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144 Plays5 years ago
We go back to the MCU to discuss the debut of Chris Hemsworth as Thor! Being the resident Thor expert, Derrick brings a wealth of information about one of his favorite comic characters and we discuss why this is an underrated film with some awesome performances.
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Transcript
Thor's Fall and Redemption
00:00:25
Speaker
You realize what you've done, what you've started? I was protecting my home! You cannot eat or protect your friends! How can you help to protect the kingdom? Come to the healing room! No! There won't be a kingdom to protect if you're afraid to act. The Yotans must learn to fear me, just as they once feared you. That's pride and vanity talking, not leadership. You've forgotten everything I taught you.
00:00:47
Speaker
but a warrior's patience. While you wait and be patient, the nine realms laugh at us. The old ways are done. You'd stand giving speeches while Asgard falls. You are a vain, greedy, cool boy. And you are an old man and a fool. Yes, I was a fool to think you were ready.
00:01:16
Speaker
Father. Hey!
Podcast Introduction and Hosts' Banter
00:01:20
Speaker
Thor, Odin son, you have betrayed the express command of your king. Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war. You are
00:01:45
Speaker
Unworthy of his rums! Unworthy of your title! You're unworthy! Of the loved ones you have betrayed. I now take from you your power! The name of my father!
00:02:28
Speaker
Whoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, he shall possess the power of Thor. Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. As always, I am half of your host, Barry Constantine. And as always, I am the other half, Derek Ferguson, coming at you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I'm here from a gloomy, rainy Kagoshima, Japan right now. Oh, is rain in there? Oh, yeah. It's like raining nonstop lately. We had more flood warnings like last week or something. Oh, wow. Well, we're cooking. Oh, we get some of that too. The rain has been cooling us off, but when it's not raining, then it's scorching.
00:03:20
Speaker
Mm, yeah. This is like the third day in a row where you've had 90 degree weather. And occasionally, you know, we'll get like a thunderstorm in the afternoon, but it's the kind of thunderstorm that doesn't do anything except makes it more humid.
00:03:38
Speaker
Right. Well, uh, next month we have, um, uh, a speech presentations for our students at one of my schools. And normally these summer presentations, we do it in an outdoor setting, like in the, but it's terrible cause it's always like scorching and it's just like the humidity is ridiculous here in August. So, but this year they finally wised up and they're like, all right, we're going to put it inside a venue where there's actual air conditioning. I'm like, Oh, thank God. No. Okay. Cool. Yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, so that'll be good. I'm looking, glad that they finally got up to speed with that. Anyway, anything else going on lately?
00:04:16
Speaker
Nothing much, I'm gonna go see my doctor tomorrow because I don't know. I did one of these things, I think I slept wrong or whatever, or I pinched a nerve or something because it's like I've had a pain in my neck for the last three or four days and I don't know if I slept wrong or what. I don't know what it is, but my wife was saying, well, you need to go see a doctor if it hasn't gone away after a couple of days. Yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, I hate when that happens. That happens to me like once a year or so. Yeah, right. And that's why I figured what it was. I said, well, I must have just slept wrong. But it's one of these things that when I turn my, you know, like I can't turn my head too far to the left or the right. Right. Because then I get, you know, because then I get a pain in my neck, of course. Yeah. So you got to get him to, you know, whack it back into place.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, probably that's all it is. He's probably going to... Or it might be what... Because it happened to me a few years ago and he gave me... It was some kind of pills to reduce the inflammation. Because he said what I probably did was that I probably pinched a nerve or something like that. And it's some kind of pills that they give you to reduce the inflammation if you have an aggravated nerve in your neck or something like that.
00:05:28
Speaker
I took that for a couple of days and I was all right. So that's good. That's
Supergirl's Lex Luthor and Netflix Action Films
00:05:32
Speaker
good. We'll see. Yeah, but you know, I'm okay. You know, I'm just I just do that in since you asked. So yeah, I I've been catching up on some Netflix stuff. So I finished last season of The Flash and just the other day I wrapped up last season of Supergirl.
00:05:49
Speaker
Um, so it was good to finally get back to those and you know what? Uh, we talked about john crier as lex luther before in our crisis episode And we were both kind of saying that we didn't really see the appeal Of that actor like he he's okay, but he's nothing special But in um in this season of supergirl like in the post crisis stuff. He plays a really massive role And he gets much better. He's really starting to grow into the role. I think they're finding more stuff to do with it
00:06:15
Speaker
Oh, okay, cool. I, you know what, I keep saying that I have to sit down and make a schedule and I have to get caught up on all of my stuff because I'm, because as it is now, like I said, you know, as we both said, there's just too much stuff. Yeah.
00:06:33
Speaker
on this thing to catch up on. I watched, what did we watch last night? We watched The Old Guard. Oh, we saw that the other night too. Greg Rucka, that's a Greg Rucka, based on a Greg Rucka book, and he was able to write the screenplay as well. Yeah, yeah, we watched that, you know, because I said, you know, everybody was talking about it on Facebook. And of course, people would ask me, oh, have you seen it yet? I haven't seen it yet. I was too busy watching other things.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, so I watched it, you know, it was okay. I liked it. Yeah, I liked it. I didn't think it was as amazing as everybody was saying it was, but I kind of got my hopes up. Yeah. But I enjoyed it. And you know, I always loved Rucka's stuff. So, you know, it's good seeing it. Because like the last thing of his that was adapted was Whiteout, which
00:07:20
Speaker
wasn't really that- Oh, I love that movie. Yeah, I love that movie. It was okay, but it's like, he had like no involvement with it. It was just kind of like they bought it and they just, they made the movie and there was like no press or anything behind it. So, but this one, he was like deeply involved, like Charlize Theron and the director, they were like very strong advocates for him. And like, they asked him lots of questions during the, in the, in the run-up to filming and during the filming and all this kind of stuff. So, so that was good that they, they worked all this stuff into it.
00:07:49
Speaker
It's one of these movies that I think, and I think that this other one that I saw a trailer for today with Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Project Power. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's another one that's gonna be a big thing. But I think that
Critique of Extraction and Audience Reactions
00:08:07
Speaker
because people can't go to the movie theaters and see there's some of their summer action blockbuster movies,
00:08:14
Speaker
I think that the ones that we're seeing on Netflix, that's why they're getting a good deal of attention. I can't help but feel that if the theaters were open and people could go to the movie theaters and see movies, I don't know if the old guard would be getting all the attention that it has been getting. I mean, I'm not sure. Maybe that's just me being cynical.
00:08:34
Speaker
I think it might because just because of you know it is a it's a pretty good movie it's they got they got um they got a pretty they got a good cast in it and everything so I think it would be getting the same amount of attention um but like some of the others you're right I don't think they would like um the the Hemsworth one uh extraction which everybody loved and then you got the fight with the internet about it
00:08:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You know what? I'm sorry to me. It was like watching a video game. It was like watching cutscenes from a video game. I wasn't digging it the way everybody else was. Everybody just went absolutely gaga with that movie. And I looked at it and I said,
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Well, whatever. Now that was one of those ones that where I enjoyed it, but like it, I enjoyed it was, it was basically like a B movie, B action movie. It wasn't anything. It was not like what you'd come to expect from Hemsworth. You know what that would have been? That was like, okay. And see,
00:09:33
Speaker
I hate to sound like the old guy all the time, but the fact is that I am an old guy. I've seen a lot of movies. This is something that Cannon was making back in the 1980s. Right. Exactly. You know, yeah. I mean, back in the 1980s, this would have been, you know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. This would have been a Chuck Norris movie, you know, back in the 80s. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, story-wise, it's not, you know, it wasn't anything I haven't seen before. The only thing that made it stand out was the action sequences. Right. Yeah. Which really, that's, which is really, to me, what the movie was all about, the fights and the stunts. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, again, I don't have a problem with, but I didn't go crazy over it like a lot of people.
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, like you said, I got to... You know why? Because it's fun, because people don't... I don't know, people seem to get a little bit offended when you don't love something as much as they do. Right, yeah, yeah. You know, we've talked about this before and yeah, I think that people, you know, they get a little bit resentful when, you know, they love something and they gushing over it and they go crazy and you just look at it and go, man,
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
Religious Backlash and Thor's Movie Analysis
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know, something that's funny is I did and this is unrelated, but I did Facebook ads for my Lucifer book. And, and I'm getting these, I'm getting these religious freaks commenting on it. And they're like, you know, all that you're it
00:11:13
Speaker
complaining about the fact that it's a book about the devil and everything. And I'm trying to wonder, how is Facebook targeting these guys when I'm targeting people who specifically like the Lucifer TV show? Listen.
00:11:32
Speaker
These people will find you, trust me. I've had experience with these people before. For some reason, because as far as they're concerned, it's their mission to convert you and to make you see the era of your ways. And no matter what it is or what intentions you have, they can see the devil in anything.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I've had people that I have no idea... And I've asked them, I said, well, what were you doing reading my books anyway? You know the type of stuff that I write. They read it and then they proceed to give me a long list of things that they didn't like about it. I said, well, then what did you read it for? Yeah. Really? No, really. If you didn't like it that much, you should have stopped reading it a long time ago. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:25
Speaker
because now I'm thinking that you had no other purpose but to read the whole thing so you could come to me and complain about it. Right. Yeah. Which to me is a waste of your time. You could have been reading something that you really liked. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:41
Speaker
Okay, so I kind of ruined our segue, because we were talking about Hemsworth there, and then I jumped to something else, because it's just popped up on my Facebook. But anyway, today we're talking about your pick, which was Hemsworth's big debut, and that's the first Thor movie, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Yeah, yeah. Surprisingly enough, Kenneth Branagh, who now, it was surprising, I know he's a good director, because I've seen
00:13:10
Speaker
him to direct other movies. He's directed a couple of Shakespearean stuff. Matter of fact, that's the first movie I ever saw him in. I think he did... What was it? Henry the Fifth? It was one of them Henry's, where he got to do the... What's that? The Band of Brothers speech? Yeah. So, I mean, I know he was a good director, but he kind of surprised me with this one,
00:13:36
Speaker
because I didn't expect him to have such a feel for superhero movies. But then again, since he did bring a kind of Shakespearean element,
00:13:47
Speaker
to the proceedings on Asgard, I can see why this material would have appealed to him. Because you've got the stuff that happens on Asgard, and you've got the stuff that happens on Earth. And because Asgard is a larger than life realm, the Shakespearean flavor, which goes back to the Lee Kirby days. Right down to the speech.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You know, I can see why this movie, you know, was right up his alley. And yeah, I mean, like Thor is like my favorite Marvel superhero. And I was just over the moon with this movie from start to finish.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, so you being a Thor fan, like, how much did this fit into your image of what the character was? Because I remember, like, there are a lot of, this movie got some mixed opinion. Like, a lot of people rank it, like, toward the bottom end of the MCU films. So, how did you feel? Yeah, you know what?
