I couldn’t agree with you more about Natalie Portman, she’s beautiful in this movie.

I think Heimdall was set up not as a bad ass, but he was feared because he can see everything and is extremely loyal to the throne, so he has the potential to be a powerful snitch.

With the exception of Odinsleep, I liked how they presented the powers by showing not telling.

Just saw Thor and also enjoyed it, though I do agree with some of your problems with it. I admit the Odin Sleep didn’t confuse me since I just wrote that off as “Well he’s the king of the gods, so I guess they’d make a big deal every time he took a nap.”
The part with Loki though, I think the reason Thor and everyone else trusts him is Loki went more in the mischief direction up till the events of the movie. Basically everyone just saw him as the village prankster and didn’t pay much heed to the deception part of the role.
On a side note, as a Green Lantern fan I am a bit interested in seeing the film just to see how they portray thhe overall story, though having Parallax as the main villain does seem a bit off putting considering what it is in the comics. I will agree with you about the Guardians since considering all the screwups they’ve made since the corps reformed, they make the Psychlos look smart.

Is you’re bro wearing a t-shirt of that French/Canadian actor…? I’ve seen him before..

I loved Thor it was f*cking awesome!!!

good vlog.  Can you PLEASE watch Bridesmaids and vlog it, cause it looks so terrible but rotten tomatoes likes it…I’m really finding that hard to believe.

totally agree with GL. god, it looks so horrible. the cg…errrrr

 hahaha yeah… i may pass this one up. seems like a marvel subplot adventure kinda idea. i love how miles always look like no ones in his loop. thats hilarious to me. I just got the espresso machine running so watch the fuck out!

amon amarth – death in fireX-cops – highway starICP – headless boogie

I’m spade and I’m decaf.

I thought Thor was the best Marvel movie yet.
 

I noticed Spoony didn’t mention the stinger at the end of Thor. I won’t discuss it here, but I thought it was a pretty good one. I had mixed feelings for Thor. I’ve had a Natalie Portman crush for years (from before star wars) But I think the “Romance” made no sense. I think she just had the hots for him, but they left out mention of that to appeal to the family audience. Stellan Skarsgard is awesome in this movie; cynical humor – love the drinking scene. When watching it, I saw the hawkeye scene – while it could have been a cooler intro to the character I still liked it. It was fun how I instantly realized it was HawkEye, while no one else did. What I didn’t like is that it was too easy for Thor to regain his powers. I feel he should have had to go through a lot more, even if the hammer allowed him to fight the guardian, it should have then taken them away so that he had to work even harder to get them back. I agree that a lot of the movie was geared toward setting up The Avengers movie rather than telling a great Thor movie.
Green lantern looks like spectacle but no plot. And I’m not familiar with GL comics, but isn’t that purple guy with the mustache Sinestro? So are they planning on having sequels? Don’t know if I’m going to see it.
The only thing I don’t like about what I’ve seen for Captain America is the obvious effect of putting the actor’s head on a smaller person’s body. It just looks bad especially when we know the actor is buff. The effect does look better in 3D. I am going to see it.
I did like the return of Miles. I wish he could be in more videos. Great vlog Spoony and Miles (maybe Miles should have a nickname as well…Captain M!)

Nice vlog, I agreed with most points. I will copy what I posted somewhere else:

It was a good and fun movie, although it had some flaws.
First off, the 3D still can’t win me over. it was unnecessary and pointless.
It wasn’t as bad as CotT, but it was made so they could just squeeze a few more bucks out of me.
The movie itself was good, C.Hemsworth did quite good as Thor, Hopkins did great as Odin, and Tom Huddlestone did a great job as Loki.
To me Loki was a sort of victim himself which was a bit weak. A confused young man jealous of his brother, who wasnt even his father’s son. I haven’t read the comics, so I don’t know what he’s like there.
Portman’s character was just there, the romance seemed forced since the chemistry was off and they didn’t have much time together.
Hawkeye’s cameo was alright, but could have been done better, all tease and no payoff.
Thor’s merry band of sidekicks was useless.
The action was great, the mythological parts were done very well, and *that
was the part that could have been messed up the most*, so more credit to them.
There were some really dumb bits, why can’t they repair the bridge, if they built it to begin with?
Overall I would rate it 7/10, and recommend seeing it on the big screen, worth it.

