Review of the movie Thor

By Arathald · May 8, 2011 · ·
  1. I just saw Thor in theaters, and, honestly, I thought that the writing sucked. Here's why, followed by a redeeming point or two. I tried to avoid spoilers, so forgive some of the more vague language.

    The 30ish-minute beginning sequence was great, except that it was all a flashback after what I thought was an unnecessary hook at the beginning. The whole time, I was wondering when we were going to get back to the story. Taking out the beginning hook and presenting the introduction as part of the story proper instead of the backstory would have made it much more enjoyable to me.

    The method in which Thor got his hammer back (okay, it's obvious he's going to, so this isn't a spoiler) seemed a bit deux ex machina to me. By that I mean that the hammer suddenly had this new ability that it didn't posess before which allowed Thor to be physically reunited with it. The spell/blessing placed on the hammmer may have been worded in a way that made me think this a bit strange. One possible resolution would be to have the big fight scene occur in the direct vicinity of where the hammer is. As it stands, I think it was too easy for him to get it back (as soon as he was able to).

    This was quickly followed by the S.H.I.E.L.D. operative acting in a completely unexpected way. I didn't remember all about S.H.I.E.L.D. from Iron Man 2, so this completely threw me for a loop. Apparently, if I had remembered Iron Man 2, this would have made perfect sense to me. Should this movie really rely on another movie that isn't even a prequel for it to make sense?

    Right after this (yes, that's three in less than 10 minutes), some characters are able to get... back where they came from. The person who helps them do this has to overcome a very specific concrete obstacle to do this (see the movie, you'll see what I mean). Now, it makes sense that when he realizes that they need help, he tries to overcome the obstacle, and succeeds. The issue is that he begins trying to overcome that obstacle before he would have realized they need help. The end result is that he happens to overcome the obstacle at the exact right instant to help them. Huh? That came across to me as a deux ex machina type device (if not deux ex machina proper), or, at best, violating causality. There's no reason he can't wait until a few seconds later to begin overcoming the obstacle.

    Lastly, the character of Loki. Loki being the god of deceit doesn't give the writers carte blanche to make him inconsistent or to have wildly varying motivations. A character can surprise the audience while still being self-consistent. Maybe if I had remembered who Loki was, I wouldn't have been so confused, but I'm not up on my Norse mythology, and some of his actions left me completely lost.

    Now, the movie wasn't all bad. For what it's worth, I still found it rather entertaining. There was one part that stuck out to me as particularly well-done, however: the ending. I appreciated that Thor made a tough decision, and it does show that his character developed as the story progressed and that proving himself earlier was not a one-time event (which is something I had wondered if they were going to show). It was definitely more complex than a lot of the silly, predictable endings movies have nowadays.

    I keep going back and forth between thinking I'm being way too picky and remembering how abruptly I was jolted out of the story. I feel like if I was unable to sustain my suspension of disbelief, there was something wrong with the writing. It's easy to blame such issues on the viewers/readers, and it's even easy for them to blame themselves for it, but when it comes down to it, shouldn't we consider that just maybe the writing was, at least in part, to blame for it? I think anything less betrays the arrogance that we sometimes have as writers, and the elitist attitude that tells us, "it's actually very good, but they're too stupid and uncultured to understand it."

Comments

  1. mugen shiyo
    hard to really judge since i never saw the movie, but if it's one thing i absolutely HATE in fiction, it's inconsistency and dues ex machina??? i'm not sure what that means, but i figured it hit along the lines of pulling crap out of your butt to advance your story line and that's why i hated reading books that were- to me- silly fiction. dwarves, elves, rings, and magical trinkets that seem to exists solely for the purpose of getting a character out an otherwise inescapable situation. i just mark it down in my mind and remember to avoid it in my own writing

    at least you enjoyed it, though. it sucks going out for something that looks cool and coming back depressed- especially if to escape depression is why you went out in the first place o_O but honestly, when you looked at the commercials you kind of knew storyline was not going to be that movies strength, if any
  2. katica
    WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the movie Thor -- Arathald

    I saw the movie yesterday and I disagree with all your criticisms. I am going to talk about spoilers a lot, so anyone who hasn't seen the movie shouldn't read this.

    1. There was nothing wrong with the hook and flashback. In fact, I was very interested in trying to figure out the whole time the flashback was happening how they were going to tie the two events together and I got super excited once they did. I know you were upset by this, but it sounds like its just a preference, since there's no writing rule out there that flashbacks are wrong. I've also seen hooks done wrong where a bunch of random names and locations are thrown out and its just a fight scene. The hook made sense without knowing anything about the story, so I'd say they did things very right.

    2. The method in which Thor got his hammer back made a lot of sense or did you not notice that his hammer was flying back to him repeatedly (and that was one of its powers from the beginning) when he was fighting the frost giants? He threw his hammer several times during that fight and he would have lost it if it wasn't tied to him in that way. And in the same way, it flew back to him again when he was worthy of wielding it again.

