“No, what for?”
Let it never be forgotten that at one point in the comics, Thor had a whole story arc where he was turned into a frog, and ultimately led a frog rebellion against their despotic ruler. That was a thing that happened. Makes it kind of strange it took them so long to turn to Taika Waititi.
And let’s not forget Beta Ray Bill, an alien horse man who was Thor once.
Definitely not forgotten, as I would love for him to show up in the MCU sooner than later.
Technically he has!
Technically, but a giant head on the side of a building can only exude so much personality.
“Coming to cinemas 2026: Beta Ray Bill.Giddy Up.”
“God! You remember when Marvel wasn’t all about Intergalactic prequals?”Future AVClub comment.
How do you feel when the MCU throws in its little references to the larger comics history as easter eggs? Like seeing Beta Ray Bill as a statue in Ragnarok or Stormbreaker in Infinity War.It always leaves me feeling a little bittersweet. I like seeing the big budget rendering and knowing that at least someone in the production pipeline has affection for these characters. But it effectively puts the lid on including these ideas as bigger stories in the MCU.We will never get World War Hulk, because they already spent all the necessary setup. Kate Bishop and Clint Barton is hard to tell when you’ve given Hawkeye a wife and kids.
I half-assumed that the girl, briefly seen in an Endgame trailer, that Hawkeye was teaching to shoot was going to turn out to be Bishop. (I guess the girl could also be his farm-house daughter, because I’ve forgotten how old she was in Age of Ultron).
The Infinity Gauntlet shows up in one of these Thor movies, only to get dismissed as a fake by Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. These little Easter eggs won’t stop them from doing the real thing later if they want to.
That sort of reference to source material in superhero movies demonstrates how little the commercial success of superheroes has done to change the lagging fortunes of comic books and the marginal status of their readers in the current day and age. Comic book fans still drool at scraps from the pop-culture table in the form of throwaway references to trivia irrelevant to the story being told.
Kate is still doable because Clint was never related to her. Her trying to live up to the retired name of Hawkeye is still a very doable story.Now what’s not doable is what an amusing dirtbag/trash bag 616 Hawkeye is. That would definitely change the nature of their partnership from possible but thoroughly regrettable hookup potential to very sincere mentorship.
Well, I wouldn’t say the doors are completely closed. The MCU hasn’t been shy about doing an idea in easter egg/cameo/brief test run first, only to expand on it later. See: the Infinity Gauntlet easter egg in Asgard’s vault in Thor, or how the Agent Carter short was expanded (and softly retconned) into the full TV show. Fraction’s take on Hawkeye and Kate Bishop would be hard to integrate into the MCU’s version of the character, I grant you, but I could definitely see ways to carry over some of the broad strokes of that run, if the MCU wanted to. But, I don’t think that the Beta Ray Bill statue in Thor:Ragnarok would give Marvel a moment’s pause if they decided they wanted to do something more with the character. It wouldn’t be very close to the comic arc, but honestly very few of the MCU’s plotlines are.
The upcoming Hawkeye TV show is about Ckint passing the mantle to Kate Bishop.
Why shouldn’t we “forget” Beta Ray Bill? He has nothing to do with anything being discussed here. If comic book fans want to be taken seriously, they should probably drop the business where any mention of adaptations of what they read becomes an excuse for a pissing contest over increasingly irrelevant trivia.
Beta Ray was not “Thor” he was just worthy of Mjolnir. Then he got his own.
I love that arc!
My opinion of Thor has sunk a little bit in recent years (watching it back to back with The Avengers as part of an ongoing Endgame-preparation marathon didn’t help), but I still love the moment when Thor fails to lift Mjolnir. Even after his banishment he remains this swaggering mountain of bravado who assumes everything will right itself if he just keeps on doing his thing. But then he fails to lift the hammer and he just starts collapsing in on himself (aided, of course, by Loki’s subsequent arrival to tell him that Odin is dead because of his actions). Plus you get that beautifully sad shot of Heimdall watching him fail from his cosmic vantage point at the Bifrost. Good stuff.
It also has a fantastic (and underrated) “theme”, that works equally well for triumphant moments of triumphant triumph… and more sombre scenes like the one you describe above.