One thing I didn’t want them to do is have any mythological enemies in The Avengers, which was strongly hinted that Loki would again be a villain. I didn’t want the Avengers to have anything else from Thor’s universe but Thor himself. I don’t want any mythology in The Avengers, and I don’t want to see Loki again unless they do Thor 2.
Kinda bummed about that, although most people won’t mind.

I think the “Hangover” fad started with Superbad, then was blown out of proportion with Hangover.

There’s something about mary, no one else really did it well so it kind of just died off. 

Also the begining of the movie kind of sucked on the grounds that the action was WAY too close, and it always had the fucking slanty camera angle, I felt like I was watching Battlefield Earth for the first little while.

Otherwise yeah, this is basically the definition of Ok, not great but not a waste of time.

I concur that Thor certainly wasn’t 5-star material, but IMHO a strong 4-star film.

IMO the film handled both plot-lines quite well (the goofy stuff on Earth and the fantasy-Shakespeare-like material in Asgard). The fact that the film wasn’t drowning in slapstick(which could have happened with Thor’s time on Earth) was already a huge relief.

i really liked thor its not a cult hit but in my opinion best movie this year

It wasn’t an origin story but its the closest that anyone is going to get at this point considering the comics are from the 60′s and they didnt explain how his hammer was made until the middle of the 80′s also im still kinda curious why they didnt make Thor do his whole possesion thing when he gets to earth with Donald Blake

i liked thor a lot And i thought it was going to be a wreck. But i didnt know J michael stracszinscky wrote the story. I love his take on the amazing spiderman series. thor didnt hide its cheese factor at all, but that made it loveable. it was a big setup involving shield, but the performances and script were good. i liked it more than iron man 2. scarlette johansenn as black widow? ……awful!

Thor spent a little too much time in New Mexico. Aside form Natalie Portman and some supporting cast, the Earth sections really didn’t have enough star power to warrant taking up over half the movie. They snubbed The Guardian, Loki, Odin, and all of the great actors in the roles of Thor’s fellow warriors whose names are mentioned only once and forgotten for the entire movie.

Even worse, a lot of the content in ‘Thor’ could have been cropped to give more time to the actors in Asgard. I don’t want to see the generic father get smashed, I want to see the other warriors get developed. It felt like the plot was taking short breaks in between the all-important everygirl story arc to slam out as much character development as it could. This problem could have been easily avoided.

‘Thor’ forces talented actors them to fulfill major secondary rolls with little to no time for character development or introduction, just to tell a relatively boring story with the better known Natalie Portman.

Aside form this movies unfair fixation with a big name actress, I still like this movie. It has great action, great actors, and surprisingly good humor. I just wish all this talent was better handled.

Portman was terrible in this.  Maybe it was just her character, but she was so incredibly dumb it was painful

Nice to see you doing these again Spoony. Good to see Miles too. Take care of yourself.

 Well I gotta tell you Noah: I am a huge, huge GL fan. I admit, Guy can be a dick. But, I have only read the recent stuff with him in it. 19 years old and all. I admit this: I fucking hate the guardians. They are behind everything that goes wrong. Loved the epilogue of Blackest Night with Arisia punching one of them. Made me laugh. You are entitled to what you like and hate by the by. I love the story and mythology of it all. I do not like though how Sinestro is less of a villain and more an anti-hero nowadays. So, Im going to say: was a little pissed at first when you said you hated Green Lantern, but calmed down when you said you hated Hal Jordan. Maybe that isn’t the only reason you hate it, maybe you don’t as much as people may think, but I will give something up in exchange, I hate the Brightest Day storyline. But, well, you stand apart from others, who knows, maybe it will be good, maybe it will be bad.