00:14:45
Speaker
It really kind of surprises me that whenever I talk to people about the MCU movies and how they rank them and stuff like that, usually Thor, they put Thor at the bottom. All three Thor movies. They say, oh, I like him better with the Avengers than I do by himself. I think by the time they hit Ragnarok, they kind of found the right flavor that worked with YTT and with Hemsworth. And so people rank Ragnarok a lot higher.
00:15:14
Speaker
But Thor and the Dark World, they both end up at the bottom rung of most people's lists. Yeah, exactly. Like you said, most people, they love Ragnarok. And to just full disclosure, my ranking, Thor and the Dark World usually are in the bottom, but it's not because I think they're bad movies. The only MCU movie I actively dislike is Iron Man 3.
00:15:37
Speaker
But all the other but all the other ones like I like in different ways It's just like it's not that I don't like Thor and I don't like the dark world. Just I like the others a lot more Well, I know that I talk so okay much arts a lot of people they rank these movies so low anyway because I Found that a lot of people really don't care for Thor a lot a lot of people say oh well I don't like to wonder well I can't relate to him. Mm-hmm. Oh the relatable thing
00:16:02
Speaker
You know, how can you relate to him? I said, well, I have no problem relating to him. And, you know, which is something I've discussed with my therapist. He's told me why I relate to Thor. I'm not going to go into it here because I don't want... Well, I think most people have been listening to the show for a while. I think they can kind of see the connections there.
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah, maybe they care. But that's usually what I get from people. They say, oh, well, I can't relate to Thor. I don't know. But when I was reading, okay, even the comic books, I love the fact that
00:16:34
Speaker
you had Thor, okay, he would be on earth and he would have adventures with the Avengers and he would fight guys like the absorbing man and the wrecking crew and stuff like that. And then just so you don't get bored, every once in a while he'd say, okay, well, let me go back to Asgard and see what's happening up there. And he'd go back to Asgard and he'd go there and he'd be kicking frost giants on the ass and
00:16:58
Speaker
And, you know, Odin would send him on, you know, these quests across the universe where he had to, you know, because Ragnarok was coming or, you know, Galactus was coming. And Thor would find these alien races and stuff like that. So you had all of this super science space opera stuff that was mixed into, you know, Norse fantasy. Yeah, and then the Earth-based superhero stuff too. Yeah. Yeah. So I liked how, you know,
00:17:27
Speaker
To me, Thor as a comic book was never boring because it was always something happening. There's always a new realm that he was going to or new foes that he was fighting. And like I say, he was either fighting super villains or he was fighting mythological monsters and everything like that. So, I mean, to me, Thor was, and of course he had the best hammer. I mean,
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that weapon was the best hammer. That hammer was the best weapon as far as I was concerned. That shit was bad ass. I think that that that, um, that scope of it, like you said, like, you know, you had the fantasy stuff you had the Shakespearean s fantasy you had the
00:18:05
Speaker
the the space opera stuff you had the the earthbound stuff like trying to mix all those together especially when this was you know really the first you know movie outside of uh this is the first you know because based at the mcu at this point all you had was iron man iron man 2 an incredible hulk and then you throw in thor and so like an iron man an incredible hulk they're both very much science fiction based and then you throw thor into this mix and he brings all these
00:18:35
Speaker
these three different worlds together. And it's, especially at that time when people didn't really expect a lot of this stuff and the idea with superheroes had to be more grounded, Thor's kind of a difficult sell in that space. Yeah, you know what? Looking at it in hindsight, I think they actually might have benefited if they had waited a little more and brought in Thor late. Because like you said,
00:19:02
Speaker
Thor is a lot to digest, especially like you said, okay, you done seen the MCU movies that we've had so far. And like I said, they're very science fictiony and they take place on earth. Right. You know, now you're bringing in an entirely whole mythology into what we've already seen.
00:19:25
Speaker
and you're asking for people to digest it, and people are, you know, they're sitting in, they're saying, okay, well, you know, they're waiting for Nick Fury and, you know, because, okay, we'll shield that. Because I remember when I went to see this in the movie theater, and when Colson showed up, there was actually a little bit of applause. It was in the theater, because people was, oh shit, yeah, Colson, yeah, you know, they was happy. It was a familiar face. They was happy to see a familiar face, at last.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so, uh, yeah, I think that, you know, in hindsight, they might have waited a little bit more to bring in Thor, because it is a lot to digest, you know, I freely admit that it's a lot for somebody like me who is familiar with Thor no it wasn't because I can say okay I know who
00:20:08
Speaker
Mrs.
Thor's Film Adaptation and Character Dynamics
00:20:09
Speaker
Thor is, and I know who Loki is, and I know he's really the son of a frost giant, and you know, I know who Odin is, and I know this and that before a lot of people, which is why I think they had that whole narration that Odin does. Yeah, he explains the concept. And then they have another part with Thor. He's with Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman, who by now has learned how to work with special effects. You know, and Thor, he also,
00:20:37
Speaker
does his little recap of explaining the concept of the nine worlds. Right, right. And he says, you know, your ancestors called it magic, you call it science, but I come from a place where they're one and the same. Right, right. And we even had that little thing with Kat Dennings, who was absolutely brilliant in this movie. By the way, this is where I fell in love with her. And you know she's going to be back in the fourth Thor movie. Well, she should. Yeah, I mean, yeah. You know what? She's got Kat Dennings.
00:21:06
Speaker
steals a lot of scenes in this movie without actually stealing them. Right. You know, because she does it like so low key, but she says things like when she says, um, there's a part with Jane Foster, she's trying to explain something and then Kat Dennings come out and say, Oh yeah, well, you know, well, it wouldn't be out of the realm of impossibility that the Norse people would have seen your people come down and with your powers and abilities, they would have assumed that you were God. Right.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, because there's that whole thing when Selvig is arguing with Jane and saying, look, you're talking about mythology and everything. And then Kat just, Darcy just chimes in. Well, a primitive culture like the Vikings would have seen these guys as gods.
00:21:52
Speaker
Right. And she says it so badly. And Jade gives her this look like, where's this bit all this time? Because up to then, she's been kind of acting like kind of bubble-headed. Yeah. But she does have her moments where she demonstrates that she has a brain under there. She has a brain up under that cap. Because I didn't know her from
00:22:18
Speaker
I mean, I knew she was in a sitcom, but I never watched it. That was what? Two Broke Girls, I think? Yeah, Two Broke Girls. Yeah, I never saw that either. I never watched it. So this movie was my first introduction to her. And yeah, I really liked it. My first introduction, sir, I remember I saw her in, there's a movie she did with Downey before the MCU, before Downey did Iron Man. It was, oh, crap.
00:22:48
Speaker
trying to blank on the name. But it was with Anton Yelchin was in it too. And the actress who plays Stark's mom in Civil War, she was in it too. And Cap Dennings was in it. I'm really blanking on the name right now. It's gonna drive me nuts. But it's this great little, kind of like indie-esque movie and it's hilarious. Downie plays the principal in this movie and she plays his daughter.
00:23:17
Speaker
Oh, OK. Oh, Charlie Bartlett, that's what it was. Charlie Bartlett, OK, the name is Familia. Yeah, great little movie. And I saw it just because of Downey. And Downey was, of course, great in it. And Anton Yeltsin as well, Kat Dennings, everybody in it was just amazing. It's a really fun little movie. OK, I'll have to look it up. Yeah, the name is Familia.
00:23:47
Speaker
So, but yeah, and you're right. She does kind of like, she does have these, she has so many great moments. Like all the funniest moments in this movie are Dennings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She actually is the comedy relief, but what I like about her is that she's very understated about it. She doesn't make a big deal out of being the comedy relief. Yeah, and I think they took that a little bit too far in the dark world.
00:24:16
Speaker
when they brought her back in there. Because she gets a lot more attention and it's a lot more trying to be funny.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, but here, I appreciate the fact that it's almost like she's off to the side and commenting on the craziness that's going on. There is that great part where they're in the hospital and Darcy says about Jade, she's like, well, she hit him with his car. And Jade's like, she's like, well, she tased him. And Darcy's like, yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yeah, exactly. Yes, I did.
00:24:53
Speaker
You know, she owns that, yeah, no problem. But she's gonna make sure that they know that Jay hit him with the car, you know. And yeah, like I was saying before, one of the problems I had with Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequel trilogy in that, is that she was walking around like the poor girl didn't know where she was at, didn't know what she was supposed to do. And I chalked that up to her,
00:25:21
Speaker
in experience with working with special effects and green screens and all that kind of stuff. Well, it's not only that, but it's also, Lucas is just like, is not a good director when it comes to dealing with actors. No, he's not. He does not like dealing with actors. He likes the technology and stuff. And that's why the best Star Wars, it's amazing that the first Star Wars movie was as good as it was, because he directed that one, I believe.
00:25:47
Speaker
But that's why the second one is so much better, because it was directed by someone else. It was... Ervin Kirshner. Ervin Kirshner directed the second one, yeah. So when he handed the reins off to someone else, it was someone who actually knew how to work with actors. I remember a story that Carrie Fisher was telling about what she was saying when they were filming Star Wars, and of course Mark Hamill, he was a young
00:26:14
Speaker
you know, inexperienced. And he was looking for his director to direct him. So when they would do a scene, he would go up to George Lucas and say, OK, well, how was that? And Lucas was, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine of it. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's OK. And he would just brush him off. And Harrison Ford actually went up to Lucas and said, you know, don't do that to the kid. You know, could you give him a word and direct him like he wants to be direct? And supposedly, according to her, they got into a pretty big fighter, you know?
00:26:43
Speaker
because Harrison Ford didn't care for his direction, the way that George Lucas directed either, which- Well, the great thing about Ford is that he's not gonna take any shit. No, no, no, no.
00:27:00
Speaker
And actually, if you see, the only reason why he took Indiana Jones' role was that he didn't take it because of Lucas, he took it because of Spielberg. Oh, I believe that, yeah. Yeah, he took it because of Spielberg, because Lucas wanted what you call the Tom Selleck. Right, right. And in fact, Selleck was actually originally cast, I believe, but then he had to drop out because of Magnum, was it Magnum P.I.? Yeah, Magnum P.I. I mean, he was signed and everything.
00:27:26
Speaker
Harrison Ford was Spielberg's actual first choice all along, he wanted him. But it was Lucas that said no. Because Lucas didn't want to work with him. Yeah, yeah. Lucas didn't want to work with him. Well, in fact, that's one of the reasons they froze Han and carbonite at the end of Empire, because they didn't know if they could get Ford back to do Jedi. Harrison Ford, for a while there, it did not look bad. If you look at Empire Strikes Back, and I know that people are saying right now, wait a minute, aren't they supposed to be talking about Thor? I promise you, we'll get back to Thor in a minute.