Idris Elba does really great work in these films, and Heimdall has a very nice (and understated) character arc which takes him from this cold and removed figure in Thor 1 to someone you really mourn for when he dies in Infinity War because he’s built a genuine friendship with ThorI just like Idris Elba ok
That hideous freak?
Hemsworth really sells his grief at Odin’s “death”.
She wasn’t forgotten, she was banhammered after she got the job on that abomination of tv “comedy” called “2 Broke Girls”. Nobody can ever defend that and Marvel opted not to try.
It’s still Perfectly Acceptable to me, but as time goes on, my god, the Dutch angling gets annoying as hell. Branagh got too cute by half with that.
“Mew Mew? What’s Mew Mew?”
That line consistently cracks me up. I love how it carried over into The Dark World.
When I think about (and half-assedly defend) the first Thor movie, this is exactly the scene I’m thinking of. Getting Thor out of Asgard is almost always better for the movie and this is when it hits its stride.
Couldn’t disagree more. I appreciate the banishment arc but they had an entire new world to explore in Asgard and instead they were like “What if he went to an ugly southwestern desert?”
My mind always go to “We drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud!”
Yep, I also always go right to the Thor+Selvig drinking scene (and follow up). “I still don’t think you’re the God of Thunder – but you ought to be!”
Darcy was the stealth MVP of the first two Thor movies. Thor 2 missed its chance by not bringing Darcy to Asgard as well, seeing her being sassy and brassy in the Realm Eternal would have been gold.
That would’ve been perfect, like the time Squirrel Girl’s friend Nancy went to Asgard.
I doubt it. The Thor series acting as the locus of the franchise’s fish-out-of-water humor has always been its weakest part. That’s why the only good Thor movie left Earth and its inhabitants behind and never came back.
“How’s space?”Kat Dennings joins the ranks of Tommy Lee Jones and Sam Rockwell of MCU actors who do a fine job but seem to be in entirely different movies to the ones they’re in.
People sometimes forget what a challenge it was to introduce Thor into the MCU. Despite the green giants and flying armor suits, making a film that somehow slotted a Norse god with a giant hammer fit into the more grounded elements of the franchise was a big ask, and they did a great job.
Norse god with a giant hammer “There’s only one God, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Everything about that line is perfect.
For a Christian, that line is perfect, but not for everyone. But just as I cannot – not do I habe the right to – judge the reality of a Christian’s relationship to the God of the Bible, no one else can – nor do they have the right to – judge the reality of the relationship between me and the Gods I honor. Though we often enjoy fellowship with others who follow the same path, faith in and off itself is an inherently individual thing, based largely on our own personal experiences which we cannot truly share with anyone else. Christians believe that no other gods exist, and many non-Christians – both those who have faith in a different pantheon and those who do not believe in any gods – will say that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist. And none of us can know for sure what – if any of it – is actually true until we die.
And come on, Darcy calling it “meirmeir” was adorable.
What’s weird to me is how much that version of Thor managed to cement itself in my brain. I’m finally getting around to playing the new God of War, and (so far, AFAIK) Thor and Odin are only present by way of mention, but every time someone talks about them, I visualize Hemsworth and Hopkins.
No spoilers here, I promise, but we’ll probably see at least one of them in the next one.
I enjoy how in Ragnarok, they were referring to themselves as the God of Thunder and God of Mischief. I haven’t seen the first two recently enough t remember how often they used those titles, but I recall it being more of a hedge -”humans worshiped us as gods” kind of deflection. Same with Thor confiding with Rocket that Loki “has died many times, but I think this time it’s permanent.” It took a while for writers to be confident pushing the all-out mythological weirdness of the characters, but I’m glad they finally did.
It works so perfectly to set up Hela saying, “I’m the Goddess of Death. What are you the God of again?” At which point Thor, quite literally, brings the thunder.
Cate Blanchett in Ragnarok single-handedly changed how I pronounced the word “goddess.”
I don’t remember them really regarding themselves as gods until Loki pulled that legendary act of hubris in Hulk’s face near the end of the first Avengers.
So is the AV Club just going to be literally nothing but MCU stuff now? How much of this site is this one franchise going to eat?