    3. You did not need to know who S.H.I.E.L.D. was at all for the movie to make sense, so you didn't need to watch Iron Man 2 beforehand to understand that detail. You also have to realize that these movies (Iron Man and Thor) are based off of Marvel comic books and in Marvel comics S.H.I.E.L.D. is found harassing many different super heroes. It didn't hurt anything to make a generic government group that any audience could get the gist of and also name it S.H.I.E.L.D. so that people like my boyfriend and I who actually read the comics know who they are at the same time and can see it as a reference. It's actually ingenius to be able to do something that's a reference to comic geeks, while at the same time not confusing the general audience.

    4. He was frozen in ice. Duh he was trying to get out before they needed his help. It showed him trying to get out (by doing a close up of his eye) long before they needed his help. It was just then that he was beginning to win against the ice.

    It's not actually fun to be unable to move and he was in the middle of a fight with Loki, so he was already pumped full of adrenaline with his sword in the air and on the momentum. Of course he'd be fighting it from the beginning,

    If you were going to complain about something to do with this, I would think it would be: How the heck is he still alive when he's been frozen by ice? Because that would make more sense.

    But even that has an explanation, since these people are gods and obviously not normal human beings, so they have the power and ability to handle things that a normal mortal could not.

    5. Loki was not inconsistent at all. The entire movie, he was obsessed with having his father's approval and jealous of Thor. He brought in ice giants during Thor's coronation to stop it from happening. He got upset when he found out he was an ice giant because it put a wedge between him and his father and made the reason that he wasn't the favorite make sense. He didn't put his father to sleep, that happened on its own and he panicked when it did happen and called the guards. He came to earth and told Thor a bunch of lies to keep him from trying to come back and took over the kingdom because he was jealous of Thor. He tried to kill Thor because he was jealous of him. He wanted his father to approve of him, so he allowed the ice giants to come into the kingdom so he could defeat them while his father was defenseless in his sleep so that his father would approve of him. This is also why he tried to kill all the ice giants, even though he was one of them. He fought Thor because Thor was trying to destroy everything he was doing and be the golden child again, which upsets him and makes him jealous. And he killed himself at the end because his father did not give him his approval for his actions.

    You see? All consistent. Everything he did was motivated by his need for approval by his father and also his jealousy of Thor. I think you are thinking he defected to the ice giant side (which you were supposed to for awhile), when he never actually did.

    Loki wasn't actually that bad of person. He wasn't motivated to do what he did by a need for power. He did what he did so that he would appear more like Thor (remember how in the end they were ironically talking about how the two of them had become like each other) because his father loved Thor and he wanted his father to approve of him.

    The only real bad guys in the story were Thor's conceit and S.H.I.E.L.D. Loki was just misguided.
  3. spklvr
    What bothered me the most about the movie (and the comic for that matter) was how wrong they were, mythology wise. If they had followed the actual mythology, NO ONE would have let Loki be king, no matter what. And they didn't make him mischievous enough. Up until ragnarok (end of the world) Loki was on the good side, but nobody trusted him for good reason. He stole stuff and played pranks on everyone just for his own amusement. Still, Loki is my favorite character. (Oh, and another thing. An Asian Norse god...?)
  4. Arathald
    WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the movie Thor

    No, but there is the general tenet that you shouldn't spend 1/4 of your work just on backstory. Flashbacks are something that occured in the past, so they are much harder for people to engage with. Making this a flashback turned it into backstory instead of story. There's not writing rule that flashbacks are wrong, but they must be used very carefully. The beginning would have been much more immersive if it had happened in the present, and I don't think that the hook at the beginning added enough value for the amount of distraction it caused.

    A boomerang suddenly transformed into a heat-seeking missle. I won't grant that this wasn't a new ability, at least not in the way they presented it.

    As a relative comicbook layperson, I was unaware of who S.H.I.E.L.D. was. Because of this, all of their actions throughout the movie struck me as villainous. Then, suddenly, they do a complete 180, and not only will they let the scientists have their stuff back, but they're now fully supportive of their work? Sorry, but without knowing about S.H.I.E.L.D., this is incredibly incsonistent behavior.

    The ice started cracking right before they started calling out for his help. Honestly, what's the point of that half-second of showing the ice cracking? Remove that tiny little bit, and then he's making a much greater effort to break free specifically because they need help. That would have been an awesome character development/revelation scene. Instead, it was just tacky. Yes, an unnecessary half-second shot turned an awesome scene into an awful one.

    Sure, consistent in retrospect. But I initially thought that he was helping the ice giants because he found out he was one of them. But he had been helping them before he found that out, so that couldn't be it. Then he suddenly decides to trick them when he finds out? I don't see a clear connection there if he's not going to reveal that to them (which I never saw him do). Finally, I thought he was genuinely helping them out, then he kills them then they attack his father. In retrospect, this makes sense, now that I know his motivations, but when I was watching it, it seemed so contrary to what I thought about the character that it broke my suspension of disbelief.

    As I said before, you can surprise the audience while keeping the character consistent. They could have provided a little foreshadowing earlier that maybe, just maybe, he was tricking the ice giants without giving it away. Then when he turns out to be working against them, I'm still surprised, but there's an ah-ha moment where everything clicks into place and still makes perfect sense. They missed a big opportunity here and that scene flopped bigtime.
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