00:27:56
Speaker
If you look at the end of Empire Strikes Back, right, you see Billy Dee Williams. He's in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Go back and watch the movie. He is dressed exactly like Harrison Ford. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was because, and I know that you're black folks. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, the reason the reason for that was that Lando was going to replace
00:28:20
Speaker
Han Solo in the third movie, if Harrison Ford decided he wasn't gonna come back. Right, which is why Lando has like nothing to do in Return of the Jedi. Yeah, exactly, has nothing to do because everything that he was gonna do was given to Han Solo. Right, yeah, yeah.
00:28:37
Speaker
with the exception of blowing up the Death Star, which just kind of feels like tacked on in that movie. Yeah, well, you know what? I felt that they said, well, you know what? We got to let him do something. Right, yeah. Because otherwise, how are they going to explain that Lando just disappears? Right, yeah. And they make him a general, too.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, well, hey, which is always good. You know, you got perks. Okay, so as promised folks... Back to Thor. Back to Thor. Back to Thor. You know, which, despite the digressions, trust me, I am serious when I say I love this movie. Renee Russo as Mrs. Odin. You know what? She has this one part in the movie, and I was watching it last night, and I don't know if it's just me subconsciously tacking on
00:29:26
Speaker
meaning to this scene.
00:29:29
Speaker
because, you
Thor's Earthly Trials and Character Growth
00:29:30
Speaker
know, given now what I know, but there's a scene where Odin says something about Thor and Loki being his sons and everything like that, and then he loves them equally and, you know, he's given that whole thing. And then they cut to Renee Russo. She's got this funny look on her face because, you know, I guess she knows, because of course she knows that, yeah, Odin says, you're my firstborn son and,
00:29:57
Speaker
It's something like that, but she gives a look. She looks at Loki and she gives them a look. So now I'm trying to think, was that a plant all along or was it just me since I know how that turns out now? You know, how that whole Loki situation turns out. It's just my subconscious.
00:30:15
Speaker
I don't think it was seriously planned to lead to something else, but I think when they went back and they did The Dark World, they looked back to Thor and they said, well, look at this moment. Look at the way she acts towards Loki. So let's build her up as like the one person in Asgard that Loki truly loved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? Let's face it, as played by Tom Hiddleston, Loki is the villain it's hard to hate.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, oh my God, I mean, how could no one, it's impossible to hate him. And that's one of the problems with doing Loki in these movies is because, you know, Loki in the comics is not as charming, is not as complex as Loki in the movies is.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you see that, how he changes in these movies, right? Like in this one, he's much more like the comic book Loki and Avengers as well. He's much more like the comic book Loki. But the problem is that Hiddleston was so good in these performances and everybody loved him so much, they had to keep bringing him back and they had to find ways to make excuses to bring him back. So they had to develop him as more of a complex character from that point. Because here's the whole thing.
00:31:32
Speaker
When they're working together, him and Thor actually make a formidable team. Right. Working together. It's just that they can't stay working together for very long. Yeah, yeah. They can. But I love the relationship that he has with everybody in this movie. And in a strange way, it's Loki that kind of ties everybody together. Right. You know, because everything
00:31:59
Speaker
that happens in this movie comes out of him, how he feels about his heritage, which was kept from him, which Odin shouldn't have kept from him. But one of the things I love about Odin is that he's a dick and he don't give a shit how you feel about nothing because he's Odin. Yeah. Pretty much that's his character. I'm Odin. I do what I want to do. But if Odin had sat him down before and said, well, listen, this is who you really are and
00:32:29
Speaker
this is why I took you and yeah, instead of letting him find out on his own, because Loki always felt that there was something different about him, which I think is another reason why a lot of people sympathize with Loki, because who among us at one time or another has not felt like they was out of place and said, okay, well, I know there's something different about me, but I don't know what it is.
00:32:52
Speaker
And it's hard to be mad at Loki in a lot of ways because Thor is an arrogant dick in this movie, especially in the beginning. So it's no surprise. So like when you got Odin making this big oaf, basically, the King of Asgard, when Loki is clearly the more intelligent one, the more strategic one. So I can understand why Loki would be pissed off about that.
00:33:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, because actually Thor is no business ruling anything. Because Thor basically likes to run around having adventures and fighting monsters. That's his thing. That's what he likes to do. And in the beginning of the movie, he picks a fight with the Frost Giants for no reason at all after Odin has given them all the good reasons why you shouldn't go pick a fight with the Frost Giants.
00:33:49
Speaker
and it makes him withdraw Thor's coronation because Thor is about to become king and then after he flips out on Odin about that Odin's like no you're not king you're not ready. Yeah you're not king of course not because yeah because he's clearly demonstrated that he is not
00:34:07
Speaker
him worthy to be king and therefore even not worthy to be king. You're not worthy to carry me on there, which is why Owen snatches it from him with a great sing. He just said, and snatches the hammer back and takes away his powers and he exiles him to earth. And then he throws the hammer to earth to follow him and says, okay, well, whoever is worthy to pick this up can possess the power of Thor. And he flings the hammer to earth. And of course,
00:34:35
Speaker
now Thor is on earth, he's got no powers, he's immortal. So now he has to prove that he is worthy so that he can regain his powers and his hammer and save Asgard from his brother who is now sitting on the throne after Odin has fallen into the fable Odin sleep.
00:34:55
Speaker
Right, yeah. Now that's an interesting little thing they did in this movie is the fact that the enchantment only comes after Thor is banished and then he puts the enchantment on the hammer and then you know it stays on for all the other movies because when we get to Stormbreaker in Infinity War and in Endgame like that doesn't have the enchantment on it so that's why other people can use that hammer.
00:35:22
Speaker
Right. So I always thought that was that was kind of an interesting thing is that you know it's not that the hammer was made with this enchantment it's that Odin put it on specifically to teach Thor humility and it's just something that stuck with it after that. Oh yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly and that's one of the things about the movie that I like that it clears up and it cleans up
00:35:49
Speaker
some of the stuff from, like, okay, for instance, the movie makes it clear that the Asgardians are not gods. They're just this advanced race that, you know, the ancient Norse folks and the Vikings and stuff like that, they thought they were gods. You know, they worshiped them as gods. I remember way back in my fan fiction days, I wrote
00:36:15
Speaker
I wrote an Avenger story, and one of the Avengers says to Thor, you know, well, don't you still go visit this village where they still think that you're a god? And he says, yeah, well, I went back and I cleaned that up. And I told him, no, I'm not really a god. But I like how they did that, you know, that they...
00:36:34
Speaker
straighten that whole thing out that, no, they're not God, they're just this advanced race that some people think it was God. I also like how in this movie, they actually gave Heimdall something to do besides just tearing that damn bridge. Oh, and, sorry, just out of the sneeze for a minute there. But yeah, and, you know, Idris Elba, like this was before he became Idris Elba. And,
00:36:59
Speaker
You remember the controversy behind that? Oh my God. That was like the dumbest thing I'd ever seen in my life. So for anyone who's listening, they don't know. There were a bunch of white people who got, you know, super offended because Heimdall was being played by a black actor. And they started like an online petition and all this stuff. And it was just like the dumbest thing ever.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, they were saying, oh, well, Heimdall can't be black because the Norse gods, they weren't black. Yeah. Yeah, but the movie makes it clear that these aren't the Norse gods. And also, you know, saying that the Norse gods weren't black, the Norse gods didn't exist. They're just fictional characters. Yeah, first of all, yeah, exactly. They were fictional characters right from the start.
00:37:47
Speaker
Yes. So, you know, yeah, I mean, people really got bent out of shape behind that. I was reading stuff online for that for months after the movie came out. And you know what I noticed is that people did not get anywhere near as offended about the fact that Tada Nobu Osano was playing Hogan.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I mean, although he does have some Norwegian ancestry, but, you know, he's he's a Japanese actor born in Japan, mostly works out of Japan. So but nobody said almost nobody said anything about him. Yeah, nobody said anything about that. What do they bitch about the fact that, you know, Thor and Norse mythology has red hair, not blonde or anything like that? Because even if you go back to the comic books,
00:38:29
Speaker
The Warriors 3, you look at them, and it's quite obvious that none of them are Norse. You know, like Hogan, he looks like he's like a Mongol. You know, he's got Asian features even in the car. Fandral, he looks like he's from England, you know.
00:38:48
Speaker
Like, he could have been a musketeer or something like that. Right. Well, the vaudeville, especially, was basically Earl Flipp. Right, exactly. Vostag was dramatic. So, I mean, they weren't Norse gods or anything like that. So that goes back. Matter of fact, I got a charge out of that thing with them making some of the main characters that we see in this movie, you know, multiracial. Yeah, yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
I had no problem with that and I applaud that decision.
00:39:24
Speaker
to do that. I also like the fact that they didn't treat Volstagg. One of the things I never liked about the Thor comic book was the treatment of Volstagg and how there was the tendency, depending on who was writing him, mind you,
Asgard's Design and Battle Scenes
00:39:38
Speaker
he was treated just as a funny fat man. Right, right, yeah. And I never really liked that because I could not see guys like Thor, and especially Hogan, who took being warriors seriously, just having a funny fat guy hang out with them. Right.
00:39:54
Speaker
You know, so I like how in this movie, yeah, they treated Vosag, you know, with the more, you know, he does have his lighter side, especially when it comes to the food and stuff like that. But he is shown to be a valuable member of the team. Yeah. For the short amount of time that they have in the entire tour series, because the Warriors 3 kind of get the shaft.
00:40:17
Speaker
And it's, and it's Ray Stevenson who was previously before this movie he was the Punisher in Punisher Warzone. So it was kind of cool. I didn't even recognize him at first. Neither did I. I didn't realize it was Ray Stevenson until I read the credits at the end.
00:40:32
Speaker
And I said, oh, shit. That was really Steve. I said, oh, wow. OK, cool. Yeah. And he does a great job. There is that scene where he's eating all this food. And Fandrel's like, in this time, you managed to consume like four boars and like three casts of ale and all this stuff. And he gets pissed off. And Stevenson has this great line, do not mistake my appetite for apathy. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. So I really like, I mean, when I listen,
00:41:03
Speaker
Again, one of the charm of seeing these movies is that I finally get to see things on screen that I never thought that I would get to see. I never thought I'd get to see Asgard that looks like the one that's in this movie. Well, and that's an interesting, I'm glad you brought that up because they, um, now I don't remember, as I recall, I've only read a few of the Thor stuff, so I may not be remembering this correctly, but the Rainbow Bridge in the comics, it is an actual rainbow, right?