The first 2 Thor movies being kind of dull makes me wish Hemsworth was sticking around longer, as it feels like the character is only just hitting his stride.
I don’t think future Thor projects have been ruled out. Both Hemsworth and Taika have expressed interest in continuing the character.
Well that’s good. I assumed that he’d be off alongside RDJ and Evans.
Unfortunately, they’ve killed off his entire supporting cast.
He’s still got Valkyrie and Korg, plus Lady Sif (when she gets un-dusted). And of course they could always add new characters or have Rabbit and Tree crossover for a movie.
“Hey man. Fourth film just got green-lit. Wanna come?”
Also, the science trio is still alive (dusting notwithstanding). I know Portman probably won’t do it, but Skarsgard & Dennings might be game.
After Infinity War I have a very hard time believing James Gunn wouldn’t want Thor to at least pop in for a cup of tea in GOTG 3.
So we can deal with a storyline where they’re being reincarnated, which also allows for recasts. Norse mythology is cyclical, and the set-up for the Ultimate version of Thor was that Ragnarok has happened and the gods are being reincarnated on Earth. Admittedly, Ultimate Thor only got one miniseries, so they didn’t do much with this, but the mainstream comics could point them in some directions. They could start with a King Thor/New Asgard story, and then introduce Kid Loki and fun stuff like that.
I think Hemsworth will only do it if the script is good enough to justify what he has to do to physically get Thor-sized.
The most tragic story in the whole MCU was Darcy Lewis getting totally forgotten about in all those post-The Dark World films. Maybe she can show up on Agents Of SHIELD.
Mmmmm…Kat Dennings….
#AvengetheFallen
Counterpoint: Jane and Darcy were one note characters who were defined only by their relationship to Thor and needed to get gone (good job writing female characters!). If we need any character more, we need more Korg.
See, I don’t entirely agree with this. And in an era when we were lucky if we got two female characters in a superhero movie, all by accident we had this relationship between them on the side, passing the Bechdel test with ease. And while there’s argument to be made that Jane is too defined by Thor, Darcy definitely isn’t.I loved that this and Dark World had a female character on the side, playing a completely atypical role, acting the part of sidekick/snarky best friend.
While I agree that there was room for improvement (Jane, comes off a bit like a 15 year-old-in-love nitwit), the movie is called Thor. How many characters weren’t defined largely by their relationship to Thor?
I meant more in their abilities and capabilities in the larger MCU. And to be fair, that has a lot more to do with how they are written rather than acted. Darcy is a barely interested college student, and Janes extensive astrophysics knowledge is dwarved by Thor’s viking bro casual knowledge.
If we need any character more, we need more Korg.I am fully expecting Korg to show up in Endgame with Valkyrie. *crosses fingers*
Valkyrie will. Tessa Thompson was in the upper live half of the most recent poster.
Maybe Jane. Darcy was awesome and needs to come back.
I’d agree with that. Kat Dennings was really funny. But without Jane, there isn’t much story hook for Darcy to use to stay involved (Darcy was not a scientist, so she can’t step into that role for Jane). With the more fantastical adventure direction that Thor seems to be moving in, there just isn’t really any room for Darcy.
Darcy had WAY more notes than Jane. It’s just that SHIELD took her iPod.
I think the days of anyone from the movies showing up in AOS went out with Powers Boothe…
Damn, was he good on the show. RIP.Much as I would love Darcy to appear on it, I think Agents of SHIELD has been doing its best work when it’s allowed to just be its own thing. It’s a big (Marvel Cinematic) Universe, after all.
That film would have been so much better if Kat Dennings had played Jane.
MIND. BLOWN.
Of all the MCU movies I rewatch, the first two Thors are probably at the bottom of the list, but I think the first one has a real charm to it that was lacking in The Dark World. Branagh tried to balance the small New Mexico town and fish out of water stuff with his Shakespeare drama, and it works for the most part. There just isn’t much that stands out besides Hemsworth and Hiddleston.
