tom hiddleston

“Piss off ghost!”

Brothers will fight

and kill each other,

sisters’ children

will defile kinship.

It is harsh in the world,

Whoredom rife

—an axe age, a sword age

—shields are riven—

a wind age, a wolf age—

before the world goes headlong.

No man will have

mercy on another.

And a vessel built for orgies

Shall enter the devil’s anus

Prophecy of the Volva

Pity Joss Whedon.

I mean okay, he’s a hugely successful film and TV professional with a devoted fanbase and more money than a fabled king of old so don’t pity him too much but….yeah, squeeze out a tear for the guy.

See, Age of Ultron was an absolute nightmare for Whedon, not least because of Marvel’s insistence that he grind his movie to a halt several times to painstakingly set up the dark, gritty, epic, Thor 3. Ohhhh it was going to be so dark and gritty, you guys. Look! Heimdall’s blind! That’s how dark we’re talking. And there were snakes and dark, gritty, sexy dancing.

What exactly does this have to do with robots destroying the world?

And then Marvel gave the job of helming the movie to Taika Waititi, celebrated fim-maker and Māori god of mischief and trickery and he was all “Hee hee! I shall use none of this! And I have cast a spell on your wife and swopped faces with her, for she is beautiful and I am ugly! Ha ha!” And then he transformed into a bird and flew out the window, leaving Joss Whedon to wonder what the fuck just happened and thinking that maybe making DC movies for Warners wasn’t actually the worst idea in the world.

INCORRECT.

Anyway, the Vikings were a bunch of monastery razing, monk-stabbing, Battle-of-Clontarf-losing assholes but I’ll give them this; they knew how to do series finales. The tales of the Norse gods end with a big, stonking climactic battle where pretty much every major god dies including the really popular ones like Thor, Odin and Loki because the Vikings were not overly concerned with action figure sales. Ragnarok (or Ragnarök when it’s got its little hat on) is the most famous of all these tales, and not surprisingly, the Thor comic has retold it many times over the years, usually when sales are a little slack. And typically, these stories tend to be pretty grim affairs like the sagas they’re based on. And I totally thought that’s where they were going with this movie. Heck, for a long time I bet Marvel thought that’s where they were going with this movie. Everything was set up for it. The Dark World ends with Odin seemingly dead, and Loki secretly ruling Asgard. Age of Ultron seemlessly and organically (hah!) hinted at a desperate Götterdämmerung for Thor and his homies.

We knew what to expect. It was not this.

(more…)

“It’s not that I don’t love our little talks, it’s just… I don’t love them.”

By now we are thirteen films into the MCU and the question of which movie is the “worst” feels more and more moot. Sure, we all love ranking things from best to worst because this is the future and the internet has turned us all mildly autistic but really, what’s the point? There have been so many of these things, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become less like a series of stand alone movies and more like a single, ongoing epic to the point that calling one movie “the worst” is almost like singling out a single chapter of Lord of the Rings for scorn and derision. Why bother?

Although, I think we can all agree that with Chapter VII, In The House of Tom Bombadil, Tolkien utterly shat the bed.

I bring this up not because I think Thor 2: The Dark World is the worst MCU movie but because it sure does pop up a lot in that particular conversation. Part of that, of course, is just blatant Thor-prejudice. Lotta people just can’t grok with the character. But there’s no denying that this is a flawed movie, and while it certainly wasn’t the most troubled Marvel production (Ant Man sits on that throne and will not be vacating for a good long time) it was, by all accounts a rather unfun experience for all involved. After the original director, Patty Jenkins (who’s now helming Wonder Woman) was axed over “creative differences” Natalie Portman almost walked out in solidarity. Jamie Alexander was injured on set and was out of commission for a month. Replacement director Alan Taylor hated the final product. Screenwriter Don Payne died of bone cancer during production. Idris Elba described the shoot as “torture”. And plagues of locusts and boils befell the production and the catering table ran with blood. Probably. In fact, it seems that only one of the principals involved actually had a good time.

He brings the party with him.