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually rainbow. So this, I thought they did a, they found a really clever way to translate that. Because I was thinking like, how are they going to handle the rainbow bridge? And they found a really clever way to do it. I like the way, I love the way how when you look at the bridge closely, and I was watching the movie last night, or, you know, of course I have it on Blu-ray as I do all of Marvel movies. I'm bragging, yes. But
00:41:56
Speaker
When you look at it closely, you'll see it looks like there's circuitry that's running in the bridge as like electrical sparks and pathways and neurons and electrons and stuff like that. I kind of like how it gives the impression that the bridge itself is thinking.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Because of course it connects to the Bifrost, which is basically a super Star Trek transporter. It's a Stargate. Yeah, exactly. Well, also, and it even, it does have that multicolored feel to it. So it is basically like a rainbow bridge. Yeah. I did like how they worked that in. And I also, I gotta say I did like that they didn't portray Asgard as like something out of a Tolkien
00:42:48
Speaker
novel, right? Oh, thank God. Yeah. Like they display it's like this. It's this high tech fantasy world, right? So they've got, you know, yeah, they fight with swords and everything. But they also have these like high tech elements. And it's just that they're done in the style of like,
00:43:06
Speaker
fantasy. So it, you know, kind of like how in Black Panther, they still, they're using like spears and everything like that. They're using more traditional, you know, African tribal weaponry and customs and that kind of stuff. But they reworked it with like a sci-fi edge to it. Yeah, it's technology that's incorporated into the traditional African culture. Right. And they did the same thing here with, with the Norse stuff. And I thought that was a really good way to handle it.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah, the Asgardians, they're basically like this warrior race, but they've incorporated...
00:43:40
Speaker
these high-tech elements into, you know, like their armor and, you know, the spears that they have and all this kind. Yeah, I mean, it's really neat. And you know what? That also comes into the fact that when Thor comes, like, I hate these movies where they have somebody from another planet and, you know, they dropped on Earth and they bumbled around like they don't know what they're doing. Thor is an intelligent guy. He knows about Earth and everything like that. It's not like he looks at a car and he doesn't know what a car is, you know?
00:44:08
Speaker
you know, he knows what stuff is. So I kind of like that aspect and it really cut through a lot of BS when, you know, the only thing he just wants to know is, you know,
00:44:18
Speaker
okay well where's my hammer that's all he wants to know when he wakes up you know he's not well where am I and who are you and oh what are these strange clothes that you're wearing no he knows what clothes are right exactly yeah and uh just touching on that as well the the design i noticed i never really noticed picked up on it before but i was just noticing it now is that how much of like because they're not
00:44:42
Speaker
direct translations of the comics, like the outfits and stuff and the design. Oh, no. But there is so much curve. You can tell they're very clearly Kirby inspired. Like all those like crazy circles and lines. Kirby always loved putting on his on his costume designs. Like all of that is present in their armors. And I was sitting there watching like, oh, wow, I never even noticed like how much Kirby isms there are in this movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like Thor's armor to me is like it's like a nice little
00:45:11
Speaker
It's like they took the best elements from Kirby and from Walt Simonson. Well, you know what I noticed is that the armor that Thor and the other Asgardians wear, it's much more like the new god stuff. Like that kind of design work, it reminded me a lot of what you see in the new god's work. Yeah.
00:45:33
Speaker
And it's functional. It is, yeah. I mean, this is, I mean, because these guys go into battle and stuff like that. So of course, they're wearing all, and I mean, the stuff actually looks heavy and it looks like it can protect you in, you know, like a fight, especially when they have, when they had that wonderful fight. I mean, the fight that starts off the movie where
00:45:53
Speaker
they go to the planet where the Frost Giants live and they had their fight scene. Man, that was like right out of the comics. Oh yeah. When I saw that, I was amazed. Because I was wondering, how are they going to do all this stuff with Thor? And that fight scene in particular, they went full out. And it was just like a comic book.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, okay, you have the fight with the destroyer that's at the end. But for me, that fight right there with the Frost Giants, that was the best fight that was in the movie. Yeah. I mean, when he's like twirling the hammer and he flies through that Frost Giants, I'm just like, holy fuck. Yeah. Because you actually, because
00:46:34
Speaker
You actually see the whole range of Thor's powers in that scene, where he just pulls down the lightning, when all of the frost giants are rushing him, and he gives that little silly stupid grin, and he just pulls down the lightning, and boom. And the ground explodes like miles around. I said, see, now that's Thor. Yeah, yeah. That right there, Patricia said, what are you laughing about? I said, because that right there, that's Thor. And did you ever expect that you would see
00:47:02
Speaker
Something that close to the Thor comics going into this movie. No, no, absolutely not And you know, I also gotta say like this trailer was one of the best MCU trailers because do you remember the trailer it opens up with Coulson with the Coulson interrogation and And you only see Coulson at first and I think maybe you don't even see him I think maybe you only just hear his voice at first and
00:47:26
Speaker
And he's talking about all these things. So where did you receive your training? Chechnya, Afghanistan. He's like, there are a lot of groups who would pay a lot of money for a good mercenary. Who are you? And then it cuts to Hemsworth as Thor looking up in your life. And I love that mystery they build up in the trailer there.
00:47:45
Speaker
Oh, okay. See, I haven't seen the trailer in ages. So, uh, but now you want me to, now I gotta go back and look at it. It was a, it was an amazing way of like, just showing like, cause this is like, you know, we take it for granted as comic book fans, cause we've known Thor for basically all our lives, but this was, you know, the, basically the world's first introduction to Thor. Like Hulk people had known about Iron Man. People had heard of, you know, they had, he had the cartoon and everything.
00:48:14
Speaker
Captain America, of course, people had heard of, but Thor was like really the big enigma, like the big x-ray. Because the only other thing that Thor had really been in at this point was you had the Avengers cartoon on at the time, and then you had his appearance in one of the Hulk TV movies years ago, which probably nobody remembers. Yeah, no, nobody remembers it. It remembers that, because that thing was, that thing was from, what, the 70s. Right, yeah, yeah. Nobody would remember that. Yeah.
00:48:46
Speaker
That scene right there where they had the fight with the Frost Giants, to me, it's crucial for the rest of the plot because you don't really appreciate what Thor has lost unless you see what kind of power the guy, you know, had. Right. Then when you see what kind of, you say, whoa, this guy, you know.
00:49:02
Speaker
I mean, the guy can pull down lightning, he's killing Godzilla's cousin and all this kind of stuff. So then when he loses his power, you say, oh shit, because now you know, yeah, this guy has really lost something. Yeah.
00:49:20
Speaker
So yeah, that's a very crucial thing. Another scene that, of course, made me smile in here, not only when Colson showed up, but we see Hawkeye. Yes, I freaked out when I saw that in the theater.
00:49:40
Speaker
Like when he, even just the other night when I was rewatching it, like I was sitting there with Colton O and we're sitting there watching it. And then when he says, I need eyes up top. And then you just see the hand, they go for the rifle and then they go for the bow and arrow. And I'm like, yeah, Hawkeye. And she looks at me like, how many times have you seen this movie? I'm like, I don't care. It's Hawkeye. I don't care. It's Hawkeye. Yeah, it's Hawkeye. And then he goes up there and he's got the bow. And I love to see it because Thor is trying to get to the hammer.
00:50:09
Speaker
And he's saying to Colson, OK, well, do you want me to take this guy out? Or are you just going to send more guys for him to beat up? Yeah. He is so Hawkeye in that scene. Yeah. Do you want to send more guys for him to beat up? And then he's like, you better call it soon, Colson, because I'm starting to root for the guy. Yeah, yeah. He said, I'm actually starting to root for this guy. You know, it is.
00:50:34
Speaker
a low-key introduction to the character. And yeah, you know, like you said, because when I saw it in the movie theater, I, of course, freaked out. That's all shit. That's Hawkeye. You know, for people who don't know the character and didn't understand, you know, they wouldn't know why I was freaking out. And they're probably wondering, why is this shield agent using a bow and arrow instead of that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because, like I said, me and Patricia went to see it. And she said, well, why wouldn't he take the gun? And I said, shh, shh, shh, I'll tell you later.
00:51:04
Speaker
just watch the movie, just watch the movie." And she just sighed and said, okay, she would have had to eat the popcorn. Because usually, before we go to these movies, I had to give her a tutorial as to who the character was. But of course, the first time I saw her, I didn't know Hawkeye was going to be in it, you know. I had known he was going to be in it because I had heard, I think there, I'm not sure if it was confirmed or if it was just rumors, but I had heard that like Jeremy Renner was going to be, have a cameo as Hawkeye in this.
Thor's Humility and Comic History
00:51:33
Speaker
Yeah. But knowing that's going to happen and then seeing it and having it done in such an awesome way was a totally different situation. Yeah, and I'm like you. I don't care how many times I see it. I say, oh shit, this whole thing. Yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
Well, that whole sequence when he breaks into the shield cam, that is so well done. Like, I love that sequence where he's taking out all these guys. And it shows that even without his powers, Thor still knows how to kick some ass. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think that that was one reason why that scene was put there, to let us know that, well, Thor is not ineffectual without his hammer. Because even in Thor Ragnarok, Odin even tells him that. He said, well, are you the god of hammers or are you the god of thunder? It's not a hammer. It's you. The power is in you.
00:52:34
Speaker
I'm watching this movie last night and I'm watching it and I have to tell you, I got very nostalgic and misty eyed for a minute thinking because of course we've seen the whole story arc that Thor has had and his father and Loki and the Asgardians as a whole. And revisiting this movie again, I was thinking, wow, Thor had really come a long way
00:53:04
Speaker
from how he was in this movie as to how we eventually see him in Endgame. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think he goes through more character development than any of the other Avengers. Yeah. Especially when we're talking about the big three, which is him, Iron Man, and Captain America. I think that out of all three of them, Thor goes through the most emotionally and psychologically
00:53:34
Speaker
you know, than any other character that we see that's in the MCU. Right. I mean, they, and that's not saying that the others don't. They do. It's just like, it's not as extreme as what Thor goes through because like, you know, Stark goes from like being very, very, he goes from self, selfish to selfless, basically. Um, but he, and he still struggles with it. Like almost every single movie is about Tony Stark, you know, deciding to be selfless. Um,
00:54:01
Speaker
And Captain America, he goes from being like, you know, completely trusting institutions to becoming more independent minded. Yeah. But Thor goes from like, you know, even in this movie, like, you know, there's such a big change in his personality. Like, he goes from very haughty and arrogant and dismissive, like, when they give him clothes after they add
00:54:27
Speaker
and you get the Don Blake sticker on his shirt and everything. And they ask me, how do the clothes fit? And he's just very dismissive way. He says they will suffice. Yeah. Yeah. And it's only after he's spending time with these people. And even up until going to the shield base, he's very arrogant. He's like, yo, I got this. I can take care of everything. And I'm going to fly out and everything.