I’ve never understood the general dislike for the first Thor movie. I thought it was solid. Plus, it gained points for not being particularly epic. The Earthbound stakes are minimal, there’s no threat to Earth as a whole and it’s a relatively small-scale palace intrigue Game Of Thrones on Asgard with the fish-out-of-water joys of Thor strutting around a tiny New Mexico town like he owns the place. It also started the rather delightful trend of Chris Hemsworth getting knocked out of frame all the time in the MCU.
Ironically, when they went to a GOT director, they got the most boring movie of the MCU.And that is WITH the Loki turning into Captain America gag.
True. But I also have to say, I adore Natalie Portman in Thor. Half of the movie is hers, after all, the perspective is split between her and Thor throughout. She’s clearly brilliant, the only cheesecake shots in the whole movie are of Chris Hemsworth, and it’s hilarious and adorable when she gets all giggly schoolgirl when Thor does some old fashioned chivalry (like when he kisses her hand). Hell, I’m a 40 something dude and I’d probably giggle if fuckin’ Thor kissed my hand.And, I can’t say this enough, without Chris Hemsworth’s charm, Thor would be a DICK for 90% of the movie. Start of the movie, he’s the douchy quarterback who can do no wrong. He’s SUCH an arrogant prick. Anyone else in the role and we’d all be rooting for Loki. Plus, one last thing, if I we’re picking ONE scene from this movie, it’d be the incredible moment when Odin stripped Thor of his power. Just a master-class in anger and pain by Anthony Hopkins. His growl at Loki by itself is fucking amazing.
Hopkins is great in this. His barking of “Butyou’renot! King! …not yet.” is my favourite line reading.
I’ll say it again, the growl at Loki is just . . . amazing. It shouldn’t work. But my God, it does.
All of it, “Through your arrogance and stupidity you’ve opened these peaceful realms to the horror . . . and desolation . . .of WAR!!The shake in his voice while he goes through the “you’re unworthy of these realms, you’re unworthy of your title, YOU’RE UNWORTHY!!!!!”
I said it before, but Hopkins packs so much anger and disappointment and pain into those lines. It’s heartrending and we don’t even know these people yet. It’s one of many scenes that make Thor worth watching.
You don’t have to convince me. Portman was great in the first Thor, but was horrid in the second. The second movie’s side plot with Dennings, Skarsgard, and the intern is way more interesting than “Thor loves a mortal and Odin is a dick while CGI monster destroys CGI set.”That scene with Hopkins is why it paid off Branah loaded his cast with Shakespearean actors. It just sings.
They get so pissed when I do this at Waffle House.
I loved Ragnarok but in the broad scope of things, I feel Hiddleston’s Loki is the greatest contribution the Thor series has made to the MCU.Arguably the best villain in the MCU to date. Thanos was a step in the right direction but he’s all business.
WUT? Justin Hammer bro. Best villain hands down.
Thor is definitely underrated but The Dark World even more so. It’s probablworse than Thor but still pretty good. There are some Star Wars-esque fun moments esp early on, a legit scary creature, a good mid film twist and a great final battle – one of the best final battles of all Marvel movies.
To be honest – Ragnarok was the first Thor movie I actually enjoyed. The first was okay but felt kinda slight and just a setup to intro the character. The second, I can’t really remember any scene from. The third I actually enjoyed immensely.
While I like it, Thor (and to an extent Captain America: First Avenger) is Marvel eating their vegetables before having their dessert (which is The Avengers). They knew the groundwork had to be laid down, so they dutifully did it, confident in the pay-off the following year. Which is definitely the lesson every other wannabe Cinematic Universe keeps forgetting.
That is the basic problem i have with the MCU or any of these cinematic universes. I pay to go see movies. Ticket prices are not cheap. So they don’t get to just serve me vegetables and tell me “If you eat them you can have cake in a few more years… that you’ll also pay to eat…”Every movie has to be entertaining and worthy on it’s own regardless of it it needs to fit into a greater whole or not.
Oh, very true. I mean, I think this movie is as good of Thor movie as you could hope to get made in 2011. It’s very much “proof of concept”. But your point is why so many *CUs have failed, because it’s the delicate balance of serving vegetables and getting people to go, “oooh, fire roasted Brussel sprouts, interesting.” All the others go for a “yes vegetables but desert” and give you overcooked broccoli with hot fudge on it and no one wants that.
