Thor 2 - discussion thread (spoilers)

[Kaido]

This is a discussion thread for Thor 2. There are spoilers. There are no spoiler tags. Do not continue reading if you do not want the movie was spoiled.

First of all, it was WAY better than I was expecting! The trailer made it look like they had really upped the production value and it did not disappoint. The first Thor was fun for a watch or two, but it wasn't up to say Ironman 1 caliber, you know? You could tell they really unleashed the budget with this one though - the graphics were great, the acting was fun, and I actually would like to see it again in theaters, maybe in 3D this time.

I'm not super hot on 3D movies. I saw Thor 2 in 2D. I hated the HFR 3D in The Hobbit. I don't mind 3D when it's done right, like in Avatar or Gravity. Thankfully, there were no "HEY THIS IS A 3D MOVIE GUYS!!!" type of callouts, like a hand stretching out to you in 3D or stuff like that, so the movie worked very well in 2D, which I very much appreciated because it didn't feel "gimmicky".

I'll just kind of discuss the pros and cons randomly, I guess. For starters, I felt like it should have been at LEAST 20 minutes longer. It felt like they cut some stuff out, especially reaction points. Like, they didn't give you enough time to react to certain scenes, like certain funny parts - they cut them too quick. And then there were some bigger parts, like the scientist boss running around naked and taking the pills - there was definitely a whole backstory they just sliced entirely out of the final movie there, haha. Also with the superhero girl getting jealous of Natalie Portman's character, there was more to that story that will hopefully be explored in a future sequel.

I LOVED the graphics. I'm a huge CGI fan (when done right) and this movie was totally great. I did get the feeling like they pulled some of the graphical ideas from LOTR & JJ Abram's first Star Trek, same with the sound, like the sound effects for the spaceships flying around definitely felt a bit ripped off from the new Star Wars movies. Not in a bad way on any of them, but you could definitely see some homage there.

There were very few scenes where I was like "aw, that's green screen". Generally they did an awesome job with everything. I liked the graphic design of the spaceships, sort of reminded me of the netherworld ones from Riddick 2. The watcher's gold metal ball cage was awesome, lots of details in the gears and stuff, and they didn't focus on the rainbow road too much, which looked kinda goofy in the first one. Lots of neat shots like when they sent the queen's body off the waterfall.

I thought the script could have been tighter. Ironman #1 is my gold standard for this - it had the right amount of real acting AND superhero stuff. I think they nailed the superhero stuff & the graphics and overall production quality in this one, but they needed to tighten up the editing a bit, like I said with giving the audience time to react before yanking you into a different scene. It was kind of hit & miss with that, like the intern had some pretty funny moments that they jumped away from quickly, but they did a good job when Thor shoved Loki out of the spaceship haha.

The cameos cracked me. I lol'd HARD when I saw Chuck (does anyone know if he was supposed to be the Princess Bride sidekick from the first movie, or was he a different dude?). The Captain America part also had me rolling - let's talk about TRUTH! Haha. I also DID NOT REALIZE that Doctor Who was the bad guy until we saw the credits! I thought Christopher Eccleston did a great job as the bad guy! Sort of like how long it took me to figure out the Ice Giant king in the first one was Liam Neeson, haha. Edit: Oops, I meant Colm Feore, the bad guy from Riddick.

The sound quality sounded a little off to me, especially Portman's intern girl, she always sounded muffled. There were a few other parts that jumped out at me with the sound effects and music and stuff that didn't sound like it was mastered or recorded quite right. Not a big deal overall though.

There was a double ending to the movie, in case you didn't stay. The first one was right after the movie and was VERY weird. Apparently there was a dude with a secure art collection that they gave the Aesther stuff to, but told him it was a second Tesseract. Then he's like "5 to go!" so they opened it up for a double Thor trilogy, whoohoo! I also thought they could have split the final post-credit ending into two - I liked that Thor came back and planted one on her, and then they showed what happened to the monster (chasing birds haha), but I felt like that would have been a really great clip just on it's own, right after the final credits, and maybe have put the Thor returning part right after the movie, and then put the weird part with the collector guy in the middle of the credits (after the big names but before the scrolling or something). It was a lot of post-ending stuff, but I like post-ending stuff so it worked for me!

