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Thor: The Dark World
185 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, we look at the most maligned of the MCU films, 2013's Thor: The Dark World. Valandil Mann of the Vytamin Dice podcast makes his debut on the show for a look back at what many consider the MCU's lowest point. But despite the poor story and thin characterization, we've got some things that are still worth watching, especially in light of this movie's influence on Avengers: Endgame.
Listen to Valandil on the Vytamin Dice podcast.
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Transcript
Sibling Banter and Truth & Honor
00:00:18
Speaker
This is so unlike you, brother. So clandestine. Are you sure you wouldn't rather just punch your way out? If you keep speaking, I just might. Fine, as you wish. I'm not even here. Is this better? It's a better company, at least. Still, we could be less conspicuous.
00:00:47
Speaker
It will hurt no less when I kill you in this form. Very well. Perhaps you prefer one of your new companions, given that you seem to like them so much. Oh, this is much better. Ooh. The costume's a bit much. It's so tight. But the confidence, I can feel the righteousness surging. Hey, want to have a rousing discussion about truth, honor, patriotism? God bless the victims. What?
00:01:20
Speaker
You could at least furnace me with a weapon. My DAG is something. At last. Little common sense. I thought you liked it.
Introducing the Hosts and Guest
00:01:58
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming a new guest today, and that is Volandil Mann. Val, how are you doing today? I'm doing good, thank you. So what I like to do with new guests is give them a chance to tell the audience a little bit about themselves. So tell us about you, what kind of stuff you do, and what brings you over here today.
00:02:21
Speaker
Um, so I have been doing, uh, trail work for the county that I live in for five seasons now. And I started going to community college for a park ranger specific program. Uh, I've always loved like Lord of the rings rangers. And so that's what sort of got me excited about the idea of being a ranger. And then I like.
00:02:51
Speaker
started doing trail work and going to school for it.
Exploring Vitamin Dice Podcast
00:02:56
Speaker
I have a D&D podcast that I do. It's called Vitamin Dice. Vitamin is spelled the Y and vices. Dice is spelled the normal way. And so I started doing a podcast for a little while and I thought it'd be really cool to be a guest on other podcasts.
00:03:18
Speaker
So I just sort of put myself out there, see who would want me on as a guest. And, uh, I listened to an episode of this podcast, super excited to be here. I listened to the, um, the end game episode. It was really interesting. Oh, good, good. Yeah. That was the big hundredth episode that we just did.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah. Endgame is such an awesome movie. I'm so excited for that. Yeah, yeah, same here. I was freaking out in the theater. My wife now, then my girlfriend, she was laughing more at me than she was at the show. Yeah. But anyway, so tell me a little bit more about your D&D podcast.
Recording D&D with Tech Tools
00:04:00
Speaker
Um, so it's an actual play. I should say it's a TTRPG podcast cause we're not, uh, focused on only playing DND. Um, we did a little bit of a fantasy, uh, like Christopher Columbus style, uh, campaign. We're actually still in the middle of that one. And before that we were doing like a sci-fi Western with a system that I, uh, designed.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm the dungeon master and then at some of my friends as the players, we like to focus on character development a lot more than we did in home games. And we're trying to have some interesting world building in there. So are you doing these, when you do the games and you're recording them, are you doing the games live in person? Are you doing them over like Zoom or some other sort of chat thing?
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, we have, I should say I have friends in different places. So we meet together on Discord and we all record our audio separately. We have a virtual tabletop so that we can play together. Okay. The tabletop simulator thing or something like that. We use one called fantasy grounds. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I've done, I've only played a little bit, but
00:05:28
Speaker
but when I was part of, we were doing the Star Trek RPG, which is kind of fun. Just a lack of time and I had to pull out of it. It's hard enough. I've got too much stuff going on eventually. And- It does take a lot of time. Yeah, the campaigns are long. We're talking like, you know, three, four hours at a time, so. It's kind of a big commitment, yeah. I get
Mann's Superhero Origin Story
00:05:51
Speaker
that.
00:05:51
Speaker
So let's talk about your relationship to superheroes. Were you a fan of superheroes from the comics or have you come in mostly through the movies and TV shows? I'm pretty young. I haven't really been in a world where superheroes haven't been in movies. So mostly it's the MCU movies that have gotten me really into superheroes.
00:06:20
Speaker
And after becoming a fan of the superheroes, I've started becoming interested a little bit in what goes on in the comic books because some wild stuff goes on in the comic books. I watched a video about some Thor comic storylines. It's pretty crazy stuff.
00:06:47
Speaker
A lot of acid being dropped in the 70s, especially. So you came in through the movies and I'm envious a little bit because the fact that you grew up, you don't really remember a world where there haven't superheroes haven't been a big thing. Because when I was growing up, we didn't have that, right? We like we clutched onto like any little thing we had. So it's like the any tiny little thing we had, like it was a bad made for TV thing. We held onto that thing because we had nothing better.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah. So what movie was it that was your intro to the MCU then?
Influence of Spider-Man and Thor
00:07:25
Speaker
When I was pretty little, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies were out. And so I've seen all three of those very many times. Still a huge fan of those movies, even though they're kind of goofy. And
00:07:47
Speaker
Basically starting with around Iron Man and Captain America, I started just watching them all as they came out. And I've seen most of them multiple times. Okay, good. Do you have a favorite from the MCU or a favorite movie or a favorite character that you kind of latch onto more than others? I relate to Thor somewhat because
00:08:12
Speaker
You have to look going, I can see on the video. That's what it is a lot. Like when Thor movies came out, my friends would be like, oh man, you look like Thor. So I looked for connections with Thor. Okay, well, that's a good transition because we are talking about one of the Thor movies today.
Thor: The Dark World Review
00:08:32
Speaker
And this is, we're talking about the dark world, which has been kind of like the,
00:08:39
Speaker
probably the most maligned of the MCU, I think. And somewhat unfairly, I would argue. I remember when I first saw this movie when it came out and I dug it. I thought it was a lot of fun. Even rewatching it, I've rewatched it a few times now and rewatching it last night to prepare for this.
00:09:00
Speaker
It's slow in parts. It's not, you know, firing on all cylinders. The story, the overall story is not as strong as the other Thor movies. But overall, I think it's still an enjoyable time, like, especially when you compare to some of the other superhero movies that are out there. I mean, I would, for an example, I would choose this over, say, Iron Man 3 any day of the week.
