THOR

 

Peter and I went to see a film this evening.  In a theatre.  Don't fall off your chairs or anything.  I suppose my resistance is down from all the time I've spent in the same cinema lately watching people sing in inappropriate and unflattering close up.*  But Peter is still recuperating from the after-effects of that fall, and I worry that he should get out more.  Since one of the things keeping him at home is the fear of upsetting an outing for other people by not being able to sit still comfortably I figured we needed back row aisle seats to a nice stupid noisy movie, so we wouldn't care if we had to leave, and no one else would notice if we did.

            THOR is getting good reviews as a cheerful monster park-your-brain Marvel-comic non-stop-action blockbuster** so I thought, perfect.***  Informed Peter I was taking him to a film, and booked.  And we didn't have to leave early.  Which is the good and the bad news.

            It may be the worst movie I've ever seen.  Granted there is some stiff competition.  But it's certainly in the top ten.  No, five.  No, three.  No . . . tonight, having just wobbled† home from the thing, which stole about four skeins' worth of good yarn money from me . . . it is the worst movie I have ever seen.  WORST.  Oh, and speaking of the ticket price:  I hate 3D.  I hate 3D.  It's not 3D in any convincing, realistic or even particularly entertaining way:  sure, when someone sticks a sword at you, it looks like it's coming out of the screen over the heads of the audience in front of you.  I don't need to spend an extra £2 per for this, including wearing a pair of heavy, insanely uncomfortable glasses over my own.  My nose isn't long enough, and the tops of my ears bruise easily.  GAAH.  And the rest of the time the '3D' breaks up to a greater or lesser extent into what looks like a bigger, waaaay more expensive version of those cardboard tableaux a few people who are as old as I am may remember making when they were kids:  You cut a viewing window out of the narrow end of a shoebox, and painstakingly create a 3D scene inside it, with cardboard and coloured cellophane and crayons and Scotch tape and so on.  Then you peer in the window and hope you will grow up soon so you can get a life.

            What can I tell you that isn't spoilery?  Why on earth†† did Kenneth Branagh want to do this rubbish?  I'm not a Branagh fan either, but he appears to have a brain, he can certainly act, and he's been involved in a lot of really interesting stuff.  Too many late nights, Branagh, honey, you're losing your edge.  Although since people seem to be liking THOR . . . well, I never had any edge to lose, and I should be beyond being surprised when popular acclaim and I march in opposite directions.  And I confess I don't get the hunk thing.  Chris Hemsworth—who plays Thor—is a snore.  He looks like a Chippendale escapee, and this is not a compliment.  But I don't like the super-cut, gym-bunny look.  We've had this conversation, haven't we?  I can't remember what heartthrob I was animadverting last time.  But I like muscles that look like they got there because they're used, not only because your personal trainer raised your reps again.  Hemsworth is so cut he looks plastic.

            Which makes him superbly suited for the plastic 3D master thwack-'em and thwack-'em blow-out that is THOR.  I'm also reading reviews about how terrific the special effects are and how gorgeous Asgard and Niflheim (?) are.  No.  Wrong.  Ugh.  Asgard looks like the more-money-than-sense fantasy version of those whopping Publishers Clearing House houses—are they still around?—with the Tudor half-timbering, the Greek Revival columns and the mansard roof all on the same building.  Oh, and crenellations.  And chimney pots.  What you might call the Very Expensive Cheap Nonsensical style.  Ugh.  And the Frost Giants' land is just murky.  And the 3D doesn't help.

            Sigh.  Plot?  One of those we-don't-need-a-writer plots.  Hey, it's mythology, it's all epic and out of copyright.  Father has two sons.†††  One of them is blond and charming.  The other one is dark and plotting.  Elder one loses his temper—in a blond, manly, charming sort of way of course—once too often‡ and is banned, more in sorrow than in anger, by dad.  Who then goes into a coma for obscure reasons, except that this allows the dark plotting son to get all darker and plottier.  Okay, look away now if you could possibly care less.  Pick-your-cliché follows.

            Elder son plunges to earth as a kind of meteorite with a bizarre event horizon, and is promptly run over by cute young female scientist who is out careening across the desert in the middle of the night searching for bizarre event horizons. ‡‡  Elder son's famous hammer is tossed over the edge by sorrowful/angry dad too, and lands a few miles away, and is instant centre of activity by a Men in Black gang . . . who barely frelling notice Thor himself.  Thor of course has to stage a Daring Raid to get his hammer back and when it fails‡‡‡ they let him go and as he's sauntering back out of this major top security area they've established he just happens to pick up the cute scientist's crucial notebook, the Men in Black having confiscated all her gear—it's just lying there and he picks it up and walks away with it and no one stops him.

            Do I really have to tell you any more?  No?  Good.  I'm going to bed.

* * * 

*Nadia says there should be a law against filming singers closer than twelve feet.  Upon reflection I think this is still too close.  First row of the stalls from the far side of the orchestra pit, say.  

** Peter and I have this little problem about agreeing on a film.   Noisy FX SF silliness is usually our best compromise. 

*** Although my track record with Marvel-into-movies is not too excellent.  Barring that I love love love the first two BLADEs (the less said about the third the better), which are among my guilty pleasures, I'm pretty unngh about the ones I've seen.  First X Men was reasonably amusing.^  I was annoyed that THE FANTASTIC FOUR was such a pulpy mess, because the comic had been one of the few I had defied parental ban to read hiding behind the shelves at the drugstore, ditto disappointed that ELEKTRA was such a bust since finally it's a girl.  And I liked the first IRON MAN.  For the rest . . . meh. 

^ Read:  Hugh Jackman is amusing. 

† Films don't have reels any more, right?  So can you say reeled home from a film without everyone groaning? 

†† Or Asgard 

††† Note that even Anthony Hopkins as Odin can't save this one.  Usually I find Hopkins to be one of those actors who confers dignity on anything by his mere presence.  Not this time. 

‡ WTF did he think he was going to accomplish by barging off to exchange pleasantries with the Frost Giants anyway?  Him and his four chums:  including the token Asian and the token girl.  The tokenism of this film is particularly gruesome.  The token black appears as Asgard's gatekeeper.  And the token over-forty-year-old woman appears as Renee Russo as Frigga.  Oh, and what I was saying about not hiring a writer?  This lack lends itself to spectacular tin-eared-ness such as one of the chums saying to one of the other minor leads–both of them standing in a timeless hall of Asgard, mind you–after the other minor lead may (or may not) have just lost a family member: 'I'm so sorry for your loss.'  GAAAAAAAAH. 

‡‡ There is absolutely no sense to our hero's reactions to present-day New Mexico:  to what he understands and what he doesn't.^  This is one of the things that loses the movie absolutely for me. 

^ And what is that mushy accent he has?  

‡‡‡ Predictably, because we have to have the Jesus/Aslan moment later on.  GAAAAAAAAH.