Thor

[Chimpy]

I may be weird compared to other ladies

Pretty sure you won't find any arguments about that sentiment around here 

[Sjofn]

Whatever, I know I'm a catch. 

[Tannhauser]

I felt sorry for Renee Russo.  She used to be a big star now she's a bit player.  Should have had an unknown there, it was distracting.

[Strazos]

Saw it yesterday, was entertained. Slightly amused by Dennings referring to the hammer as "Meow-Meow."

[Ratman_tf]

I felt sorry for Renee Russo.  She used to be a big star now she's a bit player.  Should have had an unknown there, it was distracting.

Yeah. During her scenes I was like... Rene Russo? WTF? I suppose it's better than not working at all, though.

[DLRiley]

I liked the movie. But...

- I didn't get the impression that the Asgardians where no more than normal guys who just happen to live thousands of years.
- Frost Giants could do to be Giants or threatening
- Thor was a really good brawler with a hammer, He had a bit of a live action superman feel to him. (which begs the question why haven't they got the man of steel right yet....) But again no god of thunder. I think there special effects budget wasn't high enough to show him actually hit someone with thunder, it felt like the "angels" in supernatural where most of thors impressive "supernatural" displays of power were background effects.

[Tannhauser]

Didn't he fly up in the air, twirl his hammer and summon a storm?  Can't remember if there was lightning.

But yeah, nice to see him flying and being Superman-like. 

[LK]

Considering the heavier emphasis on advanced technology as magic instead of pure magic (Marvel Movieverse), the lightning that did show up from the storm made more sense than Shock-A-Pow from Meow Meow.

[DLRiley]

Which again renders the question - Are the Asgardians just humans who figured out how to extend their life spans and kinda stopped at that? Considering the movie debunked one theory that Asgard and Earth flow in different times putting things in perspective the Asgardians being "advanced tech race" hasn't changed at all in a 1000 years....

So basically Mjorin is the IronMans suit inspired by some blurry vision of a 40k space marine seen through the eyes of someone born a thousand years ago but possessing tech 4000 years ahead of our time.

[LK]

Taking it too seriously will only hurt your brain.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You know what bothers me the most?

Not Heimdall, he was awesome and skin color did not matter one fuck.
Not english dude because while not norse in any way it could be put off as a regional thing.
Not silf who had no other defining characteristic other than she was the girl.
Not red beard, who was a really tall dwarf.

The fucking japanese guy. Seriously? Hell I could even accept if he simply 'looked' asian, but is the asgaard realm so vast they even have multiple dialects with completely different accents? jesus that guy really threw me out of the movie.

[Evildrider]

You know what bothers me the most?

Not Heimdall, he was awesome and skin color did not matter one fuck.
Not english dude because while not norse in any way it could be put off as a regional thing.
Not silf who had no other defining characteristic other than she was the girl.
Not red beard, who was a really tall dwarf.

The fucking japanese guy. Seriously? Hell I could even accept if he simply 'looked' asian, but is the asgaard realm so vast they even have multiple dialects with completely different accents? jesus that guy really threw me out of the movie.

Ho'gun has always been portrayed as Asian.  He even looks like a Mongol in the comics.  Also he's not Asgardian or he's not of the same race as the Thor and the others. 

[Strazos]

I was more put off by the Fencer's terribly fake mustache.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Ho'gun has always been portrayed as Asian.  He even looks like a Mongol in the comics.  Also he's not Asgardian or he's not of the same race as the Thor and the others.

Ok, I'm fine with that but if you aren't going to explain it in the least don't put it in. It really made me stop thinking about the movie and start thinking why the fuck is there an 'really' asian dude there? And don't get me wrong, cheesy british guy was second on that list, it was just hard to nitpick him with mister samurai right there.

[DraconianOne]

Ho'gun has always been portrayed as Asian.  He even looks like a Mongol in the comics.  Also he's not Asgardian or he's not of the same race as the Thor and the others.

Ok, I'm fine with that but if you aren't going to explain it in the least don't put it in.

 

[DLRiley]

I was more put off by the Fencer's terribly fake mustache.