00:09:25
Speaker
I mean, I also like Iron Man 3 a lot, but I'm in total agreement with you there. I watched Thor of the Dark World yesterday and I had a great time. I thought it was a good movie. I mean, I can see why a lot of people are a little bit disappointment when you look at it in context with all the rest of the MCU movies, but I don't think it's a bad movie in any way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
00:09:54
Speaker
Let's talk about that.
Visual Aesthetics of The Dark World
00:09:56
Speaker
What were some things that really kind of jumped out of you at this most recent watching? So one of the first things that jumped out to me as one thing that works about Thor the Dark World is the costume and the makeup. I think they really sort of nail like the sort of space fantasy, sci-fi, the like mix of genres that
00:10:25
Speaker
Marvel sort of has going on, but like, yeah, the, the dark elves, especially, I think they, I, I just think they have really cool costumes. They look really cool. I think.
00:10:37
Speaker
I think, yeah, I like the overall design of them. I think the prosthetic works on Chris Eccleston was a little bit, Christopher Eccleston was probably a little bit too much because it makes it hard for him to convey much with his face. He pretty much seems pretty stone faced throughout the movie. And I think he said that a big reason for that was because of the heavy use of prosthetics that they used for the Malekith design. But overall, the overall look, and I'm with you, especially on the melding of the sci-fi and
00:11:05
Speaker
and fantasy elements because if you look at the the comics like if you go back and look at some of the old the Kirby stuff Kirby love that idea of like melding the kind of sci-fi concepts with the fantasy stuff. But other artists have done different interpretations like I think Olivier Copiel was doing the art in the
00:11:28
Speaker
the mid early late mid aughts, I think it was around like 2006, 2007. And his style, he was leaning very heavily into a much more fantasy-esque version of Asgard. Like it was much more like something you'd see out of Lord of the Rings or something like that. Very light on the science fiction trappings of it. But I, I like the idea. And I think the first Thor movie kind of leaned into it. It leaned a little bit more towards the Kirby aesthetic with the kind of like,
00:11:58
Speaker
infusing the science fiction elements. But I think this movie is really where they lean heavily. Like with the Asgardians, like one of my favorite scenes is when the elves are attacking and they're all in spaceships and stuff. And then Asgardian ship takes off and it's like a Viking warship, but a spaceship type of thing. I thought it was really cool.
00:12:22
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah. It makes me think of the scene where they have Jane Foster and they're like doing some kind of analysis to like, cause she has, she has contracted the, the aether into her body. And you know, they, they say some kind of science mumbo jumbo and she's like, oh, it's a, it's an electron something. Yeah. I can't remember exactly what she said. It's a soul forge and then she looks at the door and she's like, it's this other thing too. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it harkens back to the first movie with the, uh,
00:12:51
Speaker
Like where I come from science and magic are one in the same. Yeah, that was running through that line was like running through my head on repeat as I was rewatching this yesterday. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that aspect of it because I think it makes so much sense. Right.
Supporting Cast in The Dark World
00:13:08
Speaker
When you look at the Asgardians as this
00:13:11
Speaker
society of interdimensional beings that humans just mistook for gods and started worshiping as gods, as opposed to them being from this fantasy mythological realm. It makes so much more sense that because they are basically an alien race. So it makes sense that you'd have a lot more of these sci-fi trappings there. Right, yeah, absolutely.
00:13:38
Speaker
One of the things I particularly like about this movie is
00:13:45
Speaker
I really liked that the supporting cast got a little bit more to do. We saw a bit more with the Warriors 3 and Sif in this compared to the first movie. And then, of course, in Ragnarok, the Warriors 3 all get killed off right away and Sif doesn't even appear at all. So I was really glad we got to see them have a little bit more to do here. It was also cool to see Zachary Levy as Fandral in this. Oh, yeah.
00:14:10
Speaker
I was watching with my wife and I was pointing him out to her. I'm like, do you recognize that guy? Do you know that actor? She's like, no, who is that? I'm like, that's Shazam. She's like, what? Because she loves Shazam and she didn't even recognize him at all. Yeah, I know. I did basically exactly the same thing with my partner I was watching it with yesterday. I was like, that's Shazam. No, it's not. No, it's Shazam. I swear. I'll prove it. I'll look it up on my phone. What about you? You look so different.
00:14:40
Speaker
Sorry? He just looks so different. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he looks it's the I'm not sure if it's a wig or if it's just, you know, if he just bleached his hair, but that combined with the goatee and it just complete. And he was actually supposed to be in the first one, too. But there was scheduling conflicts, I think, and he had to back out. And I see. And I don't I don't think he was in the third one, though. I don't think he was in Ragnarok. I think they got someone else for that. Yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
But I also love too that opening scene when Thor appears and the hammer just starts flying out of the bifrost. I thought that was a really great opening for him. And I like the kind of like little tweaks they had to his costume here, right? Instead of, you know, it's got like the, kind of like the braid around his hair with the rest of the hair hanging loose. And there's also kind of like a loincloth element to his costume. I thought that design really worked and it helped.
00:15:33
Speaker
evoke the kind of fantasy stuff a little bit more as opposed to the costume he wore in the first movie had in Avengers. Yeah. Yeah, I like the costume in this one a little better, I would say. Though I think still my favorite of all the looks has to be the one he had in Infinity War with the right before he right before he got rid of the eye patch. Like I like the eye patch element to that. Yeah.
00:16:03
Speaker
The eye patch moment was so cool. Oh yeah, I love that part. What are the things that did you wanna mention about, what are the things that kind of jumped out to you on this? I noticed the soundtrack like in a positive way a couple of times. Like I think I noticed the soundtrack doing like a lot of work during Frigga's funeral.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yes, that that really that scene in general was just such a it's one of the best scenes in this movie just the her death scene and just the and I love that she goes out.
00:16:43
Speaker
Basically, she goes out swinging, right? She goes out fighting. Oh, yeah. I thought that was a really good aspect of it. And we get a hint of that in the first movie, too, when the the Frost Giants invade Odin's chambers. And instead of like, you know, cowering from them, she picks up a sword and she's ready to start doing battle. So I like they because that's something that
00:17:06
Speaker
that's something that basically is true of all the women in Asgard. It's like pretty much all of them are fighters in some way. So I like that they showed her that way and that they leaned in more with her relationship with Loki and Thor, which is only briefly touched on in the last film, but it becomes very much a central focus in this movie.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's really clear because you see like the aspects of Loki and the fact that she's like magical and she has the illusion powers and you can see the aspects that like Thor has clearly latched onto and the fact that she's like a kick-ass like badass melee fighter also. When she's fighting with Malekith, it's like, it seems pretty obvious like she's the more skilled fighter of the two.
