Lionel Mandrake
Member
Superhero movies. Despite people claiming with every new release that superhero fatigue has finally set in and the genre will die off soon, apparently the real world keeps missing the memo and these movies still make a metric truck of money. As a result, Hollywood keeps making them, and it seems the vast majority tend to satisfy, on some level, the qualifications of being a successful blockbuster film.
Of course, there are exceptions. Despite my being entirely "meh" on Batman v Superman, I guess it's been universally decided by people-who-are-not-me that it's actually a disaster, and it deserves all of our ire for being a failure of a superhero movie. And that's fine. I don't care very strongly about that flick one way or the other, and while I'm admittedly kind of confused by the impressive amount of hatred for a movie which featured a scene of Lex Luthor seductively feeding a man Jolly Ranchers as he urinated on Holly Hunters face, I dont really intend to do much defending of it.
So, I'll accept that Batman v Superman is reviled. I'll accept that Ant Man is a decent way to kill time. I'll even accept that Avengers 2 ended with
Or something like that, who the hell can remember? But there's one thing I will not accept, and it's a pass that a certain movie seems to have been given by most of the movie watching community.
Thor 2 is a goddamn travesty of a motion picture.
"Oh, come on," you say, quite stupidly. "It wasn't groundbreaking or anything, but it was a perfectly serviceable superhero movie." Your dull tone trails off as you get distracted and begin licking your foam Mjolnir replica. You sick Thor 2-loving bastard.
I was once like you... for about thirty minutes.
I can remember the night I saw Thor 2 quite well. I visited a friend at his house, and some other friends were visiting from out of town. We drove out to the nearest theater-- a small town 3-screen place with cheap tickets that sells Slim Jims for concessions. We all went in and killed some time in the relatively empty theater, sharing anecdotes, talking about Marvel movies up to that point, and having a fine old time. The manager came in and apologized because there would be a small delay due to a technical issue. I remember seeing the movie and then riding back, picking up some Taco Bell on the way. I remember us coming back to the house and having a few beers and watching some B-movies on Netflix.
Yes, I remember that night quite well. But you know what I don't remember?
THOR FUCKING 2.
I've heard it said before that the worst crime a movie can commit is being forgettable. If that is true, Thor 2 deserves to be remembered among history's most despicable criminals such as Ed Gein, Benito Mussolini, and Snidely Whiplash.
Literally an hour after watching it, I could not recall anything about the plot. I was actually kind of scared. I thought something must have been wrong with me. There were a few scenes I could conjure up. I knew Stellan Skarsgard ran around naked. I knew Thor punched a rock man to death. I think some kids found a gravity-free warehouse for some reason... Or was that an Animatrix short? It's anyone's guess.
Some time later, Thor 2 would wind up on Pay-Per-View, and I'd be at some friend's place who wanted to see it. So I watched Thor 2 a second time, trying to pay as much attention as possible. I followed it fine. But once the credits rolled, it all instantly vanished from my mind. Honestly, it's kind of fascinating. Scientists should be studying this shit. I know I'm not alone. I've asked people before if they remember the plot to Thor 2. Most of them say "Thor teams up with Loki, and there are portals?" before they have collapse into tears and start writing the characters names on their arms in Sharpie and trying to form some cohesive narrative that must be Thor 2.
Yet, I still see people defend this thing. Roughly half of this very board have lost their minds.
I know this is a running gag and most people probably weren't seriously weighing BvS vs Thor 2, but at least some were, and that "some" is a jerk.
What is the story?
What happened in this movie?
Ive been wanting to write about this terrible movie for a long time, but the problem was I knew that to do it properly, I would have to rewatch Thor 2-- and God knows I dont want to do that. So I figured Id never get to properly complain about this thing.
Then it hit me!
Screw watching Thor 2 again. Im just going to hazily try to remember as much as I can.
Why not? Im not Roger Ebert. I dont have any journalistic integrity to uphold. I saw this thing all the way through twice! If I can't remember details, I'm blaming the movie.
As I remember it, Thor 2 opens with Thor and his nameless friends (And yes, they are nameless. I know people like to pretend that general audiences know who the hell Stig or whoever is, but they dont, because they shouldnt) beating up a rock monster in a big battle for some reason I didnt know even when I watched the thing.
To check and make sure I was on the right track, I went to wikipedia to read the beginning of the plot summary.
What?
Did that happen?
I dont remember any of that. I saw the movie twice! I was sober both times. I paid attention! But man, I guess there are elves in this movie, so it probably did happen.