00:54:57
Speaker
but he's so arrogant and sure of himself, which is, but it's not until he tries to grab the hammer and he realizes like, Oh shit. And you know, when the change comes, at least where I see the change come is when he's sitting down and he's talking to Jane Foster and you know,
00:55:15
Speaker
Well, it's those two conversations, first with Selvig in the bar, and then with Jane after that, too. Yeah. These are really the big turning points, because that's when he realizes, like, whoa, shit, I don't know everything. I'm not perfect. Yeah, because he gives him back the book. Yeah, yeah. And he says, listen, he said, I couldn't get everything he said, but I tried to get something. Just the fact that he went through the effort of getting that small thing as a book, but it means a lot to her. Right.
00:55:43
Speaker
And it meant a lot to me because I'm saying, OK, the guy's starting to change now. He's thinking about somebody else besides him, which is the whole point. I mean, really, once you get down to it, the whole point, Thor, is that he learns how to think of other people and not just himself.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So now you being a Thor fan, like you are very familiar with, especially back in the, in the Simonson days and all that, and especially the Lee Kirby days, Thor had a human identity, right? He was in the, he and Dr. Don Blake were, were sharing the same body basically. Yes he did. Now that, because remember Thor was created back in the 1960s, where of course every superhero had to have a secret identity. Right. And
00:56:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it was a guy named Dr. Don Blake. He was on vacation in Norway. We don't know why. He just went to Norway for a vacation. And through a series of mishaps, he gets trapped in a cave. And there's a cave in, and he's stuck in the cave. And he finds this walking stick.
00:56:56
Speaker
you know, that's in the cave. And he says, OK, maybe I can use this to get out of the cave. And he's banging the stick against the boulders that's keeping them inside the cave. And while he's doing that, of course, bam. And the stick transforms into the hammer, and he's turned into Thor. And he reads on the hammer, whosoever holds this hammer, blah, blah, blah. And he realizes, oh, well, I've become Thor.
00:57:24
Speaker
Yeah. And for the longest time, because all of the Asgardian stuff and the super science and all that other stuff didn't come until later on.
00:57:35
Speaker
For a while, their Thor was a conventional superhero. Don Blake, if there was some trouble that was in the city, he whacked a walker stick on the ground. He turned the Thor, and he fly away. And he beat up on the supervillain of the month. And then he come back. He banged the stick, and he turned back into Dr. Don Blake. And there was a little sexual tension going back and forth with his nurse, Jane Foster.
00:58:04
Speaker
who was secretly in love with Dr. Don Blake. But for some reason, he didn't want to get with Jane. I never really did understand that. I never really understood the whole thing with Jane Foster going on. But as time grew, but as time went on, it became a more popular character. And I kind of suspect that it would probably more
00:58:33
Speaker
Jack Kirby, then Lee that started introducing these super science elements and the science fiction and the fantasy and all that kind of stuff. And Lee just went with it. Right. Because it was selling books. And yeah, and it differentiated Thor from the other comic books that Marvel was producing at that time, because this was on an epic
00:58:59
Speaker
scope and scale that if you were also into Lord of the Rings, which was also very big at that time, and Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard, all that kind of stuff was becoming very popular at that time. And Thor kind of fit it right into there, the way that it was being written by Lee and Kirby, with all of the fantasy and space opera elements.
00:59:25
Speaker
mixed up. So if you were fans of one, yeah, you got into Thor. Because a lot of people, because I knew people that normally didn't read any type of, normally didn't read superhero stuff, but they read Thor. Right, right.
00:59:41
Speaker
So how did you feel about the fact that they cut out Don Blake, basically? Being a fan of the Thor comics, is that something you missed watching this movie? Or is it something that you didn't feel like it was a big deal? What were your thoughts on that? Oh, no, no, no. First of all, because I mean,
01:00:02
Speaker
We're at the point now where actually secret identities is really something that don't exist in comic books any longer, I don't think. Well, they do, but it's much more character appropriate. Yeah. So it's like you have the street level heroes, like you've got Spider-Man, you've got Daredevil, they've got secret identities.
01:00:22
Speaker
But Batman, that kind of stuff. Superman, even though Superman's not really. But Superman, he needs a secret identity for keeping himself grounded, basically. Right. Spider-Man and Daredevil, they need their secret identities to protect their loved ones. And as they've found out over the long course of their careers, when someone does find out, everybody tries to kill him. Because as we all know, the best way to become a Spider-Man villain is to be somehow connected to Peter Parker.
01:00:57
Speaker
Peter Parker has the worst taste in choosier friends. And that was actually an argument that I think it was Lee and I think it was Ditko they had about the Green Goblin was when they were trying to decide who to make him because Lee wanted him someone in Peter Parker's life. Whereas I think it was Ditko, if I'm wrong, someone can correct me, but I'm almost positive it was Lee and Ditko. And Ditko wanted him to be someone completely unconnected to Peter Parker.
01:01:18
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. That's what I got to do.
01:01:25
Speaker
which, you know, even though we got in a lot of great stories out of Norman Osborn being the Green Goblin, I kind of understand Ditko's point of view because then that thing was picked up where every single person, every single villain, almost every single villain Spider-Man fights is somehow connected to Peter Parker.
01:01:42
Speaker
I think you're right. I think that was Ditko. I have heard that story too, that yeah, it was a big thing that Ditko just wanted it to be like a complete nobody. That was his thing. He wanted it to be a nobody. Peter Parker snatched his mask off and says, okay, well, who are you? Right. But see, I understand why Stan Lee wanted to do that because
01:02:04
Speaker
of the heavy soap opera influence that he brought to Spider-Man. Because Spider-Man was basically a soap opera with a superhero as his star. Oh, completely, yeah. So yeah. So I understand why Lee wanted to do that. Because that was like a revelation that you would have seen in the soap opera of the day. Oh my god, it's really you. Yeah. Yeah. So I understand that.
01:02:30
Speaker
But no, I didn't have a problem with that, because there's some things that you outgrow. Like, for instance, when Thor first appeared, he had a weakness. He always had to hold his hammer. If the hammer was out of his hand for 60 seconds, he would turn back to Don Blake. Why? The only reason was because at that time, it was thought that every superhero had to have some sort of weakness. Right. He was very much in the DC vein of superheroes, where it was like, you know,
01:02:58
Speaker
Superman was vulnerable to Kryptonite. Breen Lantern's ring couldn't affect anything yellow. Wonder Woman lost her powers if she got tied up or I think it was something like that. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was okay. Yeah, that was the convention at that time that was felt. Of course, after a while,
01:03:16
Speaker
They just did away with that because it was silly. And they actually did away with Don Blake because they went through a whole series of stories where they were trying to explain, OK, where did Don Blake come from in the first place? Was he just an identity created by? Because for the longest time, you thought that, OK, Don Blake was the human, and that he just turned into, he was like Captain Marvel. He turned into a bigger, more powerful version of himself. Right, right, right. You know? And Thor wasn't.
01:03:46
Speaker
uh, his own person. But then, you know, when he was Thor, he started speaking in the Shakespearean, you know, manner with the fees and vows and have that de-varlet and everything like that. People say, okay, where is this coming from now? You know, he never spoke like this before. So, of course, now they had to explain, you know, well, was Dom like a separate person? Was he something created by Odin? Which I think is eventually how they resolved that thing, that it was identity created by Odin.
01:04:15
Speaker
for the same purpose as in this movie, to teach Thor humility, which is why he made him a doctor. Oh, I think they undid that later on, because I do remember... It's become twisted and convoluted because it's been changed one way and then changed back the other way. As we said before, this type of stuff is cyclical in comics. Because I remember in...
01:04:41
Speaker
For a long time, Thor had stopped using a human identity. I think it was during the Simonson run when they really kind of did away with the secret identity stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And that continued on through basically up until the 90s when Thor was canceled during onslaught and all that. And then when they relaunched the Thor title under Dan Juergens, they did give him a human identity, but it wasn't Don Blake.
01:05:11
Speaker
a paramedic named, I think it was Jake Foster, got caught in the crossfire of a battle that Thor was having with the destroyer. I can't remember the details, but there was some sort of energy transfer or something, and Thor became bonded with Jake Olsen.
01:05:30
Speaker
Because the guy was dying. And in order to die, Thor said, OK, well, I have to bond with this guy so that he won't die. In other words, Thor was touched by his heroism. He didn't feel that the guy deserved to die. So he bonded with him. And yeah, for a while there, that guy was, like, Thor's secret identity. And there was a twist on that, because unlike, if I'm not mistaken, the Don Blake thing, Don Blake was a separate character, right? Yeah.
01:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, but in this case, he was still Thor, even when he was Jake Olsen. Jake Olsen was basically nowhere to be found, and Thor was basically cursed to live out Olsen's life. And so that was the thing that went on for a while in the comics, and then eventually they resolved that. And then they went back to not giving him an identity, and then Ragnarok came, and everyone thought the Asgardians were dead.
01:06:24
Speaker
There was even a period where Thor, you know, he was Thor, but he was walking around, you know, like a human being and everything. I think his real name, he was using the identity of Sigurd Jarlsen. Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. He's a structured worker. And as a nod to Superman, when he was Sigurd Jarlsen, he would just wear a pair of glasses. Right, yeah, and he had his- I'd stand back in a ponytail. That's right, yeah, yeah.
01:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, I remember I was reading the mutant massacre trade about a few months back. And they had some Thor stuff in there, too. And I remember him as Sigurd Jarlsen hanging out with his friend and everything and his buddy's kids and all that. Yeah, he was concerned. And he carried around Majorna in an oversized lunch pail or something stupid. Yeah, but he carried it around in case he had to go do Thor stuff while he was on the job.
01:07:16
Speaker
Right, yeah. And then when J. Michael Straczynski relaunched the Thor comic book several years back, he brought back Don Blake. And so Don Blake was brought back in that and he was a character all throughout Straczynski's run. I think eventually they got separated again. I don't know if Blake's been seen since then because he wasn't in any of the Jason Aaron stuff. And actually in this movie,
01:07:44
Speaker
when the Stella Skarsgard character, he goes to get her from S.H.I.E.L., which I'm still not sure. I believe that Colson just let him take him just to see. Oh, he did, because there's that thing where it says it's falsified data. You're right, falsified data. But he goes in, you know, and Colson said, well, who's this? Oh, well, he's Dr. Don Blake, you know. So I thought it was a nice little nod to
01:08:08
Speaker
you know, uh, the original that, yeah, that for whatever reason, they did give Thor and they let him use the name of, you know, Dr. Don Blake. Well, they do, they do make that point when, um, when he finds the, hi, my name is Don sticker. And, you know, he's like, who's this? And she says, Oh, that's my ex, you know, good with patients, bad with relationships. And you know, but originally in earlier drafts, like Don Blake was actually going to be a character in the movie. And, um, Kevin McKidd almost got the part.