00:17:56
Speaker
which I think is awesome. And speaking of Malekith, let's talk about Malekith, because I think if there's,
Critiquing Malekith's Villainy
00:18:04
Speaker
The biggest disappointment of this movie is definitely Malekith. I think that the combination of the script not really giving him much to work with, the prosthetics making it really hard for him to emote, and the fact that he spends pretty much almost the entire movie speaking in like this Elvish language, it really makes it hard for us to connect with Malekith. I mean, I think if you go a while and without watching this movie, you'd be forgiven for forgetting
00:18:34
Speaker
that there was a villain named Malakith in this movie at all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Malakith does look really cool, but that's unfortunately one of the only positive things that you have to say about the villain for the Dark World. I can't even imagine if they tried to have Thanos speak in an alien language, and then it was just translated in subtitles.
00:19:03
Speaker
Like how is an actor supposed to work with that? Right, especially a language that's completely made up just for this movie. Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking of when they did that, but it's a disappointment because Eccleston is such a good actor and he's definitely, he could have done such a better job if he was, and Malekith is a very interesting character, right? He's much more,
00:19:30
Speaker
he's got much more personality in the comics too. So taking all that, and I know that, but usually when Marvel gives changes personalities for characters in the movies, they usually take them closer to the route that Malekith is in the comics, right? They give the characters a little bit more humor, a little bit more sarcasm, a little bit more wit. They do the opposite with Malekith in this movie. They take all that stuff away from him. And then they give that stuff to other villains in subsequent movies.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, maybe they were trying to differentiate Malekith from the other villains, but yeah, I just don't think Malekith is, I would say one of the least, the least, you know,
00:20:18
Speaker
one of the villains that works the least well in their movie as far as the movie goes. I think I would probably go so far as to say that he is the worst villain in the entire MCU. I don't think there's, I can't think of one that is more disappointing than he is. Yeah, I think I'd agree with you on that. I also think Hemsworth, I feel like this was a tough time for Thor because I think at this point in the movies,
Thor's Character Development
00:20:48
Speaker
They didn't really know what to do with Thor. And they didn't know how to handle his character because he's still doing like the stoic God of Thunder thing in this. Yeah. I mean, he's got some heart. He's like, I love the scene when he comes into the house and he hangs up the hammer on the wreck. Yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
But in general, he just doesn't have a lot to really work with. It's just, and that kind of thing works really well in the comics, right? You're having like this tough stoic guy, but it's harder to really kind of sell that in the movies, especially when the entire movie is hanging on this character, on him as the main character. It works in the Avengers when he's like the fish out of water thing, but I don't feel like it really works here.
00:21:37
Speaker
just the sort of like stoic like sort of straight edge personality. I think it only really works like in the Avengers when he has teammates to play off of or if there was like a really interesting villain for him to play off of it might also work but like the protagonist Thor is just like stoic and
00:22:00
Speaker
Thor. And his villain is also just like a cardboard cutout, basically, in terms of personality. So that like, neither of them really have a lot that's interesting going on. Well, I think that's personality. I think that's why the most interesting that this movie becomes is in the scenes with Thor and Loki, because Yeah.
00:22:18
Speaker
Cause Loki has that, you know, they've got that, that duo where Thor is playing straight man to Loki and they they're really playing off each other. Like I love that scene when they're leaving the prison and Loki's doing all the transformations and he changed into Chris Evans at one point. He changes Thor into Sif. Like all of that is, is great. And seeing them banter back and forth is one of the best things about this, this part of this, this movie.
00:22:44
Speaker
But when you don't have that in the scenes when you don't have Loki, it's it becomes very disappointing them. Yeah, I would definitely agree that the parts of the dark world that have Loki in them are the parts that shine.
00:23:02
Speaker
So yeah, I mean when he has that banter with Loki and I think that's one of the reasons why they ended up changing it so much when Taika YTD came on for Ragnarok and why they gave Thor much more of a personality because they realized finally that
00:23:19
Speaker
That's fine if you're doing only one or two movies with him or if you're having him just as like a supporting character for the Avengers, like you said. But when you're trying to hang a franchise on this character, that's hard to do. And I think that's why it took the Thor movies so long before they finally kind of caught on with people. Whereas, I mean, Iron Man caught on people right from the start. Cap, I think,
00:23:45
Speaker
reaction for most people was a little bit mixed on the first one. I loved it, but a lot of people had kind of like this mixed reaction, but by the second movie, everybody was all in on cap. And Thor, like they liked Chris Hemsworth in these ensemble pieces, but when it came to his own movies, he just didn't really catch on as hard. Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see that. And I think,
00:24:12
Speaker
Same thing with Natalie Portman is Jane. I know a lot of people hate her performance in these movies. I think she does a fine job. Yeah. To me, it always seemed like more of a script thing than an actor thing. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the similar problem that Chris Hemsworth has, whereas the script's not giving her a whole lot to work with.
00:24:36
Speaker
and it's holding her back a lot. And that's kind of, because in the scenes when they're acting natural together, like I think back to the first Thor movie in that scene where they're sitting out and that line you mentioned earlier when he explains that to her. And just those scenes when they're just sitting and talking to each other, you see that they do have this kind of natural chemistry with each other, but the story kind of forces them into these roles that doesn't really suit either of the actors. Yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's a similar scene in the dark world when Thor is sort of explaining the convergence to her, even the scene when he shows up to Earth again. The scenes where they're acting together, I think they both seem really natural and like they have a lot of chemistry going on, but there's like, I guess it's basically whenever you have Chris Hemsworth and he doesn't have
00:25:37
Speaker
Loki or Jane to act off against is when it really starts to fall flat. I think he does pretty good work with Anthony Hopkins as well. I love that scene in the beginning when he returns to Asgard and Thor says to Odin, he's like, you know, the battle would have gone by faster if you were there. And then Odin has this great line was, you know, am I a piece of toast for why you need, is that why you're buttering me up so much?
Anthony Hopkins as Odin
00:26:06
Speaker
Oh, the butter metaphor. Yes, I love the butter metaphor. Yeah, Anthony Hopkins is great. He's great, yeah. But also too, like he's another one who his character is very much written into this very kind of stoic role, which is why I loved his very brief appearance in Ragnarok so much where he's a little bit more relaxed, he's a little bit more natural. And I think,
00:26:32
Speaker
that movie really did a lot for the character and this world by pulling it away from the kind of Shakespearean trappings of the comics and just letting it kind of be its own thing. And it worked a lot better, I think. Yeah. Cause I'm not sure how, if you're, cause I know you said you had, you'd watch some videos about some of the comics, but have you read any of the Thor comics?