Anyway, Thor is sad because he cant go to earth to see Natalie Portman again for some reason. His appearance in Avengers is pretty much handwaved away because We needed Thor in that other movie and fuck it if we had the time to come with a satisfying answer as to why.
Since the last Thor movie, there has been an important plot development: Thor has decided to become boring. In the previous film Thor was depicted as vain, greedy, cru-el boy! He was childish, unfit to lead, and kind of stupid. And you know what? It kind of worked. It made him a little interesting. We could laugh at him a bit. But as that movie progressed, so did his character and by the end, we have a much more mature Thor, who unfortunately isnt all that interesting. And by the beginning of Thor 2, there really isnt much room for him to develop. But hey, you can have a dull lead if you have an interesting movie around him, right?
.... Oh no!
Natalie Portman is in this movie, presumably with a gun aimed at her from off camera throughout the filming. She is still a scientist with a degree in understanding Macguffins, but I guess she lives in England now with her intern Darcy and Darcy's intern.... intern. She somehow finds herself in an abandoned warehouse somewhere that leads her to another dimension, where she gets infected with some alien nanomachines or something. This is especially bad because the nanomachines are wanted by space elves who hate Asgard and this sentence is ridiculous.
Okay, how am I doing so far, Wikipedia?
So Thor goes to earth, picks up Natalie Portman, and they go to Asgard to get yelled exposition yelled at them by Odin. And then the elves attack, because they want Natalie Portman. And then the most pivotal, emotional event in the entire movie occurs. The elves kill . Thors mom.
Did we know Thors mom before this? Was she in the first movie? I dont remember her at all. I mean, look, obviously a character having their mom killed is understood to be a big deal. But its kind of uninteresting if you dont really get a feel for that character or their relationship with their child. I know she must have been in the first movie. She probably told Odin to stop being a dick to their sons, but she definitely didnt leave an impression.
Whatever, she dies. Thor is sad? For a few minutes. Loki seems a bit more sad, but he gets over it pretty quick too. The whole thing feels like
This script needs to have a low point in the story.
Isnt that what Stellan Skarsgaard running around naked is supposed to be?
No, I mean like a thematic low point.
Oh! Right. I guess we could kill someone.
But not someone important.
Right. How about one of Thors friends?
Who?
Oh, yeah. I guess the audience probably isnt aware those guys exist. How about Thors mom!
Is she in these movies?
Who cares?
So Thor frees Loki from jail because Loki knows stuff; thats the reason according to the movie, but we all know the real reason.
You see, when Thor 1 came out, most people were like, That was okay, I guess. That Loki guy was pretty good. But a relatively loud minority of people were more like, OMG! L-O-K-I! LOKI LOKI LOKI! Tom is such a dream boat! Look at this gif of him laughing! Loki 4ever! And then they started drawing him making out with his brother, because this is the internet, and the internet is, if nothing else, a place to see fictional characters get it on regardless of canon relationship.
Lokis role in this movie is so shoved-in, they should have marketed this movie as a sausage . Because you stuff sausages Shut up.
Its a very obvious attempt to pander to the fanbase. Which is, you know, fine, but when its done to a certain degree, your movie begins to feel less like an actual story, and more like you hired some guys from a movie made a couple of years ago to put on their silly costumes and make a movie in order to have a blooper reel and a Graham Norton episode.
But I can't really blame them all that much because what the fuck else could they do? Thor is boring. Natalie Portman may as well have been performing her scenes while scrolling on her phone. Loki's the only character who is interesting, but after hogging the screen in both Thor 1 and The Avengers, his charm has worn thin.
Then some bullshit happens, Loki dies but he obviously doesnt, because the fans eat him up and Jesus knows that the rest of the cast can't carry Thor 3.. They make that Mew-mew joke a few more times, because the Marvel Universe needed its own Bazinga. Thor throws Dr. Who through the Eye of London or something. Time to check Wikipedia for the finale.
Everything is resolved. The only major changes by the end of the movie are that Thors mom died, Loki is playing dead for some reason (And I guess a good guy now, until Marvel decides it needs him to be a villain again), and we got this paparazzi footage of Natalie Portman from the last day of shooting.
Thor 2 is barely a movie. It doesnt feel like these characters have found themselves in this plot, but rather this plot has been shakily constructed in order to get these characters together so that they can be pithy and wear funny hats, but not too much, because our big stars are obviously unrecognizable when they wear a hat.
Its boring. Its soulless. It has no evidence of any effort. Its like it was made by a computer algorithm of things that people who saw the first Thor googled.
