THOR, not a review, but some thoughts, especially about the actors.

[xiphias]

I quite liked it. I think, had I seen it in 3D, I would not have liked it anywhere near as much -- but Lis and I saw it in 2D, like God -- well, gods of Asgard, anyway -- intended.

What made it work? Kenneth Brannaugh. Not his direction directly, although it didn't hurt. No, the thing that he brought to the movie was his friends. I'm going to talk specifically about Tom Hiddleton, because Lis and I saw him on stage years ago. And I just love him.

I blogged about this at the time. We saw his performance in CYMBELINE in 2007, where he doubled as Posthumus and Cloten -- and his body language was so different as the two characters that I didn't realize that the same actor was playing both roles -- until the fourth time that he changed characters, by changing his clothes -- ON STAGE IN FRONT OF US. So, yeah. The master of deception, trickery, and lies is played by an actor who can become unrecognizable on stage by changing his body language.

I also want to mention Idris Elba as Heimdall, the Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge. Not because of the whole, "OMG! HOW CAN A BLACK MAN PLAY A NORSE GOD" crap, but rather because he's darned good. The fact that his casting happens to piss off racists is a nice bonus, but I actually like him in the role because I like him in the role.

Lis notes that the movie actually OPENS with a scene in which two women are talking to each other about something other than a man -- Natalie Portman plays an astrophysicist, and Kat Dennings plays, apparently, an undergrad who's assisting her. Stellan Starsgaard is there, too, as an older astrophysicist who's Portman's mentor, but most of the conversation is between Portman and Dennings, about the fact that they are in the process of driving into the middle of what looks like it's going to be a tornado, in order to take readings of a potential time-space anomaly, about which Dennings is dubious. "I'm NOT dying for six lousy undergrad credits!"

Anyway, I do see one potential conflict coming up. Idris Elba mentioned in an interview that, having gotten to play a Marvel superhero, he now thinks it'd be hella fun to play Luke Cage. What's the problem with that? Isiah Mustafa (the Old Spice guy) has ALSO expressed interest.

And they'd BOTH be awesome in the role.

Here's how I'd solve the problem: anthology movie. See, the whole point of Luke Cage is that he protects the little guy. He's on the streets; he handles problems that go under the radar of people like the Avengers, or the Guardians of Oa, or whoever. They're off dealing with world-shaking or universe-threatening problems -- but that doesn't mean that the street-level problems go away.

So what I'd love to see would be to get a few different directors -- Tarantino and Rodriguez come to mind, of course, but they're almost too expected -- and a few different actors who want to play Cage, and probably some who want to play Iron Fist, and get an anthology of a half-dozen different twenty-minute or so stories. I think THAT could be fun. And that would let both Mustafa and Elba play the role.

Comments

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

I *really* want to see this, but will have to wait for it to come out on DVD. It just looks fantastic. :-)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It's a long-standing tradition for a superhero to retire or die, and a second to take up the mantle.

Maybe Isaiah Mustafa could be Power Man I, and Elba could be Power Man II, and then they have to fight, and then they end up teaming up and overthrowing The Man.

But then--who would play Iron Fist?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about Iron Fist. My problem with the character is that he kind of has a tinge of "All We Need Is A Honkey". He is a white dude who happens to be the Totally Awesome Martial Artist Chosen By The Sect Of Martial Artists.

Why a white dude? Yet, if you make him East Asian, that's just going with a different stereotype.

What I think I'd want to do is to just do completely race-blind casting. The character would have gotten his training in whatever country/region Iron Fist was trained, and his family would be American, but his ethnicity would be just whatever the actor's ethnicity was. Could be white, could be Chinese, could be Indian, could be Inuit, whatever. Whoever you got that would be fun for the role and could handle the stunts.

Which is another question: CGI, wire-fu, or real stunts?

Or, since it's an anthology, different choices for different stories?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I think having him be Chinese in the first story, then as white-bread American as possible in the second, and then black in the third, would just be hilarious. All with the same costume and if possible an improbable Fu Manchu accent. Find the biggest lampshade around and hang it on that sucker.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

It was a very, very pretty movie. And Heimdall was fabulous.

The 3-D was pretty nice, actually, especially the zooming-through-space bits.

[gingicat]

I really like the way your brain works.

And darn it, now I need to see Thor.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Maybe we can figure out when we can make a fangirl outing out of it, and giggle over Papa Kirk's starring role and coo over Mr. Elba being awesome once again.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

womzilla and I saw Thor tonight, and I have to say, the 3-D really was something worth seeing. Some didn't quite work--I don't think they have how to do the rain exactly nailed down yet--but Thor flying would alone be worth seeing it in 3-D.

I know I'm not always on the LJ anti-racist wavelength (she understated), but I don't actually see questions about Heimdall being African-American as racist. It did bother me for a while; I don't think I'd want to see Legba or Anansi played by a Swedish-American either. Believe me, I was looking for a reason to like that guy in that role, because he was so extra-wonderful at it. However, finally I decided the film provides an answer to this, in that the Asgardians aren't actually Norse, but extra-dimensional humanoids who were worshiped by the Norse people. Then I began to wonder why there isn't more racial diversity in Asgard!

I also really liked how Loki was played.