“fire roasted Brussel sprouts”I am actually hungry now.
Personally, I think Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 are in the same boat . . . they were both standalone, standard-issue sequels that made it a point not to change the status quo in any significant way. Winter Soldier showed the MCU what their sequels could and should be, and they’ve been knocking it out of the park ever since. (With the exception of AoU, but I still maintain that was a rushed project that just ended up under-baked and, if anything, didn’t tie in enough with what came before and after).
While I really liked Winter Soldier I have to say – that is a sign of exactly why cinematic universes aren’t that great of an idea. Winter Soldier forced “Agents of Shield” into a holding pattern for most of a season… If movies were more stand alone and didn’t require every other property to tie together, we may have had a lot more fun stuff. As it was, the dovetailing ended up forcing quite a few hours of just blandness.
I disagree. Sure, it takes coordination, but that’s not impossible, they pulled it off with the correct AoS episode landing at the perfect time. I think the problem with AoS before the hammer dropped wasn’t that they were in a holding pattern, it was that they wrote the episodes knowing that they were in a holding pattern. They never bothered to develop any good ideas ahead of the fall of SHIELD because they knew what was going to happen. It was a lot of half-assed storytelling until they got to the big bang. That’s not how you do that.
You develop the show like it’s going to run ten seasons with the status-quo, with interesting storylines and and a clear and compelling narrative structure that you then unexpectedly blow up. Audiences are really savvy to narrative structure these days. We all feel the expected beats coming, which is why Game of Thrones is so incredibly popular . . . it repeatedly sets up those narrative beats only to anticlimactically murder them over and over again, leaving readers and viewers in a near-constant state of “oh shit, what the hell is going to happen now?”
AoS didn’t do that, which is why it didn’t work. And that had nothing to do with the fact it was part of a shared universe.
Honestly, the plots in those early AoS episodes were fine (except for episode 9, dear lord I hate episode 9). The only thing that bugged me was the horrible exposition dialogue, which was at its worst in episode 2, but had pretty well been smoothed over by episode 10. Then we hit the Tahiti reveal, then we hit the Hydra reveal, then the show got great.
Yeah, but when you look back, the storylines were aggressively average. They SHOULD have been developing a real big-bad, they SHOULD have been raising the stakes like an old-school, Buffy-esque Whedon show. We SHOULD’VE felt like we were building to something completely different than we ended up getting. Instead we got . . . fine.
Even with their water-treading, though, they were developing a big bad in the Clairvoyant & one hell of a dragon in Deathlok. And like I said, once we hit episode 10/11 & the Tahiti reveal, the stakes skyrocket.
That’s the problem – they knew because they had to know what was coming. You had one set of very creative people being held back by another set of people.One of the problems and strengths of the MCU is this coordination. On the one hand it ends up crafting a pretty cohesive world from separate movies. On the other it means no one movie can be really creative. There are flashes of it in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy but it’s telling that only movies that only tangentially play into the universe building can get those flashes. So we end up with a cinematic universe that is usually pretty good but kinda ends up feeling, to me at least, kinda same-y. The movies have to share a common look and have common elements in them and find ways to blend their stories into a greater whole.Personally I think that is intriguing but has tended towards blandness of late. None of the MCU movies are “bad” – even the worst of them (Iron Man 2 or THor 2) had enough good stuff to be above average. But except for Guardians 2, there aren’t any movies I feel the need to revisit.
Who cares about A0S?
Yeah, and that’s the saddest part of the “shared universe” marketing gimmick making it big in Hollywood. Marvel and DC have been using their “universes” for decades to convince comic book readers to buy crappy products they’d normally ignore. The Big Two of comic books spread “big” stories about superhero characters over multiple also-ran series, so that e.g. a four-chapter story will fall into the hands of different writers and artists every month. The usual result is a roller-coaster of tone and quality for a story that is then treated as a crucial development in ongoing plots of individual book series (series that usually establish quality, when they do, through a particular writer/artist team). Combine that with steep, swift increases in price for a single issue (shades of movie tickets there), and you have one of the reasons why, relative to most other “mass” media, almost nobody reads comic books anymore. The gimmick worked for a while, then it helped tank the industry’s sales. It’s incredibly frustrating to get invested in a good writer/artist team, and then read a note at the end of the latest issue saying that for the next course of your meal at a quality restaurant, you’ll need to head a dozen or so blocks down to an infamous hole in the wall that failed its last health inspection.When the “shared universe” gimmick oozed its way into the movie business, comic book readers, and especially superhero comic book readers, should have been the first to sound the alarm. Many of them had been complaining, loudly and for years, about its effects on their favorite form of pop media. Instead, most of those readers celebrated, I assume out of some sort of sublimated schadenfreude.
