I guess while I did enjoy the movie, and found myself laughing time and again, I did leave the theater with one kind of strange thought. The movie had no real sadness to it. There was no final look back upon the deaths of the warriors three and upon the end of Asgard. Thor showed more emotion in the first movie when Loki told him his father had died than he did in this movie when he lost his friends and his father.
It just seemed like the movie went for the laughs and completely avoided the rest.
I am not sure how much I should keep blurred at this time, I know I quit reading this thread when the movie came out and stayed away until I had seen the movie, but I don’t know if everyone will do that.
It’s been about a month, in my opinion you don’t need to hide spoilers for a popular movie that’s been out in wide release for that long, but I’m also never going to chastise anyone for being over-cautious and hiding spoilers longer than may be necessary.
It’s worth pointing out this question was posed by a New Zealand reporter to Kennedy, after the interviewer mentioned that Waititi had been named New Zealander of the year, so it would be pretty harsh for Kennedy to say, in the words of Kim Cattrall, "absolutely not!’
Yeah, just her being nice and polite. Waititi’s directorial style certainly seems more akin to the approach that ended up getting Chris Miller and Phil Lord fired.
Also, when someone suggested Waititi for Episode IX after Colin Treverrow got canned …
(Of course, we all know he’s totally do a Star Wars movie if he got offered one and he said so as much, but I wouldn’t read to much into the Kennedy remark above either way.)
As you pointed out with the Lego dudes being booted off the Han Solo spin-off, Taika Waititi recognized his style is kinda incompatible with the Star Wars series back in a interview with the New York Times, saying, “That particular franchise seems really hard. There’s not much room for someone like me. Through its narrow canon, the tone of Star Wars has always been determinedly self-serious.”
I do appreciate the journo looking out for her fellow Kiwi, and giving it a shot though!
As a movie in the standalone sense, this is a lot of fun. As a Thor movie, it makes me kind of sad.
The humour around Thor in the comics used to have him as the “straight man,” like Arnold Schwarzenegger was often used in his films. And in the first movie, that’s largely how he was used in the “fish out of water” sequences.
But over time Marvel seem to have had a failure of courage with Thor (threading the needle to have him be an epic, mythic character without making it overblown must obviously be very hard), and leaned more and more heavily on making Thor himself comedic. Maybe also because the actor does have good comic timing and they thought to take advantage of that.
Whatever the cause, he’s less like a God of Thunder these days than a sort of sentimental klutz.
The comic book character has to remain essentially static, reverting back to form every once in a while so that he can cycle through the same “character growth” arcs year after year. The movie Thor has to have some character growth through individual movies and (ideally) a maturing arc through the series that hopefully leads to a conclusion.
I really liked the "arrogant fish-out-of-water shtick that they did in the (otherwise mediocre) first move – Thor is an immortal being from a super-advanced society forced to exist in our mundane world in order to learn some humility. The actor brought a good-natured sense of entitlement to the role.
I honestly can’t remember a damned thing about the second film. Dark space elves something something responsible for his people something something red swirly vortex.
But I liked where the character was in the beginning of this movie: Comfortable with his role as protector of his people doing investigative, adventurous work on behalf of Asgard. He was still as humorous as he was in the first movie, but he was now “in on” the jokes in a self-depreciating way rather than being the unwitting butt of them.
Sentimental klutzes aren’t scary. To my mind, the God of Thunder ought to be at least a little bit scary. Think of one of those Kirby images with Thor smacking the hammer down with the krackles, and his face with sharp shadow contrasts from the light.
I did like that part in principle - but of course it was undermined somewhat by the comedic aspects and (IIRC) the now regular trope of his face being mushed up against something and him being caught.
Again, in a standalone sense, it’s cool, and I did enjoy the movie; but I’d’ve rather he’d been treated with more dignity and respect, with the comedy flowing around him like in the first movie.
But yeah, it’s an unenviable task to do a script with that requirement that isn’t going to veer over into pomposity for some people, so it’s understandable that they didn’t even try (or perhaps tried drafts and gave up).
I think this script was completely an artifact of the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, which set the tone. It’s pretty simple, they followed a formula. Thor was channeling Chris Whatshisname, to great success.
You can pre-order just not at Amazon. They are still in the middle of some sort of ongoing pricing feud with Disney so they don’t allow pre-orders for any Disney movies.
Amazon has done this a few times now, gotten into tiffs with publishers ranging from books to consoles. I can never tell who really wins in the end though.
It would take a lot of lost sales to hurt Amazon. I am just wondering if Disney is really missing out.
Nintendo isn’t even in the ballpark with the other two, but some of their stuff was not available on Amazon for a very long time… I assume it didn’t really hurt Nintendo much because it was like that for, well like I said, awihile.
This was entertaining, but super shallow when it came to actual substance of interest, for me. I have no appreciation for The Hulk, he is the epitome of boring, even more boring than the actor who plays Bruce Banner, who is also boring. This was a well made, but garbage movie IMO. This was hammered home when I saw the shameless addition of a mentally deficient Jarjar Binks character who talked with a backwater Maori affectation.
