Because I saw Thor at 12:01 this past Friday morning and the more I think about it the more I find myself believing it to be the best pure comic book superhero movie that I've ever seen.
Based on the Marvel Comics character created by Kirby, Stan Lee and Larry Leiber, Thor is the adaptation of "The King"'s trademark vast cosmic vision that we always wanted in a movie but never thought we'd actually get! I would even say that Thor is a film that we've seen precious little of since the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope, NOT The Phantom Menace). Directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Hemsworth as the titular Norse god of thunder, Thor is a movie of big concepts painted with broad brushes across an epic scale...
...and it is one heckuva fun ride!
Thor doesn't bother with puny mortal concerns like justifying the reality of science with the mystic wonder of magic. As Thor describes it at one point, his world is one where science and magic are one and the same. Or if you want a more pedestrian explanation: Thor and his people are an alien civilization of overwhelming power and achievement, that we Earthlings can only perceive as magic. I liked that. It's what lets a movie like Thor dispense with tedious rationale and get on to the action, action, ACTION!
The film's plot - the story comes from Mark Protosevich and J. Michael Straczynski: a man who has no small amount of experience in this sort of thing (he created Babylon 5) - will be gratefully acknowledged by those who have followed Thor in Marvel Comics, while also being readily accessible to those unfamiliar with the character. The movie opens with Thor being thrown down from heaven (literally) and crashing into the New Mexico desert, where he is found by scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), assistant Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Jane's advisor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard). Thinking that this strapping muscular blond guy needs medical attention, Jane and crew ferry the unconscious Thor off to a hospital... and failing to notice the metal hammer that has followed Thor from space.
From there we get a glorious synopsis of the world that Thor comes from, courtesy of monologue from Thor's father Odin, the king of Asgard (played magnificently by Sir Anthony Hopkins). We see how the race of Asgardians battled the Frost Giants over a thousand years ago to keep them from conquering the Nine Worlds (of which Midgard - the realm of Earth - is a part). We see Odin taking his young sons Thor and Loki to look at the Casket of Ancient Winters, the source of the Frost Giants' power. The obvious setup is that the Frost Giants will soon (in Asgardian terms if not human) try to take back what was once theirs.
That comes several hundreds of years later when Odin is about to proclaim Thor (Hemsworth) King of Asgard with Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Queen Frigga (Rene Russo) and the rest of the royal court witnessing the coronation. The Frost Giants attempt to steal the Casket, they fail... and Thor is perturbed, to put it mildly. So Thor gathers up his posse consisting of Loki, Sif (Jaimie Alexander) and the Warriors Three (Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano and Joshua Dallas). They make their way over the Bifrost Bridge to convince Heimdall (Idris Elba) to open the gate to the Giants' world of Jotunheim so that Thor and company can wage war on Laufey (Colm Feore) and his frigid brethren.
Well, Thor wanted battle and that's what he and his compatriots get. But it's not what Odin desires. Thor's daddy shows up, brings the wayward Asgardians back and has some not-so-nice words for Thor. The culmination of Thor's chastisement? The god of thunder is stripped of his powers and his hammer Mjolnir and cast down to Earth.
For the next good bit Thor is quite an entertaining "fish out of water" story. Thor knows who he is and he knows where Odin has exiled him to... but that doesn't stop him from making a Nordic spectacle of himself (the line that he tells the pet shop clerk is especially hilarious). But this isn't a story about fallen gods trying to hack it like mortals must: this is Marvel Comics' Thor and it's not long before Loki... who made a discovery about his own heritage during the jaunt to Jotunheim... takes advantage of Odin's fall into the deep Odinsleep in order to claim the throne of Asgard. Sif and the Warriors Three sneak to Earth to find Thor and from that point on magic, mystery, mischief and might are on a honkin' big collision course, culminating in a battle for all creation.
Thor is everything of the purest essence of comic bookdom's Silver Age writ large for the silver screen. Some will argue that the film might suffer a bit from a slower mid section, but you know what: I didn't have any particular problem with that. Because Thor at its heart is a story about humility and how one must learn to be humble. When we first see Thor he's brash, headstrong, eager to fight... and those aren't the qualities needed in a king. So we watch Thor learn the hard way that he's not the centerpiece of Asgard, and that a king must govern not so much with power as with wisdom. In that respect Thor might be too rushed for some people... but hey, if you're going to see Thor you're going to watch stuff like Thor fighting the Destroyer, not for Ayn Rand-ish soliloquies about virtue.
Chris Hemsworth is spot-on perfect as Thor. Anthony Hopkins brings the requisite weight and gravitas to the role of Odin. But the character that I really wound up digging the most was Tom Hiddleston's Loki. This is a villain who is so not like the stereotypical cartoon bad guy. Indeed: Loki is darn nearly a character that you must feel sympathy toward. It's obvious that beneath it all he loves his father and brother very dearly. This is the kind of complicated emotion that would have been fun to behold in Anakin Skywalker with the Star Wars prequels that we unfortunately didn't get. I can easily imagine that it will be but one more thing that will entice many to see Thor during its first run at the box office.