What would be fun… If Marvel, after Endgame, decided to just have fun and adapt the basic concept of their “What if…” comic to the screen. Just spin out a few years of totally bonkers stand alone movies not playing into any greater story line.
Nah, not really. I find it strange that die-hard fans of these movies have convinced themselves in hindsight that these early movies were part of some foolproof master plan on Marvel’s part.At the point when Thor began production, Marvel Studios had no idea whether it was even going to be possible for them to sell a crossover-centric movie to audiences. They hedged their bets accordingly.The stuff that Thor shares with Iron Man, and its references to the movies’ source material, are less world-building than they are smart multi-picture cast contracting (Jackson and Gregg) or Easter eggs for diehard fans (an Infinity Gauntlet in a background shot, an uncredited Hawkeye cameo by a Hollywood up-and-comer that could have been cut entirely with no effect on the movie, etc.) The Incredible Hulk is much the same: its cameos and Easter eggs contributed pretty much nothing to future movies’ crossover plots and even contradicted them at points.Thor wasn’t Marvel Studios “eating their vegetables” so much as it was a relatively modestly-budgeted movie that resulted in moderate success at the box office. That’s the only real way in which it contributed.
Right, but at that point The Avengers was at least the long-term vision, and they knew that it couldn’t work without a solid Thor first. I mean, otherwise, that’d be like trying to do The Dark Phoenix saga without any real build up. No one would be that foolish. Certainly not twice.
Then First Avenger is the most delicious vegetable ever bestowed.
Oh, it’s some serious “I didn’t realize you could do this with eggplant” business.
‘The Incredible Hulk’ = “Sorry, this is the first time I tried baking my own bread. Not sure what happened there.”
Same here. They had it all figured out by then, AND they found the right director, and good grief was that a blast. And remains so, on repeat viewings.
Oddly, I only mostly liked Ragnarok. For me, it was too funny, too irreverent, too on-the-nose with musical cues. Which was all great in those moments, but when there were moments of seriousness or sadness to be had, they felt so out of place and jammed in that they carried no emotional weight for me.In all, I enjoyed it, but can never have the deeper connection to it that I’ve had with some of the other MCU films (recognizing that having meaningful deep connections with any of the MCU is itself a bit silly).
I can get that. I mean, none of these movies are transformative experiences designed to stand the test of time over the ages or anything. They are products made by Disney to make lots of money.
No doubt. But, it is why I think Infinity War is my favorite overall at this point. It did such a great job with blending humor (that actually made me laugh several times) with poignancy, each hitting with the appropriate force and timing. That the movie – with so many storylines and characters and different emotional arcs – didn’t go completely off the rails is something of a minor miracle.
You see, to me Infinity War was fun and made me look towards Endgame but… To tell the truth that ending did not affect me one way or the other. I looked at a nice hook to get butts in seats for the next movie knowing that the products Disney wants to sell will come back in it. I thought IW definitely handled it’s cast well. And it was smart enough to know on big CF would not work. So to that, I give a clap to the writers and the director. Good work. But that was all very good technical work – it wasn’t quite as emotional investing as a smaller scale movie might be to me.IW was an MCU movie – above average and lots of fun but, for me at least, in the end it was just a fun popcorn movie. After Endgame I am off that train. Unless they find a way to make a good Fantastic Four movie – that I want to see at some point in my life.
Fair enough, since the third Thor movie is the only one of the three that’s a good movie on its own merits.
To be honest – Ragnarok was the first Thor movie I actually enjoyed.