I was a bit thrown off with the guns & RPG launchers in the beginning, but the spaceship thing kind of made since after awhile. Definitely felt very new Star Trekky to me though. I didn't feel like the seriousness of the space elves quite meshed with the funness of Thor & his earth buddies. I would actually like to see a whole separate movie about them, especially since it brings up the question of what happened and why should Asgard be allowed to exist if they simply overran the space darkness elves? Could be a fun movie.

They did a good job switching Loki up. I almost gasped when Thor went to him for help and he switched from confident to a pathetic inmate, sitting messily against the wall. I knew he had something up his sleeve for when they wanted to destroy the Aesther, but I totally forgot about that when Thor's hand got chopped off, excellent misdirection! I knew that Loki wasn't dead when he got stabbed either, because that was his "out" with Thor and because he is a sneaky enough person that he would know what was coming from a bad guy.

I'm still wondering what happened to Odin, if Loki killed him (I don't think so though) or locked him up somewhere or dumped him on that barren planet or what. I suspected it was him at the end because that's how Loki rolled. When Loki first returned in disguise and delivered the news of his own death to Odin, I also would have liked to have seen Odin give a small speech about how awesome Loki was a son, how much he loved him, and how much he wished he had stepped up to the plate instead of being a villain, because I think that would be a stronger reason for Loki to eventually turn away from the dark side, especially now that he is acting as king, apparently. You saw some of that when they were fighting on the ship and Thor was like, I wish I could trust you.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. Wish it had an extra 20 minutes or so for some more backstory & more time for reaction shots. Waaaaay better than the first Thor. Considering seeing again, this time in 3D :thumbsup:

TL;DR: It was fun. I liked it better than the Avengers movie. Go see it if you like superhero movies!

 

[FelixDeCat]

I wanna see that movie. It has that guy from that movie.

 

[Kaido]

I wanna see that movie. It has that guy from that movie.

Speaking of which, that was a really good documentary: (available on Netflix)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402200/

 

[FelixDeCat]

Speaking of which, that was a really good documentary: (available on Netflix)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402200/

Nice review btw.

 

[cubby1223]

It was a great movie up until the ending that made absolutely no sense.

It wasn't a "oh he sure fooled us!" ending, it was a "the writers will change anything they want at any time" kind of moment.

 

[BrokenVisage]

So, like, is Loki a good-guy in this?

 

[Newbian]

So, like, is Loki a good-guy in this?

If you watch the movie you would know that would be a no.

I wonder how many movies they are going to do the infinity gems things now as there are 6 and we only know of 2 as they either would have to introduce them in the other super hero movies or just skip it and have thanos get all of them except the last one in the next thor movie.

 

[Kaido]

So, like, is Loki a good-guy in this?

Nah, but you have a glimmer of hope that he can become a good guy someday. He's smart but he's angry, and the anger clouds his judgement for being a good guy. At some point, he's going to have to die, because that's just how it is with these things.

The difficult part is that Thor cannot detect when he's fooling him. At first you think he can, when he tells him to quit playing games before releasing him from prison and he changes from Loki in a suit to Loki the depressed inmate, but it'd make sense that Thor would know what he looked like when he went to prison. So first he "dies" in Thor's arms, but not really, and Thor thinks he's dead, and then he takes the place of Odin and Thor cannot tell.

So now we have a real problem, because who's really in charge? Is Odin just not in that room, and Loki took advantage of the empty room to talk to Thor? Or did Loki do something more sinister like banish Odin to a far-away place or lock him in the dungeon? I don't think Loki would kill him, at least not yet, because he respected his mother, but Odin is getting close to dying at some point, so he can't do anything too crazy with him. A private dungeon somewhere, perhaps.

 

[Kaido]

It was a great movie up until the ending that made absolutely no sense.

It wasn't a "oh he sure fooled us!" ending, it was a "the writers will change anything they want at any time" kind of moment.

Really? I thought the ending was fine, the only loop I feel like they should have closed was "where's Odin?". Loki is the trickster, so he tricked Thor and Odin. But you do get the feeling that, with Loki being able to do projected holography or whatever, they had an awful lot of freedom to really do anything they wanted.

 

[Kaido]

If you watch the movie you would know that would be a no.

I wonder how many movies they are going to do the infinity gems things now as there are 6 and we only know of 2 as they either would have to introduce them in the other super hero movies or just skip it and have thanos get all of them except the last one in the next thor movie.

