BEFORE: Chris Hemsworth carries over for the last time this week, and this is one of those big event movies that I saved a space for, and I made sure my linking would get me here, which is tougher than you might think. It's akin to trying to hit a moving target with a bow and arrow, I can't just aim for it, I have to aim for where it's going to be. I knew when "Thor: Ragnarok" was going to be released (November 3) but I figured I probably wouldn't be able to see it until the following Monday. Just to be on the safe side, I left a slot open for it on the following Wednesday, and it turns out that my schedule changed and I had dinner with my BFF Andy on Monday while he was in town, so I moved the "Thor" screening to Wednesday anyway. I've got many free days in November anyway, so if I had slotted it for Monday it only would have delayed blogging for 2 days at most, but somehow these things just work themselves out in the end.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Thor: The Dark World" (Movie #1,799)
THE PLOT: The mighty Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must fight for survival and race against time to prevent the powerful Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.
AFTER: Thor's back, with a new attitude, new powers, new weapons, and a new haircut!
The best comic-book movies combine a whole lot of storylines from the printed page, cherry-picking the best elements and blending them together to create something that's both old and new, fresh and yet familiar (if you're a regular reader). That's what happened in "The Dark Knight Rises", they took the Bane story ("Knightfall") and mixed it with the earthquake-hits-Gotham story ("No Man's Land") and dropped in bits of "The Dark Knight Returns" to create this epic Batman story that was old, new, and also classic and timeless in its own new way.
So this is a bit like "The Dark Knight Rises" but for Thor instead of Batman - it is the third film in the series, and I don't know if they'll make any more "Thor" films after this one - Chris Hemsworth did say in a recent interview that he was getting a little tired of the character, but this third film did have a fresh approach, and it made him like playing Thor again.
My first response is that saying this is a fresh approach is an understatement, and this film far exceeds the previous "Thor" films in quality - mainly because this new director remembered that these movies are supposed to be FUN, and this really puts the "comic" back in "comic-book movie". I guess some people might complain that this is supposed to be an action movie, not a comedy, but why can't it be both?
What happened between "Thor: The Dark World" and this film to explain the improvement, besides the hiring of a new director? My bet is the success of "Guardians of the Galaxy", another Marvel film, but one that definitely did not take itself too seriously. This new director clearly learned a lot about allowing the various characters to bounce off of each other, to have petty little personality conflicts and to allow them to always be trying to outsmart each other, because all of that leads to fun. And also that's it's often just as enjoyable to watch the comic-book characters fail as it is to watch them succeed. For the super-humans like Thor, this goes a long way to making them feel more human.
And obviously the Hulk is here too, I don't think I'm giving away any secrets, because he was in every single trailer and commercial, plus he's on the poster. If I've got any problem with this film, it's that we all knew the identity of the intergalactic gladiator champion before we're supposed to - I wish they could have kept this as a surprise, but Hulk vs. Thor puts nerd asses in the seats, I get that. If you noticed, both of these superheroes were absent from the "Captain America: Civil War" film, so this film potentially explains where they both were during the superhero Civil War. It makes sense to take both of these characters off the game-board for that plot, because they're the two strongest heroes in the Marvel Universe - whichever team had one of them on it would win the Civil War easily, or if they were on opposing sides, they'd have to be the last ones standing and fight each other. Without either of them involved, at least the outcome was in question.
Perhaps my sole NITPICK POINT is that we never really learn how the Hulk gets to the other planet in this film, because the last time we saw him, he was in an Avengers quinjet heading to a remote location on Earth. There's sort of a weak explanation that "everything that gets lost" ends up on this planet, but that's not really an answer. However, it fits with the Hulk's character that he wouldn't really understand or care about the science of how he got there, but it's still a glaring omission.
But this leads me to discuss the storylines that were combined to make this Thor/Hulk pastiche plot. Most notably, the Ragnarok storyline which has been done several times in the Thor comics, I think the most recent occurrence was in 2004 when the whole realm was destroyed, and the inhabitants of Asgard were moved to a new city which floated over Earth, above Oklahoma (the writer was clearly a fan of the band Three Dog Night...). The comics go back to this well every few years, though, so they've come to regard Ragnarok like any other comic-book death, which is a constant cycle of death and rebirth.