The whole point of being a nerd is taking shit too seriously. Otherwise we wouldn't have comic books or dnd or rpgs or..dear god mmos! We wouldn't have mmorpgs!!

Taking it too seriously will only hurt your brain.

It was so awesome it fucking twirled! I wanna a movie with him and his twirling mustache. Oh and Heimdall, he gets like 3 scenes in the movie, he and twirling mustache man need to be in the same movie, rush hour style 

[Khaldun]

You know what bothers me the most?

Not Heimdall, he was awesome and skin color did not matter one fuck.
Not english dude because while not norse in any way it could be put off as a regional thing.
Not silf who had no other defining characteristic other than she was the girl.
Not red beard, who was a really tall dwarf.

The fucking japanese guy. Seriously? Hell I could even accept if he simply 'looked' asian, but is the asgaard realm so vast they even have multiple dialects with completely different accents? jesus that guy really threw me out of the movie.

Yeah, because you know, alien planets with magic superscience would really not have the same variety of ethnicities and subcultures as our own planet does. I can imagine a motherfucking superhero with a magic superscience hammer summoning lightning and beating on a magic superscience robot, but why the fuck would those people have some Asian guy hanging around with them?

[Surlyboi]

'Cause like pig and elephant DNA, Asians and super science just don't splice.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, because you know, alien planets with magic superscience would really not have the same variety of ethnicities and subcultures as our own planet does. I can imagine a motherfucking superhero with a magic superscience hammer summoning lightning and beating on a magic superscience robot, but why the fuck would those people have some Asian guy hanging around with them?

lol x10  

ETA: They also didn't explain those ravens that were sitting on Odin's throne. They should have also left them out.

[Ratman_tf]

They didn't explain all the stuff in the vault. Why show it if they're not going to use it?  (Dogpile!)

[Lakov_Sanite]

Like I said, nothing wrong with heimdall and whoever said asgaard was an entire planet? sure as hell didn't look like one or was explained as one. Might as well have just had a guy in a tophat and monocle speaking the kings english and not bothered to explain it.

[Khaldun]

Whoever said it wasn't? You know, I generally wouldn't interfere with a nerd's fetishes, but going full autistic-spectrum because there's an Asian guy on a multicultural planet/realm/whatever of space gods who like to dress up in faux-medieval armor, ride horses, build killer robots and so on? Only marginally less weird than the Aryan Brotherhood types getting all shirty about Heimdall being black. It's not even justified by reference to the source material, since Kirby and Lee always portrayed Hogun as an outsider to Asgard who came from a sort of Mongol-ish part of the Nine Worlds.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Reading comprehension is hard. I'm fine with Hogun being some sort of Mongol or whatnot but they could at least make up some brief explanation. I also had a problem with the british dude, though it was not so obvious. It just all begs the question 'why' asgaard would have different cultures, if asgaard is its own planet fine, but as they show the realm it looks like its only a city.

Fuck neckbeardy comic people or the norse-loving "they must all be white" crowd. I am simply saying from a narrative standpoint it is jarring to add such a multicultural cast into what appears to be a a city full of people that inspired legends of the norse gods. You know how they could have gotten around it in the simplest way? When they mentioned that the asgaardians inspired myth, they could have had a line about inspiring legends all over the world.

It's not that hogun shouldn't have been there but they might as well have made one of the warriors a cat and never explained why there was a cat wearing armor in asgaard.

[lamaros]

Reading comprehension is hard.

Chin up! If you keep practising you'll get there one day.

[DraconianOne]

Reading comprehension is hard. I'm fine with Hogun being some sort of Mongol or whatnot but they could at least make up some brief explanation.

This is a film, not a novel. Hogun's a background character with perhaps a couple of lines of dialogue - his backstory is entirely irrelevant to the main story of the film so why the fuck would we want to spend time finding out about it?

I've never read a Thor comic and had never heard of the Warriors Three before the film and had no idea whether he was meant to be oriental or not but also, I didn't care. I'm happy to not have the slightest thing explained to me because it means I'm not being fucking patronised and that the filmmaker assumes that I'm intelligent enough to either go with it or make my own conclusions - especially about a fucking character who wouldn't have been missed by me if he'd been cut from the film totally.