Yeah I'm curious how it's going to play out. Captain America 2: The Winter Solder trailer looked way awesome, like as good as the Thor 2 trailer, so they're definitely getting their act together with the other non-Avenger, non-Ironman movies. To me, the first Thor felt like both of the Hulk movies - kinda meh, fun for a watch because I like superheroes, but nothing really noteworthy. Thor 2 was a different animal, VERY fun and would re-watch!

It looks that way with the Winter Soldier as well - the first Captain America was alright, better than the first Thor I'd say, but still not up to caliber with what it could be. I definitely think that Hawkeye needs his own movie, Renner did a great job portraying him in the first Thor and in the Avengers movie. I don't know if the Black Widow is noteworthy enough for her own movie, although the part in the Avengers where she gets the call to come in & beats those guys up makes it look like she could do a pretty good James Bond-style action movie, instead of crazy-action superhero movie.

Jeremy Renner is listed on IMDB as being in the upcoming "The Avengers: Masters of Evil" as well as 2015's "The Avengers: Age of Ultron". There's also a "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie coming out, which is what the post-credit deal was with the Collector guy:

http://news.moviefone.com/2013/11/07/kevin-feige-marvel-thor-the-dark-world/

I would actually really like to see a spin-off Loki movie. I think there's a lot they could do with that, since he's a pretty fun actor and has had a lot of good fan response, and if he really is masquerading as king, there's quite a bit of trouble he can get into

 

[zerocool84]

I didn't think the first one was that good but I'll watch it to fill in the Marvel universe.

 

[Kaido]

I didn't think the first one was that good but I'll watch it to fill in the Marvel universe.

Yeah the first one was a throwaway filler movie. I think it got more popular because Loki was a great character. They really brought the heat with Thor 2 tho :thumbsup:

 

[weirdichi]

So there was one more scene after the credits rolled? I thought they changed it up and just rolled the extra scenes right at the end. Bah!

 

[Kaido]

So there was one more scene after the credits rolled? I thought they changed it up and just rolled the extra scenes right at the end. Bah!

Yup. And it was pretty much a double - one part of Thor coming back to make out with Portman, and one part showing the giant monster dog wandering around London. I love stuff after the credits :thumbsup:

 

[dxkj]

I thought the end was a bit underwhelming... the bad guys had black-hole or, teleportation hole grenade tech, and the professor basically made up some spears that did the same thing, and that plus an extra hammer toss took care of him?

I will say I lol'd at Mjolnir chasing Thor around as he teleported all over the place.

Decent movie but nothing special, could have been an action packed 90 minute movie, way too many, "this just happened, because we say it did" moments.

Portman finds the one convergence that leads directly to the aether/ether?

Cloaking ships can rape the eff out of asgaard, and all surface to air defense sucks.

No one suspects loki of faking his own death? Nooo waaaaay! Everyone knew that was him at the end pretending to be Odidn, right?

Everyone playing hide and go teleport with the dark elf masked guys, whee! yaya fun!

Oh no, Treason! We will never be allowed back in Asgaard!... wait, we always ignore the all-father and hes like, whatevs afterwards usually, cause we kick ass!

Cameo of all of thor's friends beating the shit out of a group of Asgaard defenders on each step of the way.

Dunno, like I said it was ok, but very kiddy-scripted some of the time.

5/10

 

[weirdichi]

Everytime I saw the bad guy, I thought of this guy and the music starts playing in my head:

 

[Kaido]

I thought the end was a bit underwhelming... the bad guys had black-hole or, teleportation hole grenade tech, and the professor basically made up some spears that did the same thing, and that plus an extra hammer toss took care of him.

Yeah I agree, the ending lacked emotional impact. You wanted a "big win" and all you got was "Welp, we were successful. Let's go home!" haha. With all of the running around, planting those electronic stakes into the ground, etc., it felt like it should have been built up more and had more of an epic ending. Like when the spaceship suddenly gets transported after Thor defeats the bad guy and then flattens him while he was down - the timing was so far off that I had completely forgotten about him by then and had moved on. It got a chuckle out of me, but that really should have happened sooner - transport the bad guy back, maybe he stands up to try to return again, then gets smooshed. Boom, good storyflow.

Portman finds the one convergence that leads directly to the aether/ether?