 These side advertisements are seriously bizarre.

WTF is Cock Robin?

I’m only sort of a fan of these comic characters through film and TV, but I am however a huge norse mythology fan. I havn’t seen this movie yet, but I wanted to comment on your comments regarding Loki being the god of mischief and Thor being friends with him (though not brothers). In the actual myths, it is cannon that Loki and Thor are very good friends and many of the more common stories from these eddas are the adventures that Thor and Loki have together. He has been known to assist the gods and although tricky and playful, was not their enemy until he ended up getting Baldr killed. As for being the “god of trickery” this is more a later or modern interpretation of Loki as his stories got mixed in with other mythological figures and themes. It has not been established by scholars whether Loki is indeed one of the gods or one of the giants (depending on the edda you are looking and and how you interpret it). He was known as a trickster god, but not the god of trickery if this makes sense and until the event with Baldr, he was on good terms with the gods and had many adventures along side them. Perhaps this is not very well set up in the movie, as you say, they assume you are familiar with the comics, perhaps they assume you are familiar with the myths as well, but as someone fermiliar with the myths they are based on, what you say makes sense to me.

I’m only sort of a fan of these comic characters through film and TV, but I am however a huge norse mythology fan. I havn’t seen this movie yet, but I wanted to comment on your comments regarding Loki being the god of mischief and Thor being friends with him (though not brothers). In the actual myths, it is cannon that Loki and Thor are very good friends and many of the more common stories from these eddas are the adventures that Thor and Loki have together. He has been known to assist the gods and although tricky and playful, was not their enemy until he ended up getting Baldr killed. As for being the “god of trickery” this is more a later or modern interpretation of Loki as his stories got mixed in with other mythological figures and themes. It has not been established by scholars whether Loki is indeed one of the gods or one of the giants (depending on the edda you are looking and and how you interpret it). He was known as a trickster god, but not the god of trickery if this makes sense and until the event with Baldr, he was on good terms with the gods and had many adventures along side them. Perhaps this is not very well set up in the movie, as you say, they assume you are familiar with the comics, perhaps they assume you are familiar with the myths as well, but as someone fermiliar with the myths they are based on, what you say makes sense to me.

Im actually not a fan of Green Lantern but, as you, I did dislike the trailer. From what I hear, even Ryan Reynolds disliked it too. It made the whole movie look like a comedy, which, apparently (hopefully) is not. The second trailer was released not to long ago and it actually looks pretty good, a lot more serious if anything.

The new trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-GO9fo9DtM
Oh, and I also hear that they actually moved the release date of this movie back because they didnt like the final CGI, so they went back to redo some of it, which is actually pretty cool. Hopefully that means that they dont just want to just release some junk but actually want to improve on the movie.

Ah, I also for got to add. The hot chick comment. This is also cannon in norse mythology. Loki was a shape shifter and would often disguise himself as a woman.

 Except that Ragnarok was not set in stone. In you pay attention to the stories there are instances where we do see that they could prevent the inevitable. Frey did not have to give away his sword and keeping it would have saved his life. They took the fingernails of their fallen warriors to keep the ship from being built.

Well, here’s the part where I disagree with virtually all your points.  Everything in the movie you were confused about was explained, just with great subtlety.

1.  They’re not Gods.  They’re hyper-advanced aliens.  This part was covered in a couple different points in the movie and it sort of answers a lot of your other questions.

 - Fandral the Dashing (the guy who’s name you couldn’t remember) was talking with Thor and brought up how this wasn’t like the old days when you could pop down to Midgard, impress the mortals with a little thunder and lightning and they’d “worship you as a God”.  Immortal, yes.  Gods, no.

