I have loved Stellan Skarsgård since I first saw him with a starfish stuck to his face, but I never expected to see quite as much of him as I did tonight in Thor: The Dark World (2013). To be fair, I didn't expect that shot of Thor half-naked and gleaming with water like Achilles at the end of the Iliad, either, but I think the market for that sort of thing is rather more strongly indicated on the internet than Erik Selvig with no pants on. It is the internet. I could be wrong. If there's an audience for wild-haired scientists with interstellar hangovers running starkers around the ley-lines of Britain like the second coming of Lord John Whorfin, it will be out on Tumblr somewhere. And I should probably know about it.
The short version, before I fall over: it didn't surprise me as much as Thor (2011) and it's not as neatly put together as The Avengers (2012), but it does nothing with the characters of either Chris Hemsworth's Thor or Tom Hiddleston's Loki that I need to scream about, there is lovely world-expansion and whoever was in charge of costume and art design should take home several kinds of prize, I still feel about almost every movie in this franchise that someone has trimmed a vital scene here or there, and Stan Lee's cameo is probably my favorite so far.
The film has problems; they are at least different problems than its predecessors. The prologue is unnecessary. It feels too much like Peter Jackson and the exact same information is later reprised by Odin for Jane and Thor with a runic manuscript whose illuminations move and breathe as softly as the spells in Coriakin's book; it's a much more graceful and unusual way of filling the audience in on the war between the Æsir and the Svartálfar and made me wonder if the prologue was added after the fact or at least repositioned. After some unexpected shout-outs in The Avengers, the Norse myth in this movie is back to blended crack pretzel. The image of the Nine Worlds coming into alignment is another example of the Thor-verse's evocative intertwining of myth and astronomy (and allows for some of the best physics-bending in a fight scene since Portal), but the Norse pre-cosmos is the void of Ginnungagap with ice and fire to either side of its emptiness, not a dark matter universe full of knife-eared militaristic types. That said, Malekith's ships are a gorgeous showcase for the film's unapologetic genre-mixing, in which swordplay and illusions and rocket launchers and antimatter grenades coexist and interact in ways not usually seen onscreen, and I liked the decision to show us the faces of the Dark Elves before they don their battle masks (white as larvae, staring-eyed; their mouths are not even snarling, but dispassionately closed) and become the indistinguishable body count of a villainous army.
( Well, she wouldn't actually be shocked. )
What I like about this movie is what I liked best about Marvel's previous outings into this universe: the strength of Hemsworth and Hiddleston's acting, which continues to avoid collapsing the one character into dull good and the other into plain slick-talking evil; the humor that isn't used to undercut or apologize for the epic scale of the story, except when it's Loki flyting; the ability to create action scenes that don't bore me and were here both intellectually and visually clever; the fact that it passes the Bechdel test straight off. I love Jane's gravitational anomaly box—it is spot-built and jerry-rigged and the film makes it very clear that it is the combination of her plane-manipulating astrophysics and Thor's god-strength that defeats Malekith, because that is their story, magic and science meeting where a soul forge is a quantum field generator and galaxies drift in the branches of Yggdrasil. The first third of the movie really is kind of shapeless, but by the time we get to the heist-film intercutting of Thor's plan with its results, the timing is flawless. I saw two stupid romantic triangles looming and the script avoided both of them. Skarsgård's Selvig gets some fine moments of knowing as well as awkward humor and I'm rather glad the film bothered to deal at all with the aftermath of being god-ridden by Loki. And the uncredited cameo is great.
So, not perfect, and I'm sure I'll remember tomorrow all sorts of observations I should have made tonight, but right now I'm going to take a hot shower, nurse my sore throat, and go to bed. Really enjoyable and next, yes, please is so much better than I ever expected from any of these movies. Keep surprising me, Marvel.
The short version, before I fall over: it didn't surprise me as much as Thor (2011) and it's not as neatly put together as The Avengers (2012), but it does nothing with the characters of either Chris Hemsworth's Thor or Tom Hiddleston's Loki that I need to scream about, there is lovely world-expansion and whoever was in charge of costume and art design should take home several kinds of prize, I still feel about almost every movie in this franchise that someone has trimmed a vital scene here or there, and Stan Lee's cameo is probably my favorite so far.
The film has problems; they are at least different problems than its predecessors. The prologue is unnecessary. It feels too much like Peter Jackson and the exact same information is later reprised by Odin for Jane and Thor with a runic manuscript whose illuminations move and breathe as softly as the spells in Coriakin's book; it's a much more graceful and unusual way of filling the audience in on the war between the Æsir and the Svartálfar and made me wonder if the prologue was added after the fact or at least repositioned. After some unexpected shout-outs in The Avengers, the Norse myth in this movie is back to blended crack pretzel. The image of the Nine Worlds coming into alignment is another example of the Thor-verse's evocative intertwining of myth and astronomy (and allows for some of the best physics-bending in a fight scene since Portal), but the Norse pre-cosmos is the void of Ginnungagap with ice and fire to either side of its emptiness, not a dark matter universe full of knife-eared militaristic types. That said, Malekith's ships are a gorgeous showcase for the film's unapologetic genre-mixing, in which swordplay and illusions and rocket launchers and antimatter grenades coexist and interact in ways not usually seen onscreen, and I liked the decision to show us the faces of the Dark Elves before they don their battle masks (white as larvae, staring-eyed; their mouths are not even snarling, but dispassionately closed) and become the indistinguishable body count of a villainous army.
( Well, she wouldn't actually be shocked. )
What I like about this movie is what I liked best about Marvel's previous outings into this universe: the strength of Hemsworth and Hiddleston's acting, which continues to avoid collapsing the one character into dull good and the other into plain slick-talking evil; the humor that isn't used to undercut or apologize for the epic scale of the story, except when it's Loki flyting; the ability to create action scenes that don't bore me and were here both intellectually and visually clever; the fact that it passes the Bechdel test straight off. I love Jane's gravitational anomaly box—it is spot-built and jerry-rigged and the film makes it very clear that it is the combination of her plane-manipulating astrophysics and Thor's god-strength that defeats Malekith, because that is their story, magic and science meeting where a soul forge is a quantum field generator and galaxies drift in the branches of Yggdrasil. The first third of the movie really is kind of shapeless, but by the time we get to the heist-film intercutting of Thor's plan with its results, the timing is flawless. I saw two stupid romantic triangles looming and the script avoided both of them. Skarsgård's Selvig gets some fine moments of knowing as well as awkward humor and I'm rather glad the film bothered to deal at all with the aftermath of being god-ridden by Loki. And the uncredited cameo is great.
So, not perfect, and I'm sure I'll remember tomorrow all sorts of observations I should have made tonight, but right now I'm going to take a hot shower, nurse my sore throat, and go to bed. Really enjoyable and next, yes, please is so much better than I ever expected from any of these movies. Keep surprising me, Marvel.
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