Great movie.
Not quite as good as the first
Iron Man, which set the bar fairly high, but far better than
Iron Man 2,
Punisher:War Zone and
The Incredible Hulk.
Chris Hemsworth's portrayal of Thor, makes his casting a decision that rivals RDJ as Tony Stark. It is about perfect. He carries just the right amount of arrogance, compassion, 'for glory!', humor, knowledge and ignorance that my favorite renditions of Thor have had.
I liked Portman in this and whoever complained that her character was only smitten with Thor because he was 'hunky' hasn't met a whole lot of women. Or men for that matter. I also like the change of vocation, as it was a necessity to having her meet Thor if he was not going to assume the life of Donald Blake.
The Warriors Three were done magnificently, given the time they had on screen. All their character traits were succinctly shown and distributed to the audience without having to sidetrack the story. Whoever complained that they reminded them of generic mmorpg characters should take note that they and their character traits predate PENCIL AND PAPER rpgs by almost 10 years. Young fucking whippersnappers. Sif was badass, hot and an equal to Thor, as she should be.
Loki was another excellent cast, and hopefully, Tom Hiddleston will really get to chew some scenery as the main bad in
The Avengers.
The Frost Giants were well done, if a little unfleshed out. They refer to Odin as the All Father but never explain exactly why they battle with Asgard or humanity.
Heimdall was another great cast and had some of the coolest scenes for a guy that spends the entire movie standing in one spot or frozen in ice in one spot.
The doctor that disappeared that Selvig is referring to isn't (or at least shouldn't be) Banner, as his accident happened far before SHIELD was an entity. He should be referring to Dr. Samuel "Mr. Blue" Sterns. Although, as an agency, SHIELD is even absent in that part of the movie as all the operations are shown to be carried out by Ross's Army only unit, and at his direction.
Hawkeye forgoing the M-16 for the bow, elicited quite the loud 'FUCK YEAH!" from myself to the surprise of a few movie goers.
And was I the only one thinking Power Man/Luke Cage when that ginormus black guys forearm layed Thor out? Here's hoping.
Boy I sure do hope they work The Enchantress into
The Avengers movie. They just need to get the most smoking hot Scandinavian blonde on the planet and get her to act slutty and that should do it.
It would be great fun to see Thor deal with it and one of the few ways I can think of to get him out of some of the action in the movie so he can't just wreck shop on everyone, as they clearly have shown him capable of doing.
Cosmic cube was a nice touch and it opens up the actual Thor sequel to some cool areas to explore. Beta Ray Fucking Bill?!? Keeping my fingers crossed.
The few things I didn't like.
While I thought the design and execution of the Destroyer were well done, the actual handling was bad. It should have given Thor more of a run for his money. It has always been the be all end all of ultimate Asgardian weapons and I wish it would have stayed that way. It should have been a drag out brawl and could have gone on 3 or 4 minutes longer. Thor could have 'discovered' Mjolnir's teleportation properties on accident and defeated it by sending it away to somewhere to be a menace again, which a proper comic book would have done,
AND they could have had him trying to figure out the trick again at the end, establishing that he will eventually be able to get back to Earth without the rainbow bridge.
The implication that Bifrost is too hard to, or can't be rebuilt. I'm fairly sick of the 'technology of our past that can no longer be duplicated' crap. Learn to write shit down.
A little more time on Earth would have been nice. I'm not on the bandwagon about Thor not having enough time to learn his lesson. He is a fucking immortal with hundreds, if not thousands of years of life under his belt, he should figure it out pretty quickly, I just would have liked to have seen a few more connection scenes like we had with Selvig in the bar or Foster on the roof. Maybe one with Darcy to round it out or possibly even some towns folk. Maybe showing a little more time passing as well, before his triumphant return.
As I said though, great film and I am now even more satisfied with the direction Marvel is going in (with the exception of the licensed X-Men and Spider Man which seem to be slipping hard) and am about sold on
The Avengers and
Captain America if they can maintain this quality.
On the flip side, this just makes DC look even worse. Here's hoping
The Green Lantern can do something about it.
OK, so 3D.
This was my first 3D movie. I can say that I liked it and was pretty impressed considering the last 3D movie I saw was
Jaws 3D.
Unfortunately though, the preview for
Immortals seemed to make better use of the technology than Thor did. Was this one of those movies that wasn't really done in 3D, but had some specific effects added?