Demanding an explanation for every story element, no matter how fucking irrelevant, is indiciative of the dumbing down of films to cater for an audience who go "Derp!" every time they're asked to use the brains for a second. It's the sort of rationale which, if it had been made today, would have changed to Silence of the Lambs to include Hannibal Lecter's backstory and explain why he was a cannibal rather than just saying "He's a cannibal, he eats rude people. Deal with it!" and leaving him as a fascinating enigma. And yes, I'm well aware that The Adventures Of Young Hannibal Lecter explained exactly that.

As I tell my clients, that sort of shit does not need to be committed to the page.

/rant

EDIT: <columbo>One more thing</columbo> I'm not going to defend the entirety of Thor because quite frankly that whole Hawkeye cameo thing was jarring and felt shoehorned in. That needed more time or to be cut entirely - it was an application of Chekhov's Gun that isn't going to pay off until The Avengers and felt totally out of place.

[Khaldun]

Wanting background on all characters is pretty much = 'I don't like good movies, just movies that cater to my inexplicable need to have everything explained in depth.'

You apparently weren't watching the costuming or the designs for exterior and interior spaces in Asgard, which look nothing like Norse culture in the real world and actually include a variety of architectural styles. Did I just give you another thing that makes you uncomfortable and requires explanation? If not, why do you accept that the main Asgardian city we see has buildings that don't look "Norse" in a variety of styles, and that the Asgardians don't wear armor that looks "Norse" in any specific sense?

See, the premise as the film sets it up is: there are alien planets that are connected by some kind of wormhole network. (Which Thor describes to Jane as Yggdrasil, the "Tree of Life"). The Asgardians describe them as various 'realms', one of which is Jotunheim. Jotunheim's inhabitants, "frost giants", used to attack other planets in the Yggdrasil network, including Earth. The Asgardians came to Earth to save them from the frost giants and fought a long war. In the course of this conflict, they were worshipped as gods by the cultures which directly witnessed some of the battles in the war.

Another consideration: the original Norse myths have several realms from which gods or god-like beings hail. The main gods that people know about are the Aesir, but there are gods from other realms who are often described as looking or acting somewhat differently than the Aesir.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm glad the internet has its white knights rushing to defend flawed movies. I never said I was uncomfortable with the casting choice, just that they never explained it and it was jarring.  The funniest thing about this is people trying to defend some of the weaker parts of a movie IE character glut.

How many characters were in the first iron man, characters with any substance. You had stark, rhodes, potts and the jeff bridges character, everyone else was basically irrelevent or had very little screentime.  When characters were introduced, they mades sense, you understood who they were within a few lines and if you didn't it was explained.

Thor suffers from classic super hero movie bullshit, too many random canon characters there why? because they are there in the comics. None of the other warriors should have even been in this movie if they weren't going to give them any kind of story, they were useless and pointless. Yes I found hogun the 'most' jarring but none of the four really had a place in the movie.

See, the premise as the film sets it up is: there are alien planets that are connected by some kind of wormhole network. (Which Thor describes to Jane as Yggdrasil, the "Tree of Life"). The Asgardians describe them as various 'realms', one of which is Jotunheim. Jotunheim's inhabitants, "frost giants", used to attack other planets in the Yggdrasil network, including Earth. The Asgardians came to Earth to save them from the frost giants and fought a long war. In the course of this conflict, they were worshipped as gods by the cultures which directly witnessed some of the battles in the war.

Is Asgaard its own planet? probably, the movie never says and it looked mostly like a city when we were shown it. Did the asgaardians influence other cultures than the norse? I'm pretty sure they would have. The problem is the movie didn't take five seconds to say any of this and the only thing it even half-heartedly tries to say is that all their culture inspired some vikings.

I went into this movie expecting stargate asgaard, knowing that this would be the whole "we inspired your myths, because we are aliens, and awesome schtick. The problem was just when you bring four completely different charicatures of warriors for seemingly no reason and then never explain it.

[DraconianOne]

I'm glad the internet has its white knights rushing to defend flawed movies. I never said I was uncomfortable with the casting choice, just that they never explained it and it was jarring.  The funniest thing about this is people trying to defend some of the weaker parts of a movie IE character glut.