Theres no creativity in it. Theres no joy. The entire premise of its production is Like its going to NOT make money. The people making this thing clearly were aware that if they pandered to fans enough then it would sell, and as long as it was made competently, then there wouldnt be any significant backlash or word-of-mouth. It exists because Marvel needed to check off their big "Phase 2" movies, and someone wrote down Thor 2 on the list without thinking about if there was anywhere to go with it. It is the most cynically produced disgrace of a movie Ive watched in recent history.
And listen, yes. I am fully aware that all of these movies exist for the sole purpose of making money and furthering the brand in order to make more money. But you can at least have the decency to pretend like you give a damn.
You know, there are a lot of superhero movies that have been universally panned that have at least one defense: At least they fucking tried. They might have failed, but they tried. Thor 2 didnt try. It just coasted. It knew it was safe, so why bother putting in any kind of effort. And the worse thing is that people actually accepted it. They took this fucking imitation of a movie and treated it like it was real. Thor 2 has a fresh score on rotten tomatoes. It has a 7.1 on IMDB. So fuck me, right?
In a world where shitty criticism like CinemaSins gets passed around and people think everything is a plot hole, how were they okay with the boring, poorly constructed mess that is Thor 2? These aren't superficial flaws. They aren't nitpicking. It's an honest and open analysis of what this movie is obviously intended to be-- a goddamn placeholder on a bulletin board in Disney Studios that nobody got around to filling before they had to go into production.
I'm not a hater on the Marvel Universe. I tend to like most of the movies they put out. Even the first Thor was fine. Even Iron Man 2 had some things going for it. This? This is trash. This is below trash. Trash, at least one point in its life, had a purpose. So I want everyone on this forum to know that when I say I hate Thor 2, I'm not kidding. I hate Thor 2. It's the worst. It's worse than Batman v Superman. It's worse than Batman and Robin. It's worse than The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It's worse than Catwoman.... Okay, maybe not Catwoman. Catwoman really sucks.
There.... That felt good to get off my chest. Now if you'll excuse me, Im going to go watch a fun movie.
Of course, there are exceptions. Despite my being entirely "meh" on Batman v Superman, I guess it's been universally decided by people-who-are-not-me that it's actually a disaster, and it deserves all of our ire for being a failure of a superhero movie. And that's fine. I don't care very strongly about that flick one way or the other, and while I'm admittedly kind of confused by the impressive amount of hatred for a movie which featured a scene of Lex Luthor seductively feeding a man Jolly Ranchers as he urinated on Holly Hunters face, I dont really intend to do much defending of it.
So, I'll accept that Batman v Superman is reviled. I'll accept that Ant Man is a decent way to kill time. I'll even accept that Avengers 2 ended with
the Incredible Hulk sadly riding a plane off into the sunset after banging Black Widow because she was sad that her ballet teacher stole her baby
Thor 2 is a goddamn travesty of a motion picture.
"Oh, come on," you say, quite stupidly. "It wasn't groundbreaking or anything, but it was a perfectly serviceable superhero movie." Your dull tone trails off as you get distracted and begin licking your foam Mjolnir replica. You sick Thor 2-loving bastard.
I was once like you... for about thirty minutes.
I can remember the night I saw Thor 2 quite well. I visited a friend at his house, and some other friends were visiting from out of town. We drove out to the nearest theater-- a small town 3-screen place with cheap tickets that sells Slim Jims for concessions. We all went in and killed some time in the relatively empty theater, sharing anecdotes, talking about Marvel movies up to that point, and having a fine old time. The manager came in and apologized because there would be a small delay due to a technical issue. I remember seeing the movie and then riding back, picking up some Taco Bell on the way. I remember us coming back to the house and having a few beers and watching some B-movies on Netflix.
Yes, I remember that night quite well. But you know what I don't remember?
THOR FUCKING 2.
I've heard it said before that the worst crime a movie can commit is being forgettable. If that is true, Thor 2 deserves to be remembered among history's most despicable criminals such as Ed Gein, Benito Mussolini, and Snidely Whiplash.
Literally an hour after watching it, I could not recall anything about the plot. I was actually kind of scared. I thought something must have been wrong with me. There were a few scenes I could conjure up. I knew Stellan Skarsgard ran around naked. I knew Thor punched a rock man to death. I think some kids found a gravity-free warehouse for some reason... Or was that an Animatrix short? It's anyone's guess.
Some time later, Thor 2 would wind up on Pay-Per-View, and I'd be at some friend's place who wanted to see it. So I watched Thor 2 a second time, trying to pay as much attention as possible. I followed it fine. But once the credits rolled, it all instantly vanished from my mind. Honestly, it's kind of fascinating. Scientists should be studying this shit. I know I'm not alone. I've asked people before if they remember the plot to Thor 2. Most of them say "Thor teams up with Loki, and there are portals?" before they have collapse into tears and start writing the characters names on their arms in Sharpie and trying to form some cohesive narrative that must be Thor 2.
Yet, I still see people defend this thing. Roughly half of this very board have lost their minds.
I know this is a running gag and most people probably weren't seriously weighing BvS vs Thor 2, but at least some were, and that "some" is a jerk.
What is the story?
What happened in this movie?
Ive been wanting to write about this terrible movie for a long time, but the problem was I knew that to do it properly, I would have to rewatch Thor 2-- and God knows I dont want to do that. So I figured Id never get to properly complain about this thing.
Then it hit me!
Screw watching Thor 2 again. Im just going to hazily try to remember as much as I can.
Why not? Im not Roger Ebert. I dont have any journalistic integrity to uphold. I saw this thing all the way through twice! If I can't remember details, I'm blaming the movie.
As I remember it, Thor 2 opens with Thor and his nameless friends (And yes, they are nameless. I know people like to pretend that general audiences know who the hell Stig or whoever is, but they dont, because they shouldnt) beating up a rock monster in a big battle for some reason I didnt know even when I watched the thing.
To check and make sure I was on the right track, I went to wikipedia to read the beginning of the plot summary.
Wikipedia said:
What?
Did that happen?
I dont remember any of that. I saw the movie twice! I was sober both times. I paid attention! But man, I guess there are elves in this movie, so it probably did happen.
Anyway, Thor is sad because he cant go to earth to see Natalie Portman again for some reason. His appearance in Avengers is pretty much handwaved away because We needed Thor in that other movie and fuck it if we had the time to come with a satisfying answer as to why.
Since the last Thor movie, there has been an important plot development: Thor has decided to become boring. In the previous film Thor was depicted as vain, greedy, cru-el boy! He was childish, unfit to lead, and kind of stupid. And you know what? It kind of worked. It made him a little interesting. We could laugh at him a bit. But as that movie progressed, so did his character and by the end, we have a much more mature Thor, who unfortunately isnt all that interesting. And by the beginning of Thor 2, there really isnt much room for him to develop. But hey, you can have a dull lead if you have an interesting movie around him, right?
.... Oh no!
Natalie Portman is in this movie, presumably with a gun aimed at her from off camera throughout the filming. She is still a scientist with a degree in understanding Macguffins, but I guess she lives in England now with her intern Darcy and Darcy's intern.... intern. She somehow finds herself in an abandoned warehouse somewhere that leads her to another dimension, where she gets infected with some alien nanomachines or something. This is especially bad because the nanomachines are wanted by space elves who hate Asgard and this sentence is ridiculous.
Okay, how am I doing so far, Wikipedia?
Okay, not bad.Wikipedia said:
So Thor goes to earth, picks up Natalie Portman, and they go to Asgard to get yelled exposition yelled at them by Odin. And then the elves attack, because they want Natalie Portman. And then the most pivotal, emotional event in the entire movie occurs. The elves kill . Thors mom.
Did we know Thors mom before this? Was she in the first movie? I dont remember her at all. I mean, look, obviously a character having their mom killed is understood to be a big deal. But its kind of uninteresting if you dont really get a feel for that character or their relationship with their child. I know she must have been in the first movie. She probably told Odin to stop being a dick to their sons, but she definitely didnt leave an impression.
Whatever, she dies. Thor is sad? For a few minutes. Loki seems a bit more sad, but he gets over it pretty quick too. The whole thing feels like
This script needs to have a low point in the story.
Isnt that what Stellan Skarsgaard running around naked is supposed to be?
No, I mean like a thematic low point.
Oh! Right. I guess we could kill someone.
But not someone important.
Right. How about one of Thors friends?
Who?
Oh, yeah. I guess the audience probably isnt aware those guys exist. How about Thors mom!
Is she in these movies?
Who cares?
So Thor frees Loki from jail because Loki knows stuff; thats the reason according to the movie, but we all know the real reason.
You see, when Thor 1 came out, most people were like, That was okay, I guess. That Loki guy was pretty good. But a relatively loud minority of people were more like, OMG! L-O-K-I! LOKI LOKI LOKI! Tom