01:08:38
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. But then they eventually decided to write Blake out and just have the nod to him in those two scenes.
01:08:47
Speaker
And speaking of Stellan Skarsgard, may I just say that having him and Anthony Hopkins, as we have said so many times before, ad infinitum, I know people are getting sick of us here saying this, but I'm sorry, folks. It's a truism. You and I have talked at great length about how much casting is so important to these movies. And the contribution that both Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgard,
01:09:17
Speaker
bring to this movie cannot be emphasized enough because, I mean, we're talking about guys who, you know, I mean, I can't think of any more two prestigious actors to put together in one movie than those guys, you know.
01:09:36
Speaker
I mean, these guys have been in some serious shit, to put it bluntly. Well, not
Influence of Literature on Comics
01:09:40
Speaker
only that, but also having Kenneth Branagh directing it. Like, when they announced Kenneth Branagh was directing it, I'm like, how the hell did they get Kenneth Branagh to direct this movie? Yeah. Yeah. That's the same guy. I said, wait a minute. Kenneth Branagh, wait a minute. OK. And see, again, when you announce names like that that are attached to a superhero movie, it makes people pay attention.
01:09:59
Speaker
Yeah. And they said, oh, shit. They said, OK, let's see. OK, we don't know who Tom Hiddleston is, and we don't know who Chris Hemsworth is. But when you say Anthony Hopkins and Kenneth Branagh and Stella Skarsgard are in a superhero movie, are in a superhero? Yeah. I don't care who you are. You sit up and pay attention. And you give the movie a little bit more respect than you would otherwise.
01:10:25
Speaker
And Anthony Hopkins is amazing as Odin. I cannot think of anybody else who could play this part. Oh, yeah. Odin is one of my favorite characters. And I mean, Anthony Hopkins, this is just how I visualize Odin would be.
01:10:42
Speaker
You know, he plays him perfectly with the right now. He looks like he stepped right out of the comics. It looks exactly like he stepped out. Especially when the scene, he's on the throne with that big, huge honking horned helmet and the golden armor and everything like that. Oh my God, he looks just like a Kirby drawing come to life. Exactly, yeah.
01:11:03
Speaker
And you know what's funny, when Hemsworth and Hopkins saw each other in full armor for the first time, Hopkins said, God, there's no acting required here, is there? You know, and you know what, they do look like father and son. They do, yeah. There's this funny thing, I think I mentioned it before, but they showed these three images side by side with
01:11:24
Speaker
Cate Blanchett and Tom Hiddleston and Anthony Hopkins when he was younger he had dark hair and then Chris Hemsworth they're like are we sure Thor are we sure Loki was the adopted one and not Thor yeah right seriously seriously
01:11:41
Speaker
because I know it's a small thing, but it always bugs me when a movie gives us characters that's supposed to be related and they look nothing alike. Right, yeah, yeah. So I always appreciate it when a movie puts actors
01:11:59
Speaker
who are supposed to be father and son or mother, daughter, or brother and brother, and they actually do look like, okay, well, they could be brothers or mother, daughter, or, I mean, you know, whatever, so. No, here's a great scene, too. So that scene when, in the banishment scene, when Thor is yelling at Odin, and then Odin shouts back at him, you are a vain, cruel boy, or something like that. Yeah. Like, Brana told Hopkins to improvise his reactions.
01:12:29
Speaker
And so yeah, so when they were filming it, so Hopkins went complete, he improvised all that to Iowa. And apparently like after the scene was, and when the scene made, the cast, people who were standing there watching the scene being filmed were sobbing. And, because it was so emotional, like the way he was playing it. And then Hemsworth and Hiddleston, they said that they had to struggle to keep themselves composed while they were on camera.
01:12:58
Speaker
And then Hiddleston went up to Hopkins afterwards and he's like, that was amazing. And Hopkins just said, Ken's fantastic, isn't he? Anthony Hopkins is a trick. I don't know if that's where he got it from.
01:13:21
Speaker
But I was watching him as Odin, and there was a lot of what he did as Odin that reminded me of Peter O'Toole in The Lion in Winter.
01:13:32
Speaker
where he played a king, Peter O'Toole played a king. And I don't know. And Anthony Hopkins was in that movie, too. That was like one of his first major roles, which he got because of Catherine Hepburn, who kind of mentored him when he was a young actor. And I don't know if that's exactly
01:13:52
Speaker
where he got it from but there's a lot of Peter O'Toole in I saw in Anthony Hopkins because I think that Peter O'Toole played a king in like four or five of his movies and very few actors played a king as well as Peter O'Toole. Peter O'Toole played a king like he was born to play you know like a king.
01:14:12
Speaker
Also something else about just taking it back to Brana for a second here is that I'm just reading here in the trivia on IMDB that Brana was apparently a Thor fan, like ever since he was a kid. And I'd never known that. You'd never expect someone like Kenneth Brana to be a comic book fan, but apparently he was a huge, and it does make sense though. It makes sense why he does all this Shakespeare stuff. That was probably what got him into Shakespeare in the first place.
01:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, you know what? A lot of, and it's kind of, yeah, you know, people look at you like you're crazy, you know, when you say stuff like this. But a lot of, but comic books is what led me to a lot of what people would normally think of as highbrow sort of culture. Right. A lot of, a lot of that, like, I, like, my first exposure to opera was Bugs Bunny cartoons. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then I went on to, you know,
01:15:10
Speaker
And a lot of stuff that I read in comic books, I got into Shakespeare from reading Thor. I got into reading science fiction, stuff like Michael Moorcock and Arthur C. Clarke, because a lot of the stuff I read in comic books.
01:15:28
Speaker
Well I think people don't forget is that especially when you're getting into like the the 70s and beyond you know a lot of the the comic book writers who were were coming up at that time you know they were educated guys right they'd like did like literary degrees and stuff like that or they were very well read and they used that stuff in their comics like Chris Claremont crib from tons of stuff like the whole idea of the Morlocks that was from science fiction novels the
01:15:53
Speaker
you know the the brood was basically just alien his his way of like introducing aliens into the marvel universe and i can't help but feel and i've had this discussion with other people before someone telling me that i'm a snob and others that think i'm crazy and others they said well you may have a point there because you had people that created pop culture back in the 50s 60s and 70s and
01:16:23
Speaker
like you said, they were well educated people, they were well rounded people. They drew on a variety of things to create their books and their movies and their comic books. You had comic book writers that was just... I mean, there was a reason why this stuff became popular in colleges and stuff like that, because it wasn't written specifically for kids. It was supposed to be...
01:16:52
Speaker
It was supposed to be written for a certain age group, but when you had stuff like Marvel that came along and took chances and wrote on another level besides entertainment, that's when they entered the mainstream pop culture. But the point, let me now get off my point. The point I'm trying to make is that people that created the pop entertainment back then drew from a lot of different things. You have people now, okay, who,
01:17:20
Speaker
right and direct, let's say they fall into a certain genre. Let's pick on the horror movies, right?
01:17:30
Speaker
The reason why they make the same kind of horror movies is that basically they got into horror movies because that's all they did. They just watched horror movies. Right. Right. They didn't they didn't read anything else. You know, they didn't read extensively. They didn't, you know, so did the only drawing from what they know, you know, from what they know, comic book writers now. They will. They grew up reading, you know, Frank Miller and Chris Claremont. So that's all they want to do.
01:17:57
Speaker
Now, it could be wrong, but that's what it seems to me like a lot of times. I was reading today that there's yet another comic book series based on The Watchmen that's coming out. Oh, they do? I didn't hear about that. You got Marshaft? Oh, no, I didn't hear about that. Yeah, it's supposed to be a 12-issue series. Marvel... Not Marvel. DC is putting out under their black label imprint. Oh, okay. Yeah, I see it right now. I think that might be...
01:18:28
Speaker
I wonder if that's based off the, because they introduced a new version of Rorschach in the Doomsday Clock series, which I just read a few weeks ago, which is actually really good. So I'm not sure if this is the... Oh, and it's Tom King doing it. So I'm willing to give that a chance because Tom King's a really excellent writer.
01:18:52
Speaker
Oh, OK. Well, OK. Well, if you say so, I'll go because I'm unfamiliar with it. But I'm just saying that there's another example of them going back to the well yet again and just writing something.
01:19:04
Speaker
that part of that is also, you know, it's part of that is also the, the editors who are working in these systems because you know, these are businesses and you know, they're going to do stuff based on what a lot of it too is, you know, just like these are the fans that they have as well. So, so you gotta, you gotta kind of appease those guys. Cause when you do try, this is one of those things where we talked about where the fans don't really know what they want. Yeah. And that's true. And,
01:19:33
Speaker
The DC and Marvel, they keep trying to cater to this same group of readers, basically, who they
DC, Marvel's Brand Focus and Creators' Rights
01:19:44
Speaker
never know what they want. Well, at this point, they're trying to stay afloat.
01:19:49
Speaker
Why do they get so much they're trying to stay afloat? I think it's just like they, I think it's just that they're in this mode of doing business because I mean, DC and Marvel, it costs for AT&T and Disney to keep these companies open. Like even if they didn't sell a single comic book to keep these companies open, it would cost like the money they find in the seat cushions. Yeah, I got you.
01:20:14
Speaker
Right, so I don't think that, I don't think it's a matter of staying afloat because the DC and Marvel, like the AT&T and Disney, they don't care if DC and Marvel never makes a dime, right? Because what they want is they see DC and Marvel as basically brand development for their movies and TV shows. Yeah, I've heard that argument and I heartily concur.
01:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, so like, they can never make, so it's not even a matter of that. Like, I don't think, you know, the head of, you know, Bob Iger, he probably doesn't even realize the comic books are still being published. Right? It's like, to him, it's like the pamphlets they print up at Disney World. No, well, just to show you that,
01:21:11
Speaker
I mean, you know, the power that they have is that if you ask the average person that's on the street, you know, what common company, they're even going to say DC or Marvel. They don't know it, you know, because that's who everybody, I remember that when, uh, what movie did I saw? I was Aquaman. A lot of people thought that was a Marvel movie. Oh yeah. Yeah. They didn't know it was DC. And you know what some people said, well, what's the difference?