I just mentioned in a comment in the IM2 thread that Thor and Thor 2 always held the bottom two positions in my personal MCU rankings, but that I liked Ragnarok so much that it actually makes me like Thor 1 a little more in retrospect. I always thought Thor’s redemption in Thor 1 felt a little too rushed and forced. But Thor 2 still remains in last place for me. 🙂
The thing was – Thor 1 and 2 were not great movies but they always had flashes of the Thor movie I wanted to see. Thor 3 captured all of that and distilled it into a full movie.
Thor and Loki arguing about how to to fly the crashed dark elf ship. that was peak sibling bickering and done perfectly.
When I first heard about this movie I remember thinking “Kenneth Branaghis directing a damn Thor movie??? RIDICULOUS!!”I like that he seemed to feel the same way and infused it with enough humor and WTF-ness that it just works. Plus Hemsworth could not have been more perfect for the role.
A late rewrite on Thor actually helped elevate Coulson and ensure he would be a recurring character in the MCU.
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$85/hr provide by Google, I am making a good salary from home $6580-$7065/week , which is amazing, under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone, Here is I started,,,,,,,,http://www.payshd.com
the hell is up with his eyebrows? lookin like dude in manhunter
They made him a Sweedish Meatball.
The THOR series is the best of the solo marvel outings. Thor 3 is just okay, but Dark World is the best Marvel movie hands down, and the first Thor is great as well
Certainly a great moment, but for me, not quite as funny as “I need a horse!”
I’d forgotten how Thirsty(capitalization intended) Portman let Jane be over Thor. It would have been very tempting to dial that way back, because Jane is a serious SCIENTIST. But she went for it and made it ok for Jane ( and by extension us)to want all of that tall drink of water.
Appropriate given the dude is an actual god. Probably not just in the movie either.
One of the funnier running jokes in the MCU is that everyone in the universe swoons over Thor. Like, you’ve got Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo and Chris Evans and Tom Hiddleston running around (not to mention the women), but everyone recognizes that Thor is just in a completely different galaxy.
I’m cooler on these movies than a lot of people, but your different profile series are the best articles the current iteration of A.V. Club produces.
Thor was the best Thor movie, not least because Loki was at his best. Loki was badly written in the first Avengers plus whoever wrote that (Whedon?) couldn’t figure out that it’s not Loki vs. Iron Man (no matter how much just vanity Robert Downey Jr. has,) but Thor vs. Loki. Thor got short shrift in the second too. Thor’s advent in Infinity War worked great, but humor had zero to do with it. Thor calling Rocket a rabbit is not that funny but we can (well, most of us,) relate to loss. The second Thor was indeed “meh,” but it was because it was so hard to care about Natalie Portman, who seemed about as excited to see Thor as Padme was to see Anakin, which is to say, not. The stakes were reduced to Jane Foster’s life. Of course this wasn’t gripping. I wasn’t paid to laugh at Ragnarok, so I mostly didn’t. The Grandmaster sequence established space is tiny, doing horrible things doesn’t matter and the Hulk is far cooler than anything. The supposed Asgardian imperialism is blatant BS. Hela even snarks about where the gold comes from even after she conjures up tons of missile weapons out of her armpits. The ability of some people to ignore what’s on screen is astounding.
Lol wut
Natalie Portman was a real problem for the first 2 Thor movies. I’m glad they got rid of her.
The stakes were reduced to Jane Foster’s life.Far be it from me to defend Dark World, of all movies, but the stakes were the existence of all light in the universe.
The emphasis, the moments (what they call the “beats?”) focus on Jane Foster. The evil power of the Aether is that it threatens the life of Jane Foster. Yes, they say it threatens more, but what they show is Jane Foster getting tortured etc. Show beats tell.
2/3 of the way through the movie, they show the Aether get removed from Jane’s body. After that, everything is about stopping Malekith at the Convergence. (And also Loki.)
And it was anti-climactic. That’s why so many people don’t care for Dark World.
I’m not arguing that it wasn’t anti-climactic. Like I implied before, I didn’t particularly love the movie. I’m not challenging your opinion at all; hell, I agree with your opinion. I’m simply stating the fact that there were stakes higher than just Jane’s life.