I'll give Thor my highest recommendation possible for a movie, and I'm probably going to catch it again later this week with some more friends. Oh yeah: look for Stan Lee in his most brief (and somehow funniest) cameo yet in a Marvel Comics movie. And don't be so quick to leave the theater: there's a scene after the credits which sets the stage for Thor's return in The Avengers next summer!
Then two days ago I shared with y'all the "impressive... most impressive!" video of a German Star Wars fan's General Grievous costume.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here, looking at my humble Jedi Knight costume, looking back at the ingenuity of these other outfits, a single tear trickling down my cheek...
(Okay someday, Lord willing, I will at last put together that movie-quality Boba Fett costume that I've always dreamed of, muhahahahaha!)
According to the story at GeekTyrant, Anthony spent $4000 on his War Machine suit, and took him but one month to construct! It's made from high-impact urethane and held together with 1,500 rivets. The helmet was sculpted from clay and then liquid resin used to cast the finished item (with servo motors making the faceplate open and close like in the Iron Man movies). Add some LEDs to the chest and a motor to make the machine gun spin, and Anthony was all set!
But why just look at the pictures when you can see War Machine in full glorious action? Behold the video, true believers!
Words fail to describe just how glorious a piece of work that is. Bigtime props to Anthony Le for his hard work and cleverness!
And apprently local cult leader Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ (part of what many are now calling "Sons of Hell" and "Stalkers for Jesus") is not exempt.
Here's the original photo that was sent in by "Code Name Exelsior"...
This photo was taken inside Martinsville Church of Christ's sanctuary. That's Johnny Robertson himself in the left of the picture, and fellow cultist/stalker (and partner with recently found-guilty criminal trespasser Micah Robertson) Mark McMinnis in the plaid shirt sitting down.
Have you spotted it yet? Is your "Spider-Sense" tingling?
Well if not, behold true believers!
I count at least nine and possibly more Spider-Man comic books sitting in a pile on the pews of Martinsville Church of Christ. The headquarters of the cult that puts out What Does The Bible Say?, A Word From The Lord and Religious Review on WGSR: live TV broadcasts where Robertson and his cronies do nothing but condemn everyone else for such imagined slights and sins as having church car washes and bake sales, instrumental music and books during church worship that aren't the Bible.
Yet there it is, most presumably during a worship service at Martinsville Church of Christ: a heap of Marvel Comics and within arm's reach of its head magus. And not only that but Marvel Comics featuring Spider-Man: a character whose fathers include two Jewish comic book legends (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)! I could also note that Spidey's co-creator Steve Ditko also created Doctor Strange and worked on the New Gods at DC for awhile, so it could be argued that Johnny Robertson is also allowing "eastern religions" and pagan worship inside as he puts it "the church that you read about in the Bible".
Johnny Robertson you damn hypocrite: sit down and SHUT UP, sir!
And you thought it was bad enough that Robertson gets the Bible all twisted and convoluted. Lord only knows how he would interpret the X-Men books.
But as one trusted associate put it when I showed this photo to him: "Of course, I did wonder if comic books is where Johnny Robertson gets his theology from."
Feel free to post whatever clever and snide captions and comments you can think of!
(P.S.: Speaking of hypocrisy, why is Johnny Robertson giving more than a quarter of a million dollars of his congregation's money per year to a multiple-convicted criminal, habitual thief and bisexual purveyor of "filthy" entertainment?)
Yes, it has come to this: the entire western world dividing up into Team Leno and Team Conan. There are natural disasters across the globe and corrupt politicians taking us for a ride... but thank God we have our priorities in order!
/sarcasm
What sort of funny are we talking here? Captain America was just on the phone while wearing a Confederate outfit, discussing the re-enactment he's on his way to: "Hey it's the Civil War, what's the worst that could happen?"
Looks like I've found something new to DVR (in addition to those reruns of Are You Being Served? on PBS :-)
Fourteen months ago Mark Millar began his "Old Man Logan" arc for Marvel Comics: the story of Wolverine, now some fifty years in the future, eking out a hardscrabble existence with his wife and children in the countryside of an America gone straight to hell. And in all that time Wolverine - now simply known as "Logan" - hasn't once popped his claws.And then the cataract-plagued Hawkeye approached Logan with a business proposition: one that the former X-Man couldn't turn down because he needed the rent money to pay off the inbred progeny of Bruce Banner. For the next several issues we watched Logan and Hawkeye tear across the remnants of the United States en route to New Babylon. And during the trip we finally learned what happened on the night the heroes fell, when Wolverine was brought down so hard that he forever forsook violence.