01:21:36
Speaker
I remember someone asked me one time, like, how come Batman's out in the Avengers? And I'm like, because that's a different company. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, most people don't even understand the difference between, well, it's people dressed in costumes, you know. Right, yeah. Well, you know, who cares who's in, really, you know. So yeah, so it's not like,
01:21:58
Speaker
It's really, I tell you, if you had told me way back in the 70s that comics would be where it is now, where, you know, I wouldn't have believed, because of course, back then, I thought comics was gonna be, in the way that they were at that time, was gonna be around forever. Right, yeah, yeah. You know, I did not know they were gonna morph into what they are now, and that, of course, now. I mean, even the writers back then didn't think the comics would be around forever. No, no, no.
01:22:29
Speaker
And that's why they didn't care about like, you know, creator rights or anything like that, because they didn't, these creators, they didn't realize that they didn't expect these characters to be living on, you know, 50 years later. Well, that's why you don't see anybody. I mean, when was the last time somebody created a new character for DC or? Oh, there have been a bunch. There have been a bunch. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you had over in Marvel, they had
01:22:56
Speaker
They got the new Ms. Marvel character. They introduced Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. They brought him back and paired him up with a new character named Moon Girl. They did
01:23:09
Speaker
Ironheart, the Blue Marvel, a bunch of other stuff that are still being created. Lots of new characters still being created. DC has a whole bunch as well. They have like a new like- Wait, wait, wait. I'm not talking about just giving, just taking the name of an old character and just, you know, giving it to somebody else. I'm talking about a completely brand new character. No, there are, there are those two, yeah. There's a character,
01:23:35
Speaker
Brian Bendis created this character. I'm blanking on the name right now, but it's an original character that I think he introduced in his Superman book and then they gave her her own title. I'm trying to look it up now. Naomi, that's the name. That's the character's name.
01:23:56
Speaker
So yeah, DC's got this new imprint called Wonder Comics. And it's for like, it's directed more towards younger readers. They've got like a new Young Justice series in there. Oh, that's nice. So yeah, they're still creating new characters. But the thing is, like the, now they, after all the stuff with Jack Kirby and everything, like there is more
01:24:18
Speaker
they are giving more residuals for this stuff now, but it's not like, so it's not like it was before where, you know, after they were done with the book, they never saw another dime. Like they do get some residuals and stuff like that, but it's still not where it should be where like they should be getting, you know, a significant cut of like these movies and stuff like that.
Marvel TV Shows' Evolution and Politics
01:24:39
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I know I read an article, uh,
01:24:42
Speaker
Not long ago, the other day where Grant Morrison was saying that he wished that his name was on the Doom Patrol show that they have. He said, because he said, hey, let's be honest. He said, most of that stuff is mine. Oh, it's pretty much all his work. It's all his, yeah. Yeah.
01:25:01
Speaker
And yeah, and you know, even I posted this thing the other day with Diane Guerrero, I think I'm probably totally mangling the pronunciation of her name, but she plays Crazy Jane in the series. Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah, and they sent her a question and they said like, you know, well, did you read any of the Doom Patrol comics? And then she filmed this video for like this giant Morrison omnibus. Oh my God, that thing was huge. And she's like, I read this every night.
01:25:31
Speaker
I said, where did she find that thing from? Oh yeah, DC's got a few of those. The Morrison one, they got one for Watchmen as well, Dark Knight Returns, they got a bunch of those out. Oh, okay.
01:25:49
Speaker
All right, so anyway, kind of drifting off on tangents again, but I did want to talk about Colson in this, is that I love how in all these movies, nothing phases Colson. Nothing, not a thing. Like even when the destroyer, even when the destroyer comes to earth, you know, and the guy who's playing Jasper Sittwell, he asked him like, is that what it starts? And then Colson's just like, I don't know, the guy never tells me anything.
01:26:18
Speaker
And then he sees the Destroyer's face is starting to glow and Colson's like, here we go. When he sees Thor, like using his powers and having his hammer and everything, and he walks up to him afterwards, he's like Donald, I don't think you've been totally honest with me. Yeah, you know Phil Colson just totally,
01:26:42
Speaker
Again, you go back and you see these characters as they started. Because as far as I'm concerned, some people, they love the agents of SHIELD. I don't know. To me, they just completely hooked up Colson's character in that show, which went off the rails, I think, somewhere around season three or four. I don't know. No, it got better after that. I still watch it. I haven't caught up on the latest season, but yeah, I would still enjoy it.
01:27:10
Speaker
That's what everybody keeps telling me. I figured that what I'm going to do is because I think this season is the last season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm going to wait till it's over and then I'm going to go back and watch. Cause as you know, you know, I, I clocked out once, uh, cause to me it started being the agents of Daisy show when the girl with, uh,
01:27:33
Speaker
What was the name, Sky? Yeah, yeah. That was her name, Sky. When, you know, when the show started being, I mean, like all about her and then they went through that whole fiasco with the Inhumans. Well, that was the thing. It's because the problem with that is that
01:27:49
Speaker
when Marvel Studios and Marvel Television split, right? Because Kevin Feige, originally Marvel Studios was under the control of Ike Perlmutter, who owns Marvel and sold it to Disney. And when he sold it to Disney, it was with the understanding that he would basically get to keep his job for life. And Kevin Feige hated working with Perlmutter and he threatened to leave. And then Bob Iger smartly is like, we can't lose Kevin Feige.
01:28:19
Speaker
Yeah. But we've got this agreement with Perlmutter, we can't get rid of him. So Iger wisely said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to move Marvel Studios over and make it its own separate company under a corporate umbrella, instead of having it being a Marvel subsidiary. So then when they did that, that kind of screwed up the cohesion between the movies and the TV shows, because Marvel Television was still under the Marvel Entertainment banner.
01:28:46
Speaker
Perlmutter, you know, was pissed off that he no longer had any control or any say in the movies. So what he did was he tried to take the TV shows, you know, further away from that. And so because of that, like, and he had this thing where he believed because Fox had the X-Men rights, and Perlmutter, you know, brain trust that he is, thought that the Inhumans and the X-Men were basically the same thing.
01:29:14
Speaker
So he thought, well, you know, we don't need mutants. We can just use the Inhumans instead. Yeah, the Inhumans. So that's why he was pushing for an Inhumans movie. And I don't think anybody else really had any serious consideration for it.
01:29:28
Speaker
when he had full control over like, that's why he pushed the Inhumans so hard on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then when they did the Inhumans TV show and it failed miserably, at that point he kind of conceded, it's like, all right, fine. And then he let them take Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the directions they wanted to go. And then we got more interesting stuff, like they had Ghost Rider in there, they had the whole stuff with the LMDs, like it'd become a lot more interesting after that.
01:29:53
Speaker
Because I don't know, have you ever watched the Inhumans show? Did you ever watch it? Yeah, I watched it. Yeah, it was not good. Yeah, I didn't even bother watching it. You know what? I love the Inhumans so much. I said, you know what? I don't want to see it and be disappointed. And I cannot think of anybody who recommended that show. So I said, yeah, well, it must be pretty bad. I mean, nobody thought it was any good.
01:30:19
Speaker
No, no. And I'm not, I don't really care much for the inhumans to begin with. So like, there was nothing tying me to that show. You didn't give a poo boss fizzle about it. No, not at all. Like I only watched it because it was a Marvel thing, but I'm just like, yeah. And I sat through all what was it, like six episodes or then just like, nope, this is not that good at all. All right. Oh, also, and I love how Thor refers to Coulson as son of Cole.
01:30:48
Speaker
Son of Cole, yeah. But you know, that was one of the things that I liked about their relationship, because after a while, Thor and Coulson really did get to be pretty good friends. Well, that's the nice thing. I remember, yeah, because I was watching that scene. I was thinking about the first Avengers movie. And, you know, Coulson is really the only character in that movie that Thor confides in.
01:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then that carries over to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when S.I.F. appears, because she guest starred on like two episodes, and she has this respect and reverence for Coulson because of what she's heard from Thor. From Thor, exactly, yeah. Yeah.
01:31:33
Speaker
It's, I don't know, Phil Colson, he still remains one of my favorite characters. No matter how my perception is that they look them up, he remains one of my favorite characters. And when he appeared in this movie, I was just smiling all over again. I said, yeah, Phil Colson, there you go.
Nostalgia for Thor's Unique Storytelling
01:31:57
Speaker
It was just good to see him, and it was good to, you know what, it was really good to revisit this movie, because I have not seen this in, I don't think I've seen this in about, when was my last, because usually I will periodically do a rewatch of all of the MCU movies. I don't think I've rewatched, no, I know when Endgame came out, because I watched all of the Marvel movies in order
01:32:24
Speaker
you know, to get ready for endgame. And that was the last time that I, you know, had watched Thor. And again, as with so many of these movies, which to me is a testament of how well they're made and how well they stand up, and that after about like a half hour, I forget I'm supposed to be watching this critically to be able to talk about it, what we get together. And, you know, I'm into the movie. I'm watching, you know, because I like watching the movie.
01:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, so the last thing I want to talk about is Natalie Portman, because she took a lot of shit for her performances, Jane Foster. But I really like her in these movies. I like her here. And you know what? I am not really a big Natalie Portman fan. In most of her movies, like in the Star Wars movies, when she smiles, she looks like somebody that's trying to remember the right muscles to move.
01:33:19
Speaker
in order to smile. And there's a couple of things that I like her in, but I can't say that I'm really a Natalie Portman fan. But I like her in this movie. She seems like she's fresh and she's having fun, which there's a lot of Natalie Portman movies. She doesn't look like she's having a good time. Yeah.
01:33:42
Speaker
in the movie, you know? I mean, as a character and as an actor, she doesn't look like she's having a good time making the movie. But in this one, it's like, yeah, you know, she's much more relaxed. Right. You know, she even gets some opportunities to be kind of silly.
01:34:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's a completely different performance than what I'm used to seeing her in. I guess that's what I'm trying to get to the point of. She's more relaxed. Exactly. Yeah, much more relaxed. But yeah, I liked her in this movie, and I liked that they made her a physicist.
01:34:20
Speaker
an astrophysicist. It works really well for her character to have that connection and that makes sense why she's investigating this.
01:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, by making her astrophysicist, you know what? Because, let's face it, if we had to go through all the stuff that you and I were talking about earlier with Dr. Don Blake, and he's on vacation in Norway, and Jane Foster's a nurse, that's too much Felga Karp to bring into a movie. They do a lot of things with the characters in this movie that shortcuts a lot of the BS so we can get to the story. Right, exactly.
01:35:02
Speaker
and making her an astrophysicist this year. That's one of them. It gives her reason to be out there in the middle of the desert when, you know, Thor comes out of no place and the hammer lands. And it gives her reason to keep on being involved because, of course, S.H.I.E.L. comes and takes all of her research.