Comic vs Movie Adaptations
00:26:56
Speaker
I haven't actually read any of the Thor comics now. OK, because I I've got to I've always had a trouble. I've always had some trouble connecting with the Thor comics. Not that they're bad, but and so admittedly, I'm probably not the the best person to be commenting on on this movie because and for talking about how it's pulled away from the comics. But for me, that pullback worked a lot. And I think
00:27:22
Speaker
if my late co-host was here, he loved the Thor comic book. So he'd be arguing the other point probably if he was still here. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah, I heard that Thor Ragnarok was based on the Planet Hulk comic book series. That might be a Hulk comic book. So yeah, there's aspects of it. Like they take aspects of the Ragnarok story arc, they take aspects of the Planet Hulk story arc, and then they put some,
00:27:50
Speaker
some original stuff in there as well. So it's like this mixture of all these different, they take some, and Marvel does this a lot with a lot of their movies, they take elements from different comic stories and they kind of fit them into what's happening in the universe. Yeah. But I think one of the coolest things about Ragnarok was just, I think it's Sakaar, the like junk planet where, you know, Hulk becomes a gladiator. Yeah.
00:28:18
Speaker
Part of the reason that's fun to watch is just because it's such a cool, interesting location. There hadn't been anything like that in the MCU movies up until then. Well, I think that's another good point. I mean, the whole dark world here, it's literally what it sounds like. It's a dark world, and that's all there is to it. Yeah.
00:28:39
Speaker
Uh, like at first glance, uh, I think it's a Svartelheim with like the black sand and the clouds are sort of like kind of green. It's like, it's, it's cool visually, but it is kind of.
00:28:57
Speaker
drab and gloomy. It's not exactly like a fun location visually. Yeah, I agree. There's nothing there. There's no sense that the world is lived in at all. And I think that's a problem with these movies in general. I mean, Sakhar felt really kind of lived in. Asgard, especially in the first movie, I think it felt a little bit artificial. Here it feels a little bit more lived in, but it's
00:29:25
Speaker
but Spardalheim especially, it just seems like it's, you're wondering why anyone would actually live there because there's nothing there. We get no sense of what the elves are doing in between before they make this invasion and all that. So yeah, that part of it was really kind of disappointing. Yeah, just the elves in general.
00:29:49
Speaker
Apart from looking cool, they don't really have a clear motivation. They just like want to make the world or the universe dark again. And like Malekith is super one-dimensional. Yeah. The villain are not like understandable or relatable at all.
00:30:09
Speaker
in a way that Thanos perfectly exemplifies how to do really well. It's not done in this movie. If you put a gun to my head, I could not explain to you why Malekith is doing what he's doing. I just say, pull the trigger, I can't do it.
00:30:26
Speaker
He just likes it dark? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I don't know. Tom Hiddleston, though. I mean, in both the last movie and in this one, like he just walks away. He steals every single scene he's in and like a thief.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But what I love here is that we do get some more depth to his character, because in in the previous movies as fun as he is to watch. He is a little bit one dimensional in them. He's not quite as developed as he ends up becoming later on. Right. We start to see some more of that depth like the
00:31:01
Speaker
his feelings for Frigga, his loss when she dies and all that. And again, Renee Russo, she has a really understated but a really good role in this movie and also in Endgame, which kind of gave people, made people go back and take another look at this movie.
00:31:18
Speaker
And where that scene when she's in the prison with Loki and and she mentioned, you know, your father and he screamed, you know, he's not my father. And then and then she just asked him, you know, very calmly, does that mean I'm not your mother? And just like his entire demeanor changes when she says that. And he realized the implications of saying that. And I just I love how they're they're playing with that depth at how
00:31:42
Speaker
Because I think if your only image of Loki is from the first two movies, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was kind of, he's always hated his family and he's always kind of resented them. Whereas this movie really shows that, no, it's a little bit more nuanced than that. Yeah, yes. Some of my favorite scenes are the ones with Loki in prison because
00:32:10
Speaker
Like I, especially like when, when Thor comes to visit him later and he has this illusion up, like you could, you could say emotionally to this illusion up that he's just like calm and collected. And when Thor calls him out on it, he lets the illusion down and he's just a mess physically and emotionally a mess. I love that too. That was, um,
00:32:30
Speaker
That was such a great moment too. And it really kind of shows just how much Frigga's death is affecting him. And when he finds out too, like just that, you know, that one gesture and it just throws all the furniture in the cell aside. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm hoping, cause now we've got a version of Loki running around still. So I'm hoping we get to see more of this. Cause I really liked where they were going with him in Ragnarok. Yeah.
Thor and Loki's Dynamic
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah. Loki continues to be great in Ragnarok as well. Yeah. Well, I mean, he elevates it to a whole new level in Ragnarok because now the relationship with Thor becomes much more developed there, right? Where there's this
00:33:16
Speaker
Thor has much more personality to begin with first. That's one of the big reasons too. But also there's more of an understanding on Thor's part about who Loki is and what he's capable of, but still this desire to have his brother back. And I really liked that aspect of it. And it made me, because in the comics, Loki is, I don't think Loki is as well developed in the comics as he is in these movies. And Tom Hiddleston brings a lot to the role, I think.
00:33:47
Speaker
I can't exactly speak to how he's in the comics. He's not really anything that special like he's never impressed me at all in the comics, which is why I liked him so much in these movies. Two, I love that the scenes when he when they're doing the breakout and they're escaping Asgard and you've got
00:34:07
Speaker
you know, Sif stops him first and she says, if you betray him, I'll kill you. And then, and then Bullstacks says the same thing. He starts, he's like, if you betray him, and then, and then Vloki's like, what, you'll kill me? Apparently there's going to be a lot. Yeah, that part was really funny. There are a lot of parts just throughout this movie that are, you know, they're supposed to be funny and they land. There's, there's a lot of them that land. I think some of the ones that don't land is, um,
00:34:35
Speaker
some of the stuff on earth. I think they lean too heavily into Eric Selvig as comedy relief in this movie. Yeah, I would agree that those parts didn't really work as well for me. It's really kind of incongruous with the movies before and after this, because in Avengers, I know the whole reason is because he's been controlled by Loki, but
00:35:01
Speaker
Nobody else has that kind of reaction to Loki's control. And by the end of it, he seems to be a lot more together than he, and then by, and then in this movie, he's going crazy, you know, running around Stonehenge naked. And then in, but then in Age of Ultron, it's like all of that is gone because he's working at a university. He's, you know, completely got it all together now. And then that's it. We don't see him again after that, I don't think.