But there's a fair amount of "Planet Hulk" here, too - this was a storyline where Hulk was exiled from Earth (for the second time) and heroes like Tony Stark, Reed Richards and Doctor Strange built a satellite that captured the Hulk and sent him light-years away to another planet, Sakaar, which turned out to be a gladiator-based culture, and as you might imagine, Hulk did very well there. He had allies (Korg, Miek) and even falls in love and has a son. The good times didn't last, though, and eventually Hulk returned to Earth with his "Warbound" allies to get revenge on the heroes who sent him there, and this was called "World War Hulk".
(The first time that the Hulk was exiled, I remember it was in Hulk #300, the first issue of his comic that I collected. Doctor Strange banished him to the Crossroads, a place with a bunch of inter dimensional doorways so he could find a realm that he'd be happy in, the theory being that even a Hulk has to fit in somewhere. The depiction of Sakaar in this film seems to be a reference to this, with all of its wormholes. Also Doctor Strange appears in this film to aid with the dimension-hopping.)
But then I also have to mention another comic, the Contest of Champions. (Technically, the Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions, another one of the first comics I ever read...) This was Marvel's first limited series, where heroes from around the world were kidnapped by two Elders of the Universe, divided into two teams and made to play a contest, seeking four parts of an orb, in order to settle a bet between Grandmaster and Death, for the life of Grandmaster's brother, the Collector. This series featured one of the biggest mistakes in Marvel's history, because in this 4-part contest, the Grandmaster's team won twice and lost twice, which should have resulted in a tie - but somehow it was declared a victory for the Grandmaster. Only it wasn't, because Death then claimed that the Collector could only be brought back to life if the Grandmaster took his place in Death's realm. Someone had to write another story in an Avengers Annual to explain that the whole thing was a ruse on the part of the Grandmaster to steal Death's powers, and trick Death into exiling the Elders from her realm, which in essence made them immortal. But I digress.
Then there's the origin of Hela, which is given a new twist here by explaining her relationship to Odin, which is different from the one in the comic books, where I think she's Loki's daughter or something. This origin works much better, so to improve on Lee & Kirby's Asgard back-story is really an accomplishment! But it goes back to the thing about cycles, how Asgard is always being destroyed and recreated over the millennia. Anyway, the important thing is that Hela is back, and she's pissed - the realm of Hel is not enough for her, she wants Asgard and the other realms as well.
It's really amazing that these various storylines got stitched together the way they did to create a coherent whole - another (minor) sticking point was that I figured out the way to "save" Asgard about an hour before Thor did. They really telegraphed it in the beginning of the film, just to make sure we wouldn't miss it.
Anyway, with 30 slots left in 2017, I've got just two more planned trips to the theater before the end of the year. I have been going to the movies a lot these past couple of months, though - it's been a busy time with "Logan", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", "Wonder Woman", "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and this all coming out in the same calendar year. (Throw in "Cars 3", "Despicable Me 3" and "Blade Runner 2049", that's been my big-screen agenda so far) All of this time in the theater led me to create this joke, for my future stand-up routine:
I've been going out to the movies a lot lately, so much that my wife started to get suspicious, like she thought I might not be telling her the truth about where I was going, that I might be having an affair. So when I got home last night she started asking me details about the movie that I saw. I told her that the new "Thor" movie was really great, the way it worked the "Planet Hulk" storyline in with the destruction of Asgard was really cool, plus there were a lot of in-jokes and references that only a true comic-book fan would get, like the Grandmaster's game from the Contest of Champions limited series. She ended up saying, "Why couldn't you just have an affair, like normal men?"
Also starring Tom Hiddleston (last seen in "Muppets Most Wanted"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Carol"), Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Doctor Strange"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Bobby"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Spotlight"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Nashville"), Idris Elba (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Karl Urban (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Creed"), Ray Stevenson (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Zachary Levi (ditto), Tadanobu Asano (ditto), Rachel House (last heard in "Moana"), with the voices of Clancy Brown (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Taika Waititi, and cameos from Luke Hemsworth, Sam Neill (last seen in "Escape Plan"), Matt Damon (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Stan Lee (last seen in "Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Chef")
RATING: 9 out of 10 winged horses
No comments:
Post a Comment