01:35:19
Speaker
You know, I also like that they didn't put this in a typical place where you'd expect it to be, right? They didn't put it in New York like all, like every single Marvel superhero lives in New York. But it's, and they didn't put it on in another big city. They put it in this small town in New Mexico. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like the way they did that. Which gives it a completely different look. Right. You know, we're in a small town. There's not a lot of people.
01:35:45
Speaker
You know, and of course, because it's in the small town, we get scenes like that fun scene where everybody's trying to lift the hammer and where it's falling at. Where we get Stan Lee's cameo in that one. Where they attach a chain to, and he's got a pickup truck. And he loses the bumper, yeah.
01:36:08
Speaker
He leans out, he said, did it work? And everybody's laughing for that of all the guys. And all these guys stand around with beers in their hand, and they're just having a good time just trying to lift his hammer. And it's a great scene. It's a lot of fun. I know that, as we were saying earlier, I know that a lot of people, when they talk about their favorite movies, MCU movies, for some reason, the Thor movies,
01:36:35
Speaker
they always put them at the bottom of the heap, and I have no idea why, especially this one, this first one, because this first one really is, you know, it's in the tradition of those MCU movies that we've seen already, you know, and the ones that we say are the best ones, like, okay, the Captain America movie, the first one, the Iron Man movie, you know, this is, I mean, to me,
01:37:04
Speaker
This is one of the best and one of my favorite out-of-all MCUs. It is. I really enjoyed this movie. And actually, you know who the finalist for the role of Thor was? Was Liam Hemsworth, Chris Hemsworth's brother. Oh, OK.
01:37:23
Speaker
Who isn't bad himself? No, no, but it's funny, like Hemsworth later said, you know, it was really funny that we both came all the way from Australia and we find out that we're competing against each other for the same role. Yeah, well, I think his brother is like almost, because Hemsworth is what, like six, four, six, six, something like that? I think his brother's like a little bit like,
01:37:48
Speaker
A little bit shorter. What does it matter when you're dead tall. I think he's like two inches short or something like that. Well, so, um, Brad Pitt was rumored. Channing Tatum and Triple H were considered Oddly enough, I don't know how this Daniel Craig was the first choice. I don't know how the hell you get Daniel Craig is Thor.
01:38:10
Speaker
You know what, I'm still trying to figure out how you got him as James Bond, but that's a whole other podcast. Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy, Alexander Skarsgard, Joel Kinnaman. Alexander Skarsgard, okay, I could see. Skarsgard, I could see, yeah. Yeah, Skarsgard could see.
01:38:31
Speaker
hilson as well they all screen tested for the role so did uh liam hemsworth and then eventually and then chris is the one who got it and you know what i cannot think of anyone better really like scars are ever been good but
01:38:43
Speaker
The thing about Thor is if you got someone who's just like, you know, a big muscle bound guy, like Thor would not be endearing. You need to have someone who can have that arrogance but can still be charmingly arrogant. And that thing about Hemsworth is this guy just oozes charm and like everything he's in. Well, yeah, you can see it in the scene when, you know, when Jane Foster
01:39:10
Speaker
you know, they take him out to breakfast. Yeah, I love that. And even though he's over there and he's smashing the coffee cups and everything like that, but he's being charming. Yeah. You know, even when he's being a dick, a total dick, he's still a charming dick. Right, exactly. And that's a very hard thing to pull off. Like you need to have that kind of
01:39:30
Speaker
natural career like just like downy has with uh with tony stark because tony stark is also an arrogant dick but they both have a charm about them that allows them that still makes you like them even when they're being a dick because you know what it is even though they're being a dick they're not being mean about it right yeah because you can you can be a dick
01:39:52
Speaker
But you can be a dick without being mean about being a dick, if that makes any sense. No, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we see in guys like Thor and then Tony Stark. And Thor, OK, Thor is not a mean-spirited guy, first of all. This is just something that he sees as his natural birthright, that he's supposed to have. Right. But through the course of this movie,
01:40:22
Speaker
he actually earns the right to carry the hammer and to be the king of Asgard and all that other stuff. And matter of fact, we see that through his whole character arc through all of the Thor movies and the Avenger movies and stuff like that. We see a Thor that learns and grows and the lessons he learns in this movie is only enriched in every succeeding movie that we see him in. Exactly, yeah.
01:40:52
Speaker
All right. I think that's basically all we have to say about Thor. Is there anything else you wanted to add? Only that if you have not seen Thor yet, and I cannot imagine why, if you listen to this podcast, I would imagine that you have seen all of the movies that we've talked about already. But if you have not seen Thor, then that's your homework assignment for this weekend. I want you to go see Thor.
01:41:18
Speaker
have seen Thor, but you haven't seen it in like a couple of years, then your homework assignment for this week is to go watch Thor again. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All means. Of course, of course, when you start doing that, then you probably end up watching other MCU movies, but hey, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. They're like potato chips. You know, you watch one and, you know, you want to watch another one. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, these, it's a, I think it's an underrated movie. Like I remember even when
01:41:47
Speaker
When the trailer came out, people were like, I don't know how they're going to make Thor work. And I'm like, well, I'm just going to give him a chance. You won't know until you try it. And I think they made it work. I think they pulled it off more. There's some things, I think maybe they went a bit too much with the whole fish out of water bit with Thor. And I would have liked to see more stuff dealing with Asgard. But overall, I still like this movie.
01:42:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I have no problem with this movie at all. Yeah. I mean, like you, I would have liked to see more Asgard stuff, which we do get in The Dark World, which, of course, is the red-headed stepchild of all Thor movies. Yeah, yeah. Nobody seems to have. I mean, I liked it. But apparently, I'm the only one who did, because a lot of most people I know don't like The Dark World for reasons that totally escape me and we will get into whenever we get around to doing
01:42:40
Speaker
No, I like it too. And I mean, it's not as good as the other movies, but I still enjoy it. And you know, it's funny. I think it was like maybe last year or something. Not long after we, yeah, not long after we saw Endgame. Copenot was like, I asked her, you know, you want to watch something? She's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, what do you want to watch? You know, I'll usually ask her, give her, see if she wants to watch like any particular movie, or if there's like any genre she wants to watch. And she's like, I want to watch The Dark World. I'm like, really?
01:43:07
Speaker
Okay. I'm like, why? She's like, well, because we saw Endgame and there was so much dealing with that in that movie, so I want to rewatch it. So we went back and rewatched it and, you know, we enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.
01:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, the only reason why I didn't, let's say I watched this last, I watched Thor last night. The only reason why I didn't watch the other two Thor movies, like one right after another, because it was so late at night, it was like one o'clock in the morning when I finished watching it. And I said, well, I had to get up early this morning. So otherwise, I probably would have sat there and I would have watched, you know, the next two, the Thor and, you know, yeah, I would have watched the other two, which I probably will watch.
01:43:45
Speaker
this weekend, I probably watched it both of them, now that we've been talking about four so much. And I mean, you know, I watched it. And as a matter of fact, I have it on now while we're talking about this. I got the sound turned down. I got it on.
01:43:59
Speaker
Yeah. All right. So that's about all we have to say about the first Thor movie. So that means, and this was your picks, that means next week, it's my pick again.
Upcoming Discussion on X-Men: Days of Future Past
01:44:11
Speaker
And, you know, I thought we'd go back to the X-Men because Days of Future Past is on Disney Plus now.
01:44:18
Speaker
Oh, okay. So this would be a good time to go back and have a look at X-Men Days of Future Past, which a lot of people consider one of the best, if not the best movies in the X-Men series. I had some knucklehead contact me.
01:44:38
Speaker
on instant messenger and said, ha, ha, ha, ha. I said, what are you ha, ha, haing about? Well, you guys blew it. You didn't do, you didn't cover the X-Men for the anniversary. And I said, you dumb dick. I said, look at this. And I gave him a link to when we did the first X-Men movie. We did the first X-Men movie. Yeah.
01:44:59
Speaker
All right, okay, so yeah. In fact, now there are actually two versions of this movie. So there's, and I think the theatrical cut is the one that's most likely on Disney Plus, I haven't checked, but there's also an extended version of the movie. And that's the one I'm actually- Which one do you wanna do? I'm gonna be doing the extended version. It's called the Rogue Cut, because this one actually had, because Rogue had, Anna Paquin had filmed a scene as Rogue, which was cut from the theatrical version.
01:45:25
Speaker
Um, and so I want to go and so and I actually think it's a better it's a better movie because it deals with It uh, it has a better use of some stuff and so I and it it shows a little bit more of the future Part so I want to I want to go back and i'm going to look at the the road cut Okay. Well, okay. Well, no problem. I'll find the extended cut and okay. Awesome. Sounds good. So join us Awesome. So join us next week. We'll be talking about the extended version of x-men days a future pass
01:45:53
Speaker
And that about does it for us. Derek, anything else you want to add before we sign off for the day? Nope. That's it, as usual. I'd like to remind you, as always, the coronavirus is still out there. So everybody, please stay safe.
01:46:11
Speaker
Do not listen to the ignoramus in the White House that is telling you all the BS. Listen to scientists, listen to doctors, listen to health experts and specialists. These are the people that we should be listening to in this time. Watch a bunch of good movies, read some good books, and be good to each other.
01:46:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. All right, so we're getting out of here now, so join us again next week. Be careful. Wear a mask, as Derek said. Don't listen to that fucking dumb ass piece of shit.
01:46:54
Speaker
you know, watch Thor over the weekend and watch X-Men Days of Future Past so you can prepare for our next episode. Yeah, by all means, yeah, definitely. I would hope that you guys, you know, that's one of the reasons why we announced what we're going to watch. There's one reason why we announced what we're going to do next week to give you opportunity so that you can watch it first and, you know, you can be ahead of us.
01:47:17
Speaker
Exactly, yeah, yeah. All right, so that does it for now. Head on over to facebook.com, look for the Superhero Cinephiles group, join the discussion. Also, we've got a PayPal donate button on the site, so if you don't want to commit to a Patreon subscription, then you can just toss us, you know, a buck here and there, and every little bit helps us keep the lights on around here.
01:47:39
Speaker
Yeah. And also, if you're interested at all, because my wife, she listens to this, and she tells me I should plug my stuff more. If you want to read more of my movie reviews, go to the Ferguson Theater. There are reviews of most of the movies that we've covered already, believe it or not. I've covered a lot of superhero movies, as well as other movies and other genres, Western, science fiction, or whatever. So by all means, go check it out.
01:48:09
Speaker
Exactly. All right. So that does it for now. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time. Good night. God bless.
01:48:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
01:48:41
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantudios.com.