Thor

My expectations going to see the Thor movie were fairly low, so I was not disappointed by the result. The movie was not dumb, it was entirely watchable, it just could have been a lot better. My daughter was excited about the idea of a Thor movie because she thought it would be from the Norse myths she has heard over many years, and that could have been an interesting if perhaps somewhat depressing movie. She is not interested in the movie based on the comic book, in which they don’t even get Thor’s hair color right, nor Sif’s.

The comic book Thor is a hard character to make a good movie from. This movie does do a good job of showing Thor as he starts out: arrogant and thoughtless. His misbehaviour is believable, and so is Odin’s anger, and Thor’s banishment. That’s all from the original Lee and Kirby stories, albeit told out of order. But Lee always had a gift for making the core of the character make sense, at least in melodramatic terms. In the comics, Odin doesn’t just banish Thor to Midgard, he takes away his memory, puts him in the form of a man who is physically weak, and makes him a doctor, someone who often succeeds but also often inevitably fails to save his patients. It makes sense that that combination would teach humility. In the movie Thor is banished, but retains his memory and physical form if not his powers. It’s not clear why he learns anything from this. The key scene, which is meant to show that he is worthy of regaining his power, doesn’t show him as having learned anything. He is brave and self-sacrificing, but it’s easy to believe that he was that before his banishment. The movie wants to show that he has learned that people can get hurt, and that that matters, but there isn’t any clear reason why he should know that at the end of the movie when he didn’t know it at the start.

I was kind of disappointed by the vision of Asgard, too. The picture from afar was pretty but didn’t look like anything other than a picture. The rooms in the houses were huge and the actors playing gods tended to look lost in them. Having Kenneth Branagh direct was an interesting move but he was not in his element handling special effects.

Some short notes on other movies I’ve seen recently.

Sucker Punch. Very weak. If you’re going to try to hide your simple-minded story ideas behind good visuals, you need better visuals. And you need to make it more impressive as you go, not less. And if you’re going to dress your women like that, you need to do it with a sense of humor, something this movie completely lacked. It’s impossible to imagine Superman without a sense of humor, so I have to hope that rumors that Zack Snyder will direct the next Superman movie will turn out to be false.

The Adjustment Bureau. A solid movie all the way around.

Limitless. I liked this. They didn’t bother to fill in all the plot holes, but I thought that worked given the style of the movie and the protagonist.

Source Code. The title makes no sense but this is a coherent science fiction movie, a very rare thing indeed. And nicely acted by all. The second coherent science fiction movie by Duncan Jones, who directed (and, in that case, wrote) Moon.

Battle Los Angeles. Would have a been a nice movie if they hadn’t had to suddenly decide to wrap up the whole war.

Jane Eyre. A well done adaption, with a Jane who is both plausibly plain and plausible attractive to her Mr. Rochester.

Something Borrowed. All romantic comedies are inherently predictable, but this movie really stood out in its unrelenting predictability. Also it seems odd to make a movie in which the two main characters are so very ordinary and remarkably without interesting characteristics: just like real life, and very much unlike a movie. Still it had a few good moments.