Dont' fucking backtrack now - you didn't say anything about character glut, you were demanding an explanation as to why one of the incidental characters was Chinese.

None of the other warriors should have even been in this movie if they weren't going to give them any kind of story, they were useless and pointless.

Bollocks. They served the same purpose as Rhodes in Iron Man - the "sidekick" character except that there were four of them rather than one. And you got the brief explanation - they were friends and comrades of Thor who had fought together many times. That's who they are - the sidekicks.  They served a purpose in so far as they were the ones who went to rescue the protagonist when all seemed lost for him.

So yes, you could have made them one person rather than four and it wouldn't have made a difference. Yes, you could have got rid of them all and changed the story so Thor didn't need their help at the end of the second act.  You could say the same about Rhodes who did fucking nothing in the first Iron Man and wouldn't have been missed at all if he'd been cut.

You absolutely did not need to know why one of them was oriental. That's just fucking ridiculous.

As for being a White Knight - well, thank you. All I can ask is that please for the love of all that's celluloid, don't ever go to a test screening and give your feedback because the rest of us don't deserve to suffer the sort of crap that would produce.

[Lakov_Sanite]

 

[Sky]

They probably didn't even explain how Valkyrie descend to pick up the souls of the greatest fallen warriors from midgard to take back to Valhalla to hang out waiting for Ragnarok and that the best of those might hang out and drink and fight with Thor who liked to slum around alot.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Lakov is not of Scandanavian descent.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I just don't see how people can't understand that it is a bit jarring to have random earth culture inside a supposedly alien world. It wasn't even skintone so much as "this dude is captital A-Asian, heavy accent included" the british dude was every bit as heavy-handed and stupid, don't think for a second I felt he was any better, just not as noticeable.

Also it does have every bit to do with a glut of characters. Because with that many, you don't take the time to explain them, they are just there.  Rhodes or Potts are great examples because you 'didn't' need to go into great detail about their history or backstories, in a few lines you figured out all you needed to know about them. rhodes was straight-laced military, starks friend and a generally good guy. Potts was starks assistant, straight laced but with a hint of sexual tension nd someone who cared for him.

Thor was a fun movie but where it really dropped the ball was with its characters. They never explained hogun, nor even gave him more than a couple say-nothing lines.  Just imagine if potts in iron man was dressed in a barbarella outfit but they never explained why and unless you read the comic you didn't know that it was because of whatever stupid reason. 

[Speedy Cerviche]

Seemed pretty self explanatory to me. They are Thor's drinking & brawling buddies for his merry adventures. They had no role besides showing that Thor was a social guy who enjoyed comraderie, and served as props in the scene where Thor's lack of maturity is exposed when he goes out to kick the giants' ass (also highlights his selfish traits, where his desire for revenge and glory almost get his bros killed). This establishes he is not at heart a loner anti-hero like wolverine or the hulk, since he does care about these people, they're all very tight, and they love him, but he lacks wisdom, maturity, and some empathy, he is too much of a rash, single minded hero like Achilles. It sets up the character developments later in the film.

This basic role as Thor's homies as props to explain Thor's character, and later character developments was pretty clear, beyond that it hardly mattered if they were asian, robots or battletoads.

[Ratman_tf]

I just don't see how people can't understand that it is a bit jarring to have random earth culture inside a supposedly alien world. It wasn't even skintone so much as "this dude is captital A-Asian, heavy accent included" the british dude was every bit as heavy-handed and stupid, don't think for a second I felt he was any better, just not as noticeable.

So you think chinks are more noticeable than limeys when they all pretend to be aliens who look exactly like humans.



 

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I love the "the British guy is not as noticeable, however I object to him just as much, because neither of them fit the peculiarly intense impression I got that Asgard was a city, not a planet, and as a city not a planet could not possibly be ethnically diverse, because alien superscience planets when they have otherwise completely human-looking aliens on them are always of a single ethnicity and race, this is just a fact of imaginary sociology".

I think you'd better get more comfortable with those nasty Asians since the way you're digging yourself into a hole here, you're bound to pop out in China any time now.

[Evildrider]

Hey what about Heimdall?  I didn't know there were Black Viking gods!