Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Thor: the Dark World

Or possibly "The Rise of Loki" since Loki is a more interesting character.
The movie was entertaining. Thor was a good Norse God of Smashem Inna Face, not particularly clever but able to solve things by brute force + invulnerability + physical courage,  He didn't wrestle with tough moral choices; he did have to make one tough choice, but all the discussion on that one was "how do we pull this off", not "what will it cost us?" and "what if we're wrong?" The line from the trailer "Ask yourself: what would you sacrifice, for what you believe?" just didn't apply. Thor isn't, apparently, much given to worrying about consequences.
Other than that: I didn't find the villain's "Let's destroy all the worlds" motivation to be believable, although I think it could have been improved with a bit better writing; also, he apparently didn't care about his own people's casualties, which is a bit odd since that's all that's left of his whole species. The Asgardian flak guns and aero-boat fighters (with open decks....) were jarring, particularly since the Asgardian infantry only uses melee weapons. I think they tried to give too many people screen time; for instance, they could have eliminated Selvig and given all his "figuring out what's going on" functions to Jane, which would have made her less of a passive victory token and more of an active participant.
Still, it was fun.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

HAVE YOU SEEN ENDER'S GAME YET?
(You Have to have read that book, correct?)

Umm--sorry--that question is completely unrelated to your post, I'm sorry.

Okay, well it's not COMPLETELY unrelated. They are both movies and both sci-fi/fantasy things.

I want to go see that one but don't feel like going alone. And because I have no friends, that means I'd really enjoy seeing a review from you as the next best thing. (Unless it's really negative.) --Okay, if you've seen it and you've hated it, don't write about that. Write about how people should go see movies solo and be content, wait a day or two, then write the review.

Availeth

Chris DeBoe said...

I've read the book. I don't have plan to see the movie because I don't expect the movie to improve on the book.

Anonymous said...

Well, if you go by that policy, you'd never see any movie based on a book, right? Cuz books are always better than movies? The LoTR films weren't bad, but that's the thing I can think of that came close to book-goodness. Oh, and maybe Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" (but nobody knows that but me).