That's what I mean about parts being cut out. It felt like there were holes in the story that someone had chopped out to make the movie shorter. So they throw a bunch of shoes into the portal (someone had obviously been playing Portal haha) and then she goes through one and is now the chosen one who carries the Aether? (spelling based on alien subtitles) Plus it was weird that it was like, ruins, and there was a stupid pillar holding some liquid mercury with a red LED glowstick and that's what is going to destroy the universe? Was it alive? Did it choose her? All seemed pretty random.

I think one of the things they struggled with was having a serious movie vs. a fun movie. That part when she goes into the Aether realm in the beginning was pretty serious, you know? And those crazy space elves were pretty serious dudes with serious faces, serious spaceships, and serious deep voices. It felt a lot like the opening to the first new Star Trek with the big bad guy's spaceship - this is serious stuff, man! But then it was all jolly at other parts, didn't really jive.

I also wanted to see more action from Thor's support crew. I liked how they all gave Loki death threats and he said "apparently there will be a line to kill me" hehe - but they should have used them more because Thor needs his posse. If he's just one dude who can handle everything, then what's the point of his superhero homies? I also didn't get the superhero girl's romantic interests. There was none of that in the first film. It kept feeling like they were going to go somewhere with that, but it just got sidelined.

In reality, I think it could have been a deeper and better movie if they had added an extra hour onto it. Number one, really meshed the seriousness of the space elves with the story. Number two, let the editors give more backstory to the superhero girl vs. Portman, to the naked Stonehenge professor, and to the audience reaction times. Number three, created a story trap where Loki got funneled into his situation in such a way that it wasn't just completely open, as everyone had mentioned - it's like an infinite deus ex machina machine for the writers because they didn't really pin him down in certain areas. No one can detect when he's doing a holographic projection, so he can do anything he wants, whenever he wants. They could have really gone nuts with different ideas there, fooling the bad guys for example.

I wouldn't give it a 10/10, but it was a lot of fun and I liked it way better than the first Thor and better than either of the Hulk movies, and a bit better than the Avengers movie. And they did raise some good points about Thor not seeing Portman in the Avengers movie - they should have had a quick cameo with her in the Avengers movie so that it wasn't just like...well, yeah, I was on earth, and yeah, I could have spared 2 minutes to use my hammer to fly over and say hi before I locked up Loki, but you know...I was busy and stuff

 

[rsutoratosu]

Just saw it a few hours ago too.. horrible in 3d, didn't want to wait extra hr for the 2d one.

Like it, not bad

 

[bearxor]

Is Odin dead? Who knows. I think the writers needed an out if Anthony Hopkins is perhaps unable to reprise the role somehow in a few years.

About the post credits scene.

Asgard had the Tessaract and the Infinity Glove. The briefly showed the glove in the first Thor movie.

The decision to give the collector the Aether is obviously Loki's, since he's in charge now. This ties in really nicely with a write up I read after The Avengers came out. Loki meant to be captured and sent back to Asgard.

Here's the write up.
http://maskofreason.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/very-good-writing-why-loki-won-in-the-avengers/

The Guardians of the Galaxy film will likely deal with the Collector and probably a couple more of the infinity stones. All leading up to Thanos being the big baddie in Avengers 3.

Marvel is definitely playing the long game here. This shit won't be concluded until like 2020.

 

[Newbian]

Asgard had the Tessaract and the Infinity Glove. The briefly showed the glove in the first Thor movie.

From what I remember in the comics the infinity glove is only called the infinity gauntlet once it has the gems in it and before it was just a glove thanos used so I don't think that means much really in the way of the treasures they store but suppose it could be just a hint towards the future if they make the glove itself something special.

 

[bearxor]

Well Thanos doesn't have it now, it's stored in the Asgard vault. And Marvel was showing it off as the infinity gauntlet at various cons.

Here it is from the first Thor movie.

 

[gorcorps]

There was a double ending to the movie, in case you didn't stay. The first one was right after the movie and was VERY weird. Apparently there was a dude with a secure art collection that they gave the Aesther stuff to, but told him it was a second Tesseract. Then he's like "5 to go!" so they opened it up for a double Thor trilogy, whoohoo! I also thought they could have split the final post-credit ending into two - I liked that Thor came back and planted one on her, and then they showed what happened to the monster (chasing birds haha), but I felt like that would have been a really great clip just on it's own, right after the final credits, and maybe have put the Thor returning part right after the movie, and then put the weird part with the collector guy in the middle of the credits (after the big names but before the scrolling or something). It was a lot of post-ending stuff, but I like post-ending stuff so it worked for me!