00:35:30
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. That, that, that does seem odd. Maybe they were like trying to, to show how Loki mind controlling him had like an effect on him, but it feels weird to just to like, to like show the effects of that, but basically just play it for laughs. Yeah.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's where I felt too. And also it's just, it's so incongruous because you look at Hawkeye too and Age of Ultron, he's got none of that same kind of psychological hang up that Selvig has in this movie. I mean, but yeah, the whole playing it all for laughs, even though we do get some good moments like the, when he's explaining the convergence in the psychiatric hospital and then you've got Stan Lee asking for his shoe back.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think sort of Stanley's made that scene for me. Yeah, definitely. What did you think of Darcy in this movie? Because she seems to have a little bit, it's a little bit expanded from the first movie. Yeah, I mean, I didn't mind that they focused on Darcy more in this movie. You know, Kat Dennings definitely got some laughs out of me on this watch of Thor.
00:36:53
Speaker
It is perhaps a bit like irrelevant to the rest of the plot. Like it doesn't exactly fit in. Yeah, I have sort of mixed feelings about it, I would say. I know what you're saying. I feel the same way. I feel like she got, she had so much praise for her role in the first movie that
00:37:21
Speaker
that the thought of the producers was, okay, well, everybody loved Kat in the first movie. So we have to give them more Kat in this movie, even if the story doesn't really call for it. And as good as, as, as great as Kat Dennings is, I feel like she, she's used too much. I think they push her a little bit too much and push that the, the humor angle a little bit too, too far. Whereas in,
00:37:46
Speaker
in the first movie, less was definitely more. Like she had these little moments, she popped in here and here, but by the end, it, like I remember the scene when, you know, we have the convergence thing and all these things flying through portals, and then she sees Mio and Aaron, she goes, Mio, Mio, right? At that point, I'm just like, okay, now we're, now we're crossing the line a little bit here. Yeah. The final battle of this movie with Malekith in Greenwich is a bit,
00:38:18
Speaker
It's a bit lacking. There's like, yeah, they're still having like trying to put in Kat Dennings comedy bits, even at the final battle. And you have Malekith with the unmoving face and the language that you don't speak. Yeah.
00:38:43
Speaker
I mean, the part where Thor and Malekith are flying through the portals is pretty cool. But just in general, I think the final battle of this movie is not great. No, no, it feels like
00:38:58
Speaker
I feel like, and this really kind of continued the trend that, and it probably established a trend that really Avengers started with the whole sky portal thing that happened. And then you had like a lot of superhero movies were doing that with these big ending scenes that involved portals of some kind. And yeah, it's just, and I think this has been a problem I think with, or not so much a problem, more of a weakness.
00:39:23
Speaker
Marvel movies tend, as much as I love them, like don't, I'm not bashing them by any means here, but I do think that they're, the final battles do lack kind of the intensity and energy that's been set up. Usually in the mid battles, like the mid battles tend to be very, very well done. And then, and the final battles tend to be a pale reflection of that. Cause they're trying to make it more,
00:39:48
Speaker
epic and, but the stakes aren't really raised in comparison to it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I would say, uh, this movie fits with that pattern as well. Cause I, I feel like the battle where, um, Thor and Loki have gone to Svartlheim. The battle that they have the Dark Elves there is, I would say a better scene than the battle in Greenwich.
00:40:13
Speaker
Oh yeah, but also the whole, everything leading up to that, like the whole escape from Asgard, like all of that is handled very well. And after that, when they go back to Earth, it just seems like the movie slows down a lot. Yeah. And I feel like maybe that's also too, is there's,
00:40:31
Speaker
I sense a hesitancy with this movie, just like I sensed the first movie, because I think that they're worried that if they did too much with Asgard and not enough on Earth, that the audience would feel disconnected from the movie. And I think that hesitancy, that fear really kind of holds it back, because even though we do get a lot more Asgard in this movie, you've got these scenes with Earth, and it feels like the whole Earth storyline
Earth Scenes Criticism
00:40:55
Speaker
is just kind of like shoehorned in so that they could have more stuff on Earth.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I would say that generally making creative decisions based on fear is a bad idea. I'd agree. Yeah. I definitely agree. I mean, I understand their reasoning for it, but, and I understand they want to have an excuse to bring back Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings and Natalie Portman, but yeah, it just feels so unnecessary because the best parts of this movie are when they're on Asgard.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah. Or just anywhere else besides Earth. Yeah, yeah. Well, except for Spardelheim, arguably. But that's more because of the setting as opposed to the story elements. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. Let's see. Anything else I really wanted to mention about this? Anything else that really kind of jumped out at you? There's not a whole lot to this movie. It's, I think, because it's very light on story. So it's,
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah. Let's see. Well, I did like one thing I did like that I forgot to mention was we get a little bit more of Heimdall and Thor's relationship here. Oh, yeah. Because I remember in.
00:42:19
Speaker
When I saw Infinity War, and he mentions that Rocket's asking him about like all the people in his life have died. And Rocket asks him, do you have a best friend? And Thor says that he's dead. And we know that he's supposed to be referring to Heimdall on that. And I thought it was a little bit weird at the time watching him. Like, why would Heimdall be his best friend? But then you go back and you watch this movie and you really kind of see the seeds for that. Yeah.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely true. If you watched the first Thor movie and you were a bit put off by Thor, so maybe you didn't watch the Dark World and you kind of gathered what happened through sort of cultural osmosis, and then you watched Thor Ragnarok and then Infinity War, yeah, I would understand why you might hear that line and go,
00:43:14
Speaker
I didn't really see them as best friends necessarily. And there is some setup for that in this movie. Yeah, that scene when they're sitting down at the table and Heimdall takes off his helmet and they're talking about it, they're having that conversation. Again, some of the best scenes in this movie are just these characters sitting and talking with each other. Yeah.
00:43:49
Speaker
And I am disappointed that we didn't get to see a little bit, I would have hoped that we got more of the Warriors 3 in these movies. We get a good amount of Sif and we also see her in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which developed her role even more. But they're such a big part of the comics that I wish we had seen maybe less of Darcy and less of her intern or whatever, and more of the Warriors 3, I think would have been a lot better.
00:44:10
Speaker
That's true, yeah.
00:44:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that would have made a better movie, perhaps. There's a there's a scene on Vanneheim. That's a good scene. It's not a very long scene. And that's the worst on that scene. And then there again in like there's like the the heist planning around the table cut in with them escaping from Asgard. And they're in that
00:44:47
Speaker
But yeah, it's basically two scenes that they're in, in this movie. They, you know, they maybe have like 10 or 15 minutes of screen time between them. And the Vannaheim scene disappointed me so much because, I mean, they were great in that scene, but what disappointed me so much at the end is when Hogan stays behind in Vannaheim because, you know,
00:45:08
Speaker
Tadunobu Asano, he's like one of my favorite Japanese actors. He's amazing. And he's just, he gets such a short shrift in these movies. And I wish we could have seen, and also, you know, we got Zachary Levy taking over as Fandral in here. We got Ray Stevenson as Volstagg. And it would have been so great to see the three of them really kind of interact a little bit more. Yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah, there is disappointingly little of that in this movie. I think Darcy and Selvig might have more screen time than the Warriors 3. Oh, I think even Darcy's intern, Ian, I think he gets more screen time than they do. Ian, the intern's intern is not a character in the comic books, is he? No, definitely not. I would be surprised.
00:46:04
Speaker
No, Darcy's not either. Selvig got introduced in the comics after the movies, but even still he wasn't very much, he appeared more in the Captain America comics actually than the four comics or anything else. Yeah. Yeah, so the only reason I could think that that would be is
00:46:27
Speaker
the studio wanting more earth time to avoid that fear of alienating the audience. Yeah, definitely. Apparently Kenneth Brana, he backed out of this and
00:46:47
Speaker
then after he backed out of directing this, and then they brought in Alan Taylor. Well, they went through a few different directors before they finally settled on Alan Taylor. Yeah, there's an interesting story with the direction of this film. Right, so you can take that if, what do you remember about that aspect of it? So Kenneth Branagh, he directed the first Thor movie, and I think they had announced a second Thor movie.
00:47:14
Speaker
before he sort of resigned. He said he was interested in doing other things. I think the first director that they had after Kenneth, it's the woman who directed Wonder Woman. I remember her name. Patty Jenkins, yeah. And I did do a little bit of digging this past week. And as far as I know,
00:47:44
Speaker
I think she had like a different vision for Thor the Dark World that was a little bit more like a dramatic romance tale of Thor and Jane Foster. And I think Natalie Portman was like really on board with that.
00:48:07
Speaker
Oh yeah, she was, in fact, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think that she actually did some campaigning at Marvel to get Jenkins hired because, you know, people, it's easy to forget now when you see the success of Wonder Woman, but back then, Jenkins biggest movie was Monster. She didn't have like any sort of big blockbuster clout at that point. Yeah. But apparently the studio was not on board with that as much as Natalie Portman was.
00:48:37
Speaker
I think what happened is the studio was just like, they were like, here's the final script. This is what we're doing. And it was like, not what Patty Jenkins was envisioning directing. It's like not what she was interested in doing. So I think at that point she stepped down as well.
00:48:56
Speaker
Right. Well, here's what Wikipedia says about what Jenkins' vision was. And it says that she had wanted to create a film based on the premise of Romeo and Juliet, where Jane was stuck on Earth and Thor was forbidden to come save her. And after Thor eventually does travel to Earth, he and Jane would have discovered that Malekith was hiding the
00:49:16
Speaker
the dark energy inside of Earth because he knows Odin doesn't care about the Earth. And so he's using Odin's disinterest to trick him, which just on the surface, just that alone sounds like a much better story than what we got.
00:49:29
Speaker
Definitely interesting and unique in a way that Thor the Dark World is not. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just Thor the Dark World is just a very, if you didn't have these characters in, like this could be any sort of generic sci-fi film, right? Alien comes, you know, is, you know, comes to the planet seeking this, you know, powerful weapon to rule. And that's it. That's basically the plot of it.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah, I almost feel like people would be more accepting of it if it was a generic action movie because I think a lot of what like lessens the experience for people is expectations and context of the rest of the MCU.
00:50:12
Speaker
I think so too because after you had such a big showing of Thor and Loki and just allowing Hemsworth and Hiddleston to really show off in that film and just like how well received and universally beloved that film was and then to go from that and then this is Thor's next appearance and it's very generic. It doesn't feel like it adds anything to his character because
00:50:34
Speaker
Loki and Thor are more or less, they end this movie pretty much the same place they started. The only real difference is Loki's now, is Loki's free and masquerading as Odin. But there's no, we get some character growth, we get the hints of some character growth for Loki, but it seems to be undermined by the ending. Yeah.
Production Challenges
00:50:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's a little bit of like setup and character growth, but like not a movie's worth. Right. Between the ending of Avengers and, uh, I guess age of Ultron, but I don't think Loki's in that. And I think a big part of the change from Patty Jenkins has to do because, um,
00:51:21
Speaker
During this time period, Marvel was Marvel Studios was still under the control of Marvel Entertainment and because the owner of Marvel before Disney bought them out was a guy named Ike Perlmutter and he's, you know,
00:51:37
Speaker
basically a scumbag and misogynist racist all that kind of shit and he had and he had agreed to when he agreed to the disney buyout it was the condition one of the conditions was that he would not be fired he was basically guaranteed his position for life
00:51:53
Speaker
So he had a lot of control over the Marvel movies early on. And so a lot of the decisions made, like the reason why we never got a Black Widow solo film until years later was because of Pearl Mutter, because he felt that nobody wants to see a female superhero movie. I think also a big reason why we ended up, we also didn't get Captain Marvel in Age of Ultron, because she was originally supposed to debut much earlier. But again, I think it was Pearl Mutter, you know, axing that.
00:52:23
Speaker
Also, the whole thing about the inhumans trying to push the inhumans as the new X-Men, that was all Perlmutter's thing, because he thought, well, they're both born with power, so they're basically the same thing. And I think also he was the one, because you look at Patty Jenkins' approach, it's much more focused on the romance aspect of it. And Perlmutter probably felt like, well,
00:52:45
Speaker
Our target audience is guys. Guys don't want to see a movie about romance. They want to see a movie about action. So you could see why that very much influenced it here. Fortunately, eventually, because Kevin Feige threatened to quit Marvel because he was so fed up of dealing with Perlmutter that Disney eventually took Marvel Studios and made it a separate division under the Disney umbrella so that he would never have to deal with Ike Perlmutter again.
00:53:12
Speaker
Nice. And that's why after a certain point, you'd see the movies, they definitely improve a lot. And it's a big part of, that's a big part of it. Yeah, it's somewhere between Age of Ultron and Thor Ragnarok. Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly when the shift happened. And as soon as that happens, right, you get like Black Panther green lit, you get Shang-Chi, you get Captain Marvel, all this stuff starts coming out as soon as they get rid of him. Yeah.
00:53:38
Speaker
There is a pretty clear shift right in there. Yeah. But apparently, too, Alan Taylor had a lot of problems working on this movie is directing it because, yeah, he he said that it was
00:54:00
Speaker
Oh, here it is. He said that he felt Marvel made a whole lot of changes during post-production, and he called working on the Dark World a particularly wrenching experience. In fact, it was so bad that he actually almost quit directing altogether. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's a bad experience. And yeah.
00:54:24
Speaker
He said that he would like to do like his own release, like a director's cut and show like his original vision for this movie. But I don't think there's a whole lot of demand for that. Yeah. I mean, personally, I would be extremely interested in seeing that. Oh, same here. I definitely feel with sort of the the larger audience of
00:54:50
Speaker
the MCU movies, not a lot of interest in Thor the Dark World. And I think something you mentioned too about a lot of people potentially maybe have skipped this film because they didn't really connect to the first one. And I think in a lot of ways, this is very similar to Iron Man 3 in a lot of ways in that it is very disconnected from the overall
00:55:16
Speaker
phase two storyline that was happening at that time. Um, cause even though you do have some elements that pop up like the ether, it's, it's not even really clear that it's an infinity stone so much in this movie. And you would have been forgiven like you and nothing, you don't need to see anything in this movie to really understand when it pops up again in infinity war. Yeah. The amount of like,
00:55:43
Speaker
recap that they do in Infinity War is really all the setup that the Dark World did in the first place. Right. But then we get to Endgame and Endgame kind of surprised a lot of people because it had this, it really kind of brought back the Dark World in a way that I don't think anybody was really expecting it to.
Endgame's Revival of The Dark World
00:56:04
Speaker
Yeah, there was like,
00:56:07
Speaker
you know, they jump into the past and there's like three or four locations. And one of them is basically just Thor, the dark world. It's entirety because of the ether being there. Yeah. So what did you think of that? The referencing and kind of bringing back the dark world and kind of people starting to take another look at that movie after seeing Endgame. I mean, I was one of the people
00:56:35
Speaker
who saw Endgame in the theaters and hadn't really seen or thought about the dark world since that came out, which was like, I don't know, almost 10 years apart, I wanna say, is pretty close. Just about, yeah. And yeah, Frigga is really comes back in an interesting way in Endgame.
00:57:00
Speaker
She's, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think, uh, I mean, certainly when I watched the dark world for the first time, I wasn't really thinking about Frigga as being a wise enough person just to spot a time traveler just by the look of them. But it's, uh, it's also really telling.
00:57:23
Speaker
how emotional a conversation Frigga and Thor have where Frigga can just immediately tell like, oh Thor, you're not doing so well, bud. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
00:57:38
Speaker
And that's just about all I had to say about that, actually. Yeah, I love that scene in Endgame. And I had seen Dark World a few times. So I'd gone back to it a few times over the years. And I had a much more, like I said at the beginning, I had a much more positive reaction to that movie than a lot of people when I first saw it. So going back and seeing that movie and seeing, well, when we got to Endgame and we see Frigga pop up,
00:58:08
Speaker
I mean, it was, I was not expecting her to pop up and I wasn't, even as someone who liked the dark, more or less like the dark world, I was not expecting her to have such a big presence like that. And yeah, I mean, that scene that she has with Thor, the conversation that she has with him, the insight she shows, because
00:58:33
Speaker
in most tellings like in the comics or it would be Odin who fills that role but here it's Frigga and I think that was such an excellent choice.
00:58:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a choice that is as unexpected as it is genius, I would say. Like it works so well. Also because she undermines the whole idea of the hero's quest, too. I love that where he's like he's like where he's falling apart because he's like, I'm supposed to be the hero. I'm supposed to save the world and I can't and I didn't do it. And she's like, well, why do you have to be that? And just, you know, completely throwing that and just completely undermining that whole
00:59:14
Speaker
big arc and which now it seems based on the trailers, we're gonna get a lot of exploration of in Love and Thunder. Yeah, she basically set up Thor Love and Thunder, right? Exactly, yeah. Right there at Endgame. That is pretty cool. Yeah, and I'm glad that people are taking another look at this movie because even though it's got flaws, even though it's got a pretty crappy villain and there's a lot of,
00:59:42
Speaker
There's a lot of navel gazing, I guess I'd say. But there's still good moments in it. I think there's a lot of good character moments that I think really kind of inform Thor going forward.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's especially worth a rewatch if you want, if you are focused on Thor's character. And if you now can watch all the Thor movies, like in preparation for Thor love and thunder, if you wanted to say go back and watch Thor, the dark world, you know, the Avengers and age of all just all the Thor movies. You know, there, there are definitely some great moments from the dark world for
01:00:26
Speaker
Thor's like infinity saga wide character arc. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I don't know, is there anything else that you wanted to mention? I think I've said pretty much everything I have to say about the dark world. Yeah, that'd be what I have to say about it. So one last thing, what did you think of the setup at the end with Loki
01:00:55
Speaker
taking over Odin's place. I think it's an interesting play for power. So I guess it has the suggestion that Loki
01:01:23
Speaker
sort of had his sights on the same goal sort of throughout the movie. And like if he had made a different choice at the end of the dark world, it could have been an opportunity to show character growth. So I think in that aspect, in some ways you could say a missed opportunity.
01:01:56
Speaker
Although the scene in Thor Ragnarok where he's pretended to be Odin is a very fun scene. That's like some of the best comedy work Anthony Hopkins has ever done. Yeah. Yeah. I think I saw, I read somewhere that like somebody's head cannon for that was like, they knew it was Loki and they were like, yeah, I'm when he hasn't killed anybody. So we just kind of let him have it, you know?
01:02:26
Speaker
Like when I saw this movie the first time, I remember being excited when we see Loki at the end, but looking back on it now, it does feel like a choice that really kind of undermines the growth that he has in this movie. And I'm not saying that I think he should have died at the end, because then we wouldn't have gotten him in Ragnarok, but I do feel that it does him a disservice. And I think,
01:02:57
Speaker
And had Taiko Waititi like directed both these movies, this one and Ragnarok, I think he would have definitely set up a different ending for Loki because when he has him in Ragnarok, he seems to be starting from the point and kind of like what you were saying, he's not really doing anything as Loki, he's just kind of like chilling in Asgard and eating grapes in his bathrobe and watching plays of himself. Yeah, because
01:03:26
Speaker
when you have Loki as a character where his goal is, I want to rule. And by the end of Thor II, he's basically accomplished that goal. What that means for Loki is that when you start down looking at doing Thor Ragnarok, it's like, well, Loki doesn't have anywhere to go at the moment. He's very stagnant. Like he needs something new to do to have,
01:03:54
Speaker
another arc for this movie or going forward. Right. So it does feel like Taika was just kind of saddled with that. And he's like, all right, let's see how we can make this work the best way we can. And also how do you explain why Loki hasn't done anything with this power he's had over the past several years? Because it's been like, you know, by the time we get to Ragnarok, it's been like, what, four or five years since the dark world? And all that time he's just been doing nothing with all this power he has.
01:04:23
Speaker
And I think, yeah, it was a missed opportunity to do something better with Loki's character in this movie, or even to do something with him having the throne in the first place. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Because if you had a really clear and interesting idea of something that springboards off of Loki having the throne, that'd be one thing. Right. But that wasn't the case. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
01:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, and there was something else I wanted to mention about that, but it's probably not important anyway. But yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say about the dark world. Any final thoughts about it? One thing I just thought of is, what did you think about the after credit scene?
01:05:14
Speaker
Oh, so we get, well, we get two. We get the mid-credit scene with the collector, which was kind of weird because I remember thinking at the time that this is gonna lead into Guardians, which hadn't come out at that point. Not real, I mean, it was just the fact that the collector exists. That was pretty much it. But there's no mention of the ether or the reality gem in Guardians of the Galaxy. That's true.
01:05:42
Speaker
So, and it doesn't pop up again until Infinity War. So I thought that was- Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of, and also they seem to be setting up the collector a little bit differently at the end because he says one down, five to go, and then nothing's ever done with that. Yeah, that's true. That could be taken as one piece of evidence that, you know, back in, I believe 2013 was when the Dark World came out.
01:06:13
Speaker
you know, they didn't quite have everything planned going forward as much as retroactively they might like you to think that they did. Oh yeah, absolutely. There's, and Marvel's, this is how Marvel operates, right? They have kind of a very loose plan for where they're going, but they change their minds a lot and they'll alter that plan depending on how things turn out, how things shake out in different ways, so. Yeah.
01:06:41
Speaker
Like there's even, you can even see that in the post-credits scene in Avengers when Thanos appears and the other says to him, you know, to challenge them is to court death, which is Thanos' whole thing in the comics is he's in love with the personification of death. So that's why he smiles at the end. But at that point, there was no Infinity War saga
01:07:06
Speaker
planned right like Josh Whedon just put in Thanos because he liked the character and he figured this is a cool way to introduce him and then after everybody went nuts from that for that movie then Marvel kind of retroactively decided to work in the infinity stones and all this because the tesseract in the comics was basically the cosmic cube and then they kind of changed it into the space gem here
01:07:29
Speaker
Yeah. So they, they'd done a lot of, they had done a lot of stuff like reworking things. And I think this is the first time when we get actual mention, actual hints of the infinity stones as a concept, because when Odin's explaining about the ether, you see those other ones and he mentions how the other ones appear as stones. Yeah. So in, in 2013 or in 2012 or, you know, it's, it sounds like they might've had like the
01:08:00
Speaker
the big like macro level idea that like the infinity saga was gonna be. But a lot of details hadn't been put into place yet. Absolutely, yeah. We also get one other post credit scene with Thor returning to London and just like him and Jane embracing. And then we see one of the,
01:08:27
Speaker
the creatures from one of the frost giant creatures still on a rampage. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:37
Speaker
It's a, I mean, I got a chuckle when I saw the Jotunheim beast rampaging around. It doesn't really set anything up. No, no. I think that's kind of indicative of what was happening at Marvel at the time because they didn't quite know where they were going. So a lot of the post credit scenes after Avengers and probably
01:09:08
Speaker
probably up until Ant-Man, really. It's just a lot of wheel spinning, right? Because they don't really do a lot. They don't really set anything up. Like the Iron Man 3 post-credits scene was him telling the story to Bruce and Bruce falling asleep. This one is that scene with Thor and Jane. In Age of Ultron, we get Thanos putting on the gauntlet saying, I'll do it myself. And then he doesn't do anything for several years. Yeah.
01:09:36
Speaker
I will do it myself eventually. Just don't rush me. All right. But yeah, I think overall, if you haven't seen this movie since it first came out, I think it's worth another look. It's definitely not a perfect movie. There's tons of flaws in it, which we talked about. But I think there's good stuff in there. There's some good character moments. There's some really good visuals. And those alone are worth a watch.
01:10:06
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like, it's not a bad movie. I would say like, if you sit down and watch it, you'll have a good time watching this movie. Right. It's just not one of the, it's not among the better 50% of movies in the MCU. Yeah, definitely. This would definitely be on the lower rung of the rankings for me, probably toward, probably towards the bottom. And that's, that doesn't mean I, I hate it. Just means I like the other ones a lot more. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
01:10:35
Speaker
Okay, well, thanks so much for coming on. Why don't you tell people where they can find your podcast? So yeah, my podcast, Vitamin Dice, it's...
01:10:47
Speaker
most places that you can find podcasts. My analytics show that most people find us on Spotify. So if you have Spotify, just V-Y-T-A-M-I-N-D-I-C-E. Yeah, me and a group of friends, a group of friends and I, as a grammar would indicate, we get to get together, play some D&D recently.
01:11:16
Speaker
We have plans to play some other RPGs as well. OK, very cool. And we'll have a link to that in the show notes, too. So people will be able to go double check there and just click the link for that. But yeah, thanks so much for coming on. It was a good discussion about the dark world. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
01:11:37
Speaker
Okay, and that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website. We are SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And if you sign up for our Patreon page, you get each of these episodes a week in advance. And we also are now publishing the Superhero Cinephiles book club where we're covering, doing reviews of comic books and graphic novels. So check that out and subscribe at any level and you'll get access to that.
01:12:06
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
01:12:32
Speaker
If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show. Please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. And as always,
01:13:02
Speaker
Good night. Good evening. God bless.