But just because almost everyone spent every waking minute wishing for the sweet release of death, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie sucks. Apocalypse Now had a hellish shoot after all. Then again, so did The Island of Doctor Moreau. Which example does Thor 2 follow? Let’s take a look.

(more…)

“You think me strange? Good strange, or bad strange?”

First dates are essentially scams. You sit down to dinner with someone you don’t know, and try to pretend that you’re someone else. Someone charming, and succesful, and definitely not into doing weird things with fish. No sir. Not you. The second and third dates are more or less the same. But by the time the fourth date rolls around you need to start being honest. That’s where you take your date on a long walk and say “Look. I really like you. I like where this is going. But if we’re going to have something together I’m going to have to tell you just how much of a freak I actually am.”

“This. This is me. This is what I get up to.”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has essentially been a long, meticulous romancing of the mainstream. Thor is the part of the relationship where Marvel finally says “I’m glad you like the snarky businessman in the robot suit and the scientist who turns into a green monster. Now here’s where we get nuts.” As a title, The Mighty Thor has always been an unapologetically melodramatic, ridiculous, camp, epic, nonsensical, glorious, mess. In short, it is one of the purest comic books ever written. It’s huge men with long flowing hair and fabulous capes yelling cod-Shakespearean insults at each other and not understanding the difference between “thee” and “thou”.

It, quite simply, does not give a fuck.

But first, a little history.

The character of Thor was created early in the first millennium by the Germanic peoples inhabiting what is now Scandinavia. Some stuff happened. Then, in 1962, the character was introduced into the Marvel universe by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby in the pages of Tales to Astonish. There’s a little bit of confusion as to who actually came up with the idea (aside from the ancient Vikings, I mean). Stan Lee claims that the idea came to him when he realised that the only way to create a character stronger than the Hulk would be to make him a god, and that rather than go with the more well-known Greek or Roman deities he decided to delve into Norse mythology.

Meanwhile, Cúchulainn sits on the damn shelf.

Jack Kirby, on the other hand, claims that he created the character because of his love of Norse mythology and to be honest, I think the evidence is on Kirby’s side. Kirby had already created not one but two versions of Thor for DC in the golden age, so he clearly had an interest in the character. Not only that, but “comic book characters as post-industrial mythology” was kind of Jack Kirby’s whole deal. Thor’s sales have never exactly set the world on fire but this is nonetheless a character with some serious cred. There are many who consider Lee and Kirby’s run on the character the finest work of either men in the sixties (damn high praise) and he’s also had some celebrated runs, none greater than Walt Simonson’s glorious, batshit insane epic in the eighties.

This is normally the part of the review where I would say “we do not speak of the Frog of Thunder” but even this was AWESOME.

He’s also been a very consistent presence in the Marvel universe, showing up in almost everyone else’s books at one time or another and, if there’s a team of Avengers that Thor’s not on, it’s probably only because he’s dead again. He’s always been one of the company’s “faces”, one of their most visible and iconic characters. And yet, Thor has always struggled outside of comics. His live action appearances before 2011 was just a single episode of The Incredible Hulk, and he hasn’t headlined his own cartoon series since the frickin’ sixties (compare that to Spider-man, who gets a new cartoon show every time Stan Lee sneezes). Same Raimi originally pitched a Thor movie to Marvel all the way back in 1990 and from there it was dropped, picked up again, briefly re-conceived as a TV show starring Tyler Mane before bouncing to Sony, then to Paramount before finally arriving back at Marvel. The decision to nominate Kenneth Branagh to direct was surprising but also kind of inspired. Branagh is famous as an interpreter of Shakespeare for the masses, and Stan Lee is of course one of the biggest Shakespeare fanboys out there.

He made Falstaff into a superhero, people.

Branagh was the perfect candidate to make the overblown, melodramatic bluster of Thor work for a mainstream audience. Just, for the love of God, don’t subject yourself to his commentary on the DVD.

“The director’s an ass.”

Marvel knew going in that compared to Iron Man and Hulk, this movie was the real test. This is where they’d learn if a mainstream audience could really accept all the comic book nuttiness they were about to bring. It was time to see if this relationship had legs.