But it was all a setup. Hawkeye was killed by agents of the new President: the Red Skull. Logan wound up meting out a cold dish of revenge in the bowels of the White House, before donning Iron Man's old armor and flying back to California with a valise full of cash: more than enough to pay off the Hulk Gang.
And then Logan arrived home.... to find that his entire family had been killed by the Hulks. They "got bored", Logan's neighbor told him.
Do I even need to intimate what happened next, after Wolverine saw the battered bodies of his loved ones?
"SNIKT!"
Well friends, it has been a long wait indeed but "Old Man Logan" finally wraps up this week with the publication of Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size #1. All I will say about this issue is: get it! It's not terribly deep on character or plot compared to what has preceded it... but hey, we do see Wolverine, uncaged after a half-century of self-restraint, totally breaking bad on dozens of Hulks. It's a mean, ultra-violent sixty-four pages that will have you forgetting that the Comics Code Authority ever existed. But I also have to say that it ends better than I had expected (and I had come to expect plenty after how good the rest of this arc has been).
By all means buy it now on the stands. Or wait for the "Old Man Logan" trade paperback when it comes out in a few months. I'm not much of a regular comic book reader, but I must attest that "Old Man Logan" has been satisfying enough to warrant some bookshelf space. Absolutely to be recommended!
But it's true: Disney is purchasing Marvel Entertainment and everything that comes with it - comics, characters, movies, the whole shebang - for $4 billion in cash and stock transaction.
All that I can think of at the moment is that this will probably become the entertainment industry's equivalent to Ted Turner's Time Warner purchasing of America Online.
See if this makes any sense: in April readers of Marvel Comics got Wolverine #73, which had nothing to do with the current "Old Man Logan" arc and was mostly a promotional issue for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. But last week Marvel delivered Wolverine #72...I must ask aloud: was X-Men Origins: Wolverine really worth mucking up the publishing of what many are already calling the greatest comics story ever told about Wolverine?
Probably not. But be of good cheer: Wolverine #72 gets us back on track with "Old Man Logan".
To recap: it's been fifty years since "the night the heroes fell" and Wolverine hasn't popped his claws once since. He has relegated himself to being simply "Logan": a pacifist farmer scratching out a meager existence alongside his wife and children in the wastes of California. When the now-blind ex-Avenger Hawkeye approaches Logan with an offer he can't refuse ('cuz Logan is behind on his rent to the inbred offspring of Bruce Banner) the two former heroes take off across a carved-up America plagued with Moloids, Venom-possessed dinosaurs and worse. And then in Part 5 of "Old Man Logan" we found out why it is that Logan renounced violence and threw down the proverbial sword (read my reaction to that issue here). In the last chapter of "Old Man Logan", Hawkeye and Logan finally arrived at New Babylon with their mysterious package, and at last we find out who is calling the shots of this dystopian vision of America: the Red Skull, now the President of the United States.
If you've been reading "Old Man Logan" already and have been frustrated by the publishing schedule, rest assured that Wolverine #72 will profoundly reward your patience! The initial scenes in the White House with an even more macabre Red Skull and how he's still gloating over his victory a half-century earlier might be some of the most nightmarish images in Marvel history. I dare not say anything else about this issue folks, because if you've been keeping up this far then you really owe it to yourself to go into it cold. But it's a wallop of a read and the final pages will make you forget everything that delayed this issue from coming out.
Oh yeah, you might wanna try reading it a little slower and indulge your senses all the more, because "Old Man Logan" won't be wrapping up until a double-sized issue coming out in September at the earliest. But don't let that stop you from discovering the best Wolverine tale in many a moon and maybe ever: "Old Man Logan" is a must-read whether you're a rabid comics fan or a casual reader.
While we're waiting for the swine flu epidemic to either burn itself out or dispatch most of civilization to "the Choir Invisible", here's some encouraging literature to read in the meantime: Marvel Comics' AMAZING adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel The Stand.The ongoing series, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Mike Perkins with oversight by King himself, is scheduled to span thirty issues consisting of five story arcs. The first, "Captain Trips", just wrapped up and you should be able to find the collected trade paperback version at most well-stocked bookstores. If you've ever read the novel, you can probably figure out that "Captain Trips" covers the first several days of the superflu plague that wipes out more than 99% of humanity. The next and current arc, "American Nightmares", deals with what happens to those lucky (or unfortunate) enough to have survived the pandemic.
As a longtime fan of The Stand I can heartily recommend buying this. Marvel's The Stand is probably the finest version of King's tale outside of the original book that I've seen yet. Yeah, the TV miniseries was pretty good (can you believe it'll be fifteen years next month since it first premiered?) but as a graphic novel there's much more room and liberty to faithfully recreate The Stand's plot and its characters. Well worth tracking down and keeping up with.