The “rabbit” gag was worth it just for “These are my friends, Rabbit and Tree.”
In the minority here, but Ragnarok is actually the weakest of the three Thor films. Both previous films had their flaws but at least had more compelling story that was taken more seriously whilst still trying to inject moments of humour.The first film actually balances the seriousness and humour the best. Thor is just as engaging a character without becoming too jokey. The second film’s first hour is really good for the most part,staying in Asgard and having some great set pieces including the Dark Elves attack. Things only fall apart when the story shifts to Earth taking more comedic tone.That’s the mistake of the third movie. It took an apocalyptic storyline but fearful that audiences would have to think too much, decided to make a joke out of it in the end. The visuals and colors were there but the grandiosity and integrity of the first two were missing.
I agree completely! I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I thought Ragnarok was too goofy. The tone was wrong, and it lessened the impact of Hela and the destruction of Asgard.
Won’t lie, I wanted a callback in the Shawarma scene…THOR: This is delicious! ANOTHER! (Throws down basket)
STEVE: Uh, Thor, that’s not how we…
TONY: YEAH! ANOTHER! (Throws down basket)
STEVE: (Facepalm)
BRING BACK DARCY
The problem with Thor and Thor 2 is Natalie Portman / Jane Foster. Portman had no chemistry with Hemsworth and seemed to not want to be there at all. She really phoned it in. The forced love story was weak, and no one cared about Jane Foster, which is why they’ve long since dropped her (and Natalie “I’m only here for the paycheck” Portman).
I find a lot to love about the first ‘Thor’. ‘Iron Man’ was exciting and new, its sequel and ‘The Incredible Hulk’ were disappointing, but ‘Thor’ was the movie where I left the cinema with a big damn smile on my face.By the way, the Marvel Moment for ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ should be Skinny Steve jumping on that grenade. You learn all you need to know about the guy right there.
If I were going to pick a moment of excellence in Thor, I would choose Anthony Hopkins pure, incredible moment when he strips Thor of his power. It’s such an acting master-class . . . so much anger and pain all wrapped up in a Shakespearean speech. It was when you knew no one could be Odin but Hopkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWmlWA_jb7w
Thor had been the series of films I was looking forward to in the mcu. Vikings in Space, what could go wrong? So fucking much. We got a disney-fied version before it was bought by disney. The second one was better in my opinion. Then thor; fraggelrock came out, and was a joke. No other word for it. They took a story that could have been so fucking epic, and went for the punch line. While also disney-fying and bastardizing Norse mythology at the same time. This and iron man 2 (disney-fyied version of “Demon in a Bottle” (that was such a let down, it’s abysmal)).
I found Ragnarok to be a middling mess. Dull and ridiculous equals “middling”, right?
Eh, I don’t think this was a precursor to Thor Ragnarok at all. While Iron Man/Robert Downey Jr had a lot of quick witted retorts as an insufferable genius, Thor got to do fish out of water jokes. It’s an easy staple for comic book characters and was also lost in Thor 2 since he spent the movie doing his Asgardian stuff, which was boooringgg.It wasn’t until Age of Ultron that Marvel revamped Thor into a casually chill joking guy, waaay different from his appearances up to then. Once the party scene starts early on, he’s making fun of War Machine, getting Stan Lee drunk, and playing Who’s Worthy? with Mjolnir and friends. Even at the end, he’s talking about his hammer’s weight distribution with Vision. Outside of the Stellan Skarsgard scenes which feel really out of place, Thor is joking the entire way through.There’s still the occasional fish out of water joke, but buddy cop Hulk/Thor and hanging out with the GotG is seemingly born out of Age of Ultron.
I still quite love the first Thor. It took the first step into the wider universe, it had the most ‘thee-and-thou’ faux-operatic-Shakespeare stuff which just gets me off, and it remains the best Loki performance from Hiddleston to me personally. Also we saw the most of the Warriors Three. The hero theme score was really great. Hemsworth was a revelation. Hawkeye. The Son of Coul. Way too much hate on this movie.However TDW did have the only straight up Shakespearean rhyming couplet thingie: “I only ask for one thing in return: a seat from which to watch Asgard burn.”