- The in-your-face moment when Thor is telling Jane Foster “your ancestors called it magic, you call it science.  Where I’m from, they’re one in the same”.  This brings up the old sci-fi trope of any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- When Thor is stripped of his armor and hammer, he’s no stronger or more durable than a human.  It’s as though his powers were completely dependent on Asgardian technology.

2.  The timeline and discrepancies vs Norse Mythology.  It’s pretty clear that a lot of what is recorded in Norse Mythology couldn’t possibly apply to the characters in the movies.  It goes back to that quote from Fandral.  Odin and the Asgardian warriors pop down to Earth and kick a ton of Frost Giant ass.  Thor and probably the rest have been to Earth since then.

It makes complete sense that the people of Norway interpreted these strange people whom they already were convinced were Gods according to their own preconceived notions.  Loki was mentioned in the movie as always being into mischief.  Some bitter (and observant) Vikings probably read something sinister into his crap and gave him a prominent role as a villain (and getting his liver eaten by a bird for all eternity.  That’ll learn ya for putting a dead fish in my jerkin.).

This also completely explains the difference between myth Heimdall and movie Heimdall.  If he never left his post, how would the Vikings even know what he looked like?  The most they would have saw were half-images during those times the bridge was open.  And all you would see is a big gleaming set of golden armor.

Side note:  Hogrun the Grim is Asian in the comics, too.  Though he was a Mongol instead of Japanese, so that’s still a fair comment.

Naturally, of course nobody from Asgard is going to look at Norse Mythology and be like “Hey Loki, they think you’re an asshole.”  A lot of those stories couldn’t have gelled with the Asgardians in the movie, so it would look more like libel than anything else.  “Hey Loki, they also say you turned into a mare and bore Odin’s steed.”

you guys are right about the masters of the universe comparison, though thor did show that a decent masters film could be made today, sadly its little chance of happening 

I love the fact, that they didn’t copy too much from northern mythology. For example the 20. movie about thor vs. midgaard snake. I’m so sick of these.
But I liked the fact that they did not chance the core of the caraters. so heimdall is still the only one who never trusted loki.

Two words: ‘dutch angles’.  Every. Fucking. Shot. It was Battlefield Earth tier in the cinematography.

 I like Idris Elba, too. Right now he’s the only reason I’m considering going to this movie, really.

Oh yeah, and I read something on Cracked that said that every second of the Green Lantern trailer was ripped from other superhero trailers. That might have been a different trailer, though. I almost certainly won’t see the movie anyway.

Every time Portman walk onto the scene, I get a lot of “You’re softer than sand” jokes. But yeah, she is cute

Surprisingly decently made. I was worried that with all the superhero films these days, there’d be a screw-up that put an end to the genre. Hope Green lantern and Captain America don’t stink (something I’m expecting X-Men First Class to do).

 Just to point out Loki in myth is actually the god of mischief hes meant to stir the pot hes not out right evil he only becomes evil in myth when his children are mistreated and he kills balder the most loved of the gods. 

that’s when he turns against the gods his daughter is Hel the ruler of the underword he has a serpent son who kills thor in the end and Fenrir the great wolf swallows Odin and is killed by Thor.

So Loki is never outright evil and he has the ability to shape shift into anything and he is granted there propites he often turns into a bird and one story he turns into a female horse to tempt another horse away from rebuilding the wall, if the giant had finished building the wall he would get the sun and moon and thors wife as payment Loki notices the horse actually does most of the work and draws the horse away. It later has sex with the horse and gives birth to a 7 legged horse which is then offered to Odin which later became his trademark horse.

Explaining the Asgardian gods’ “magic” as advanced technology helps bring the Thor universe in line with the other modern versions of Marvel characters of the past 10 years, especially for the Avengers movie.

Iron Man: no superpowers, but gadgeteer with advanced high-tech (fusion energy, weaponry and A.I.)
Green Lantern: alien supertechnology
Captain America: supersoldier serum plus high-tech shield
Hulk: superpowers as “mutation” caused by gamma radiation (and possibly genetic experimentation, depending on movie). Also, the scientist and engineer Bruce Banner in the comics invents his own brand of high-tech called “Bannertech”.
Hawkeye: archer, no superpowers, but similar to Batman in that he uses gadgets and high-tech weaponry and is at the peak of human physical performance

What got to me mythologically was that Odin was riding Sleipnir, the badass eight-legged überhorse from the legends. The problem? Loki is supposed to be her mom. In the myth the walls of Asgard are broken from war with Vanaheim and some worksman comes in saying he can fix them if he gets to marry Freya. The gods reluctantly agree if he finishes the job in an unrealistic deadline, but surprisingly he almost succeeds. So Loki decides to distract him from his work by turning into a mare in heat and luring away his horse, at which point the random worksman reveals himself as a Frost Giant in disguise. Loki then comes back a few months later with an eight-legged colt in tow and gives her to Odin as a gift.

In this continuity Loki is Odin’s son! Shouldn’t the whole thing be all kinds of awkward and disturbing for all of them?

If the script writers of the Thor movie really wanted to explain why the movie-Heimdall is not only dark-skinned but has these weird red eyes, well, why not claim Heimdall is a Fire Giant from Muspelheim, the realm of fire? Surtr (which in Old Norse meant “black” or “the swarthy one”), the king of the fire giants, has been described in the Edda as carrying a very sharp, brightly shining sword which is either on fire or shines with bright light.

Only problem with that might be that Surtr is supposed to fight against the gods of Asgard during Ragnarök. But hey… it’s not like the movie bears much resemblance to the Edda anyway. ;-)

Kind of strange to talk about the movie for 40 minutes in detail and barely mention Tom Hiddleston’s fantastic performance, was the glue that held the entire film together. It was probably the best acting of any of these Marvel movies so far by a wide margin.

Your brother is far too reserved.   It looks like he has a lot to say but he just looks around the room looking frustrated.  Spoony, you rant for just a little too long and you don’t give Miles the chance to voice his opinion so a lot of meaningful commentary is lost.  This is what I’m seeing anyway, it’s your review and your site, do what you like.

 I have never read Thor, I know the mythology really well though, and I can mostly agree. My favorite part of the film (besides how awesome Asgard looked) was Loki’s back story. I thought it was actually done really well. The fact that they didn’t know what was in children’s books or the fact that they weren’t all norse looking didn’t bother me because they set up at the beginning that they were aliens basically and that human’s had interpreted them as Gods. I didn’t find Loki’s background confusing, if anything I loved it because of it’s subtle character building aspects that contrasted the very predictable plot arc of Thor. And I loved the actor that played him.

The Odin sleep did confuse me a little and seemed more like convenient plot device, but I went with it. The only thing I did have to ask comic friends about was Hawkeye, since I don’t read those comics. That was the only annoying Avengers moment in the films for me, otherwise I agree with Miles, some government agency would want to investigate alien tech falling from the sky.

The beginning war scene was badly done, specifically when they froze woman and child in my opinion, but the scene you described with the soldiers bothered me less, having me instead have an awkward Night Watch flashback. The coloring in ice scenes just seemed too stylized, and unrealistic. Asgard has the coronation-y scene that’s very yellow and fake-ish, but it wasn’t as jarring as the blue.

As for theater vs. rental. I think the cg of Asgard alone is worth the theater, the scope and beauty is just awesome. But, I also can attest that 3D isn’t worth it. I got to go for free to a pre-screening which was in 3D (it took them forever to sync the projectors) and the 3D was subtle and mostly done in post so not even true 3D.

The romance was annoyingly tacked on, but I must say I was actually surprised at the lack of shirtless Thor. There was only like one short shot. 

Do we need a description of why Heimdall is so awesome and powerful, I mean.. look at the guy. He just is. 

Marvel-Odin says: “As my father and his father before!” – Odin-Odin has two giants as father and grandfather:)

Marvel-Odin loses his eye in battle. Odin-Odin puts his eye into the spring of truth and future, clever god.

Marvel-Frigg is Marvel-Odins wife and Marvel-Thors mother. Frigg-Frigg is Odins wife, Thors mother is one of the 14 other women of Odin. I guess that is why they call him All-Father:)

Loki never was the son of Odin, but Heimdall is.

Sif is the golden blond wife of Thor, who gets betrayed by him, while Marvel-Sif gets outranked by Natalie Portman, which faith is worse?

The breaking of Bifröst is part of the apocalypse, Marvel-Thor does it himself.

The Marvel heros battle the leader of Jotunheim by beating him up badly. The north heros battle him by competing with him in the disciplines: Eating, grandma wrestling, running, horn drinking and last but not least cat lifting. I rather would have seen that version.

In the movie a girl calls Mjölnir “Mimir”, who is mythological a giant and a consultant of Odin.

Jötunheimr is inhabited by giant giants, Marvels Jotunheim is inhabited by the Blue Man Group.

Marvel-Loki is the Son of “Laufey”. Loki-Loki is too, but Laufey is his mother :)

PS:I really really hope they make a few Thor movies more and skip the avengers!

This movie was an average no character development movie:  Thor meet Jane, Thor find hammer, Thor fight for Jane.   This is Thor comic fan movie.  I would have preferred the action and story take place at either Asgard or Midgard (Earth).  The dialogue is not bad compared to Star Wars Ep. 3, but it is hammy.  The casting was good.  What was the epilogue point?  After the credits, “Thor will Return.”, should have ended the movie.  Or, Jane should opened the bridge in the end and no scroller.  The would rate this movie below Iron Man 2.  Suggest you make this movie a rental and save your movie for a better movie.

Better then Beastmaster 2?  So whos cuter, Natalie Portman or Sarah Douglas?  Tough choice.

Sounds decent, hell a comic movie that Spoony seemed to like?….I might have to see it.

Better then Beastmaster 2?  So whos cuter, Natalie Portman or Sarah Douglas?  Tough choice.

Sounds decent, hell a comic movie that Spoony seemed to like?….I might have to see it.

I totally dug on this movie, but I can see where it might have been better had it been more about Thor.  That being said, I really doubt this movie would have been made WITHOUT the run up to the Avengers. Even if it had, it would have been given a teency budget.

What would be nice is if they make a SHIELD-less sequel, probably after the Avengers movie.  Give it the same kind of budget and keep it mostly in Asgard, and see what you can do with it.

I’ll tell you why you can do this with Thor and not HeMan or Beastmaster.

First, with the Beastmaster and HeMan franchises, you never get any sense that these worlds have any relationship with Earth, let alone Modern Earth (or Earth as we know it.) Thor, on the other hand, is a god with a long relationship with the mortals. In the comics they take it still further with Thor being banished to Earth and becoming a superhero.

So the audience goes in knowing Thor will interact with modern day mortals. This character has been doing this for nearly fifty years now. We’ve had fifty years to get used it to and to figure out how to make it work.

And like you said, its on purpose here as opposed to being a budget saving manuever.

You should review The Almighty Thor, Thor gets to shoot an uzi :-)

Oddly, I think the thing that REALLY helped out here was Kenneth Branagh’s training in classical theatre. Working with a Shakespeare director can really help when you’re trying to lend real gravitas to scenes where either the main character or every character is speaking Renaissance Faire English.

I loved Loki’s character arc, it made the movie awesome.

Out of all the Lead-up movies to the Avengers, Thor was the best. I don’t even LIKE Thor, and I found the movie awesome. I respect your opinion, and I acknowledge the fact that he should have seen the betrayal by Loki coming…In the end it was an okay movie, not the best, but just okay.