SPOILERS, right? You’ve been warned.
Let me get this out of my system: oh my GOODness WTH Greenwich? GREENWICH? ARE YOU FOR REAL??
Ahem.
So. Thor’s second solo(ish) outing. I think it’s got a slightly better plot than the first. It’s still a crazy romp (see here for The Mary Sue’s review that suggests it’s not as crazy as it could/should be – too caught up with realism for a story that is hello, based on Norse mythology – which I agree with). There’s going to be a conjunction of the nine worlds (which makes me think that Lara Croft should be finding something awesome, amiright?), and this is causing all sorts of gravitational ructions between the worlds… and the Dark Elves are waking up, having been totes smashed by Odin’s dad a while back, and they want reveeeeeeenge. Also the Aether, a magic substance that will help them bring about everlasting darkness (which raises all SORTS of questions about why they have eyes, etc, but this movie is not the place for a discussion of evolutionary biology (insert joke about Chris Hemsworth’s abs here)). Things go wrong for everyone, surprise! There are battles, there is science, there are monsters, and there is kissing.
Things I liked:
Sif is awesome.
Jane was science-y! (And thanks to a science discussion early on with Darcy, the movie passes the Bechdel test.)
Friga was brilliant. With a sword. Also the tricksiness.
The relationship between Thor and Loki. Prickly but sad, angry but wanting-to-be-hopeful… more nuanced than I was expecting, to be honest. Not knocking Hemsworth but I think a lot of that was down to Hiddleston, because as the wrong-doer he had a harder job making Loki both unrepentant and dismayed at the outcome of his actions. That moment when you realise that everything you’re seeing in Loki’s cell is a trick? – sheer brilliance.
The end! (of the movie itself that is, not the stingers). I was pretty sure I knew what was going down, but it was nice to see it actually happen.
Things I was sad about:
There is not enough Sif.
I will never get the image of Stellan Skarsgard in y-fronts out of my brain.
GREENWICH. You cannot be serious about using Greenwich as as the locus of the nine worlds’ conjunctions. And you really cannot be serious about drawing lines that converge there that start at Stonehenge, Snowdon and… other unnamed places because if you named them it’d be even more obvious how STUPID this is…. And in conjunction with this, you really, really cannot be serious about the ancients having left messages for us from “last time”: the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Mayans… the MAYANS? The Mayans were not building monumental structures at the same time as the Egyptians and the Chinese! I… I have no words. Look, even Skarsgard is dubious about his own words!
Darcy and the intern getting it on. Yes I was expecting it, but still.
I liked it. I love superhero movies (except for Spiderman. It just hasn’t worked for me). So… there are explosions and fight scenes and some delightful snark. And Loki. It’s exactly what I expected.