You could read up on Thanos and the infinity glove if you want to, because that's what it's talking about. It's weird the way they're going about this because a lot of these after credit reveals makes no sense unless you know a decent amount about the Marvel universe already. Your average joe that's watching these movies now won't recognize Thanos in the Avengers credits scene, or what "5 to go" means in Thor 2, but it's all connected and building up for the future films.

 

[gorcorps]

Yeah I agree, the ending lacked emotional impact. You wanted a "big win" and all you got was "Welp, we were successful. Let's go home!" haha. With all of the running around, planting those electronic stakes into the ground, etc., it felt like it should have been built up more and had more of an epic ending. Like when the spaceship suddenly gets transported after Thor defeats the bad guy and then flattens him while he was down - the timing was so far off that I had completely forgotten about him by then and had moved on. It got a chuckle out of me, but that really should have happened sooner - transport the bad guy back, maybe he stands up to try to return again, then gets smooshed. Boom, good storyflow.



That's what I mean about parts being cut out. It felt like there were holes in the story that someone had chopped out to make the movie shorter. So they throw a bunch of shoes into the portal (someone had obviously been playing Portal haha) and then she goes through one and is now the chosen one who carries the Aether? (spelling based on alien subtitles) Plus it was weird that it was like, ruins, and there was a stupid pillar holding some liquid mercury with a red LED glowstick and that's what is going to destroy the universe? Was it alive? Did it choose her? All seemed pretty random.

I think one of the things they struggled with was having a serious movie vs. a fun movie. That part when she goes into the Aether realm in the beginning was pretty serious, you know? And those crazy space elves were pretty serious dudes with serious faces, serious spaceships, and serious deep voices. It felt a lot like the opening to the first new Star Trek with the big bad guy's spaceship - this is serious stuff, man! But then it was all jolly at other parts, didn't really jive.

I also wanted to see more action from Thor's support crew. I liked how they all gave Loki death threats and he said "apparently there will be a line to kill me" hehe - but they should have used them more because Thor needs his posse. If he's just one dude who can handle everything, then what's the point of his superhero homies? I also didn't get the superhero girl's romantic interests. There was none of that in the first film. It kept feeling like they were going to go somewhere with that, but it just got sidelined.

In reality, I think it could have been a deeper and better movie if they had added an extra hour onto it. Number one, really meshed the seriousness of the space elves with the story. Number two, let the editors give more backstory to the superhero girl vs. Portman, to the naked Stonehenge professor, and to the audience reaction times. Number three, created a story trap where Loki got funneled into his situation in such a way that it wasn't just completely open, as everyone had mentioned - it's like an infinite deus ex machina machine for the writers because they didn't really pin him down in certain areas. No one can detect when he's doing a holographic projection, so he can do anything he wants, whenever he wants. They could have really gone nuts with different ideas there, fooling the bad guys for example.

I wouldn't give it a 10/10, but it was a lot of fun and I liked it way better than the first Thor and better than either of the Hulk movies, and a bit better than the Avengers movie. And they did raise some good points about Loki not seeing Portman in the Avengers movie - they should have had a quick cameo with her in the Avengers movie so that it wasn't just like...well, yeah, I was on earth, and yeah, I could have spared 2 minutes to use my hammer to fly over and say hi before I locked up Loki, but you know...I was busy and stuff

I agree with most of this. Good movie but there seems to be a lot of unfinished business and things that never really came to a head, and knowing full well there's a lot more movies to come doesn't help me feel better.

The ending was by far the most absurd though. So Loki's not dead... so I assume he was just faking it. How do you fake a sword through the chest though? OK, now everybody thinks he's dead which gives him a lot of room to fuck with people as he loves to do. Was he just messing with Thor at the end, or is he really intending to stay as king? So where's Odin?

 

[Kaido]

Just saw it a few hours ago too.. horrible in 3d, didn't want to wait extra hr for the 2d one.

Like it, not bad

What was bad about it in 3D? Was it cookie-cutter 3D and looked bad?

 

[bearxor]

Those that saw the movie might appreciate watching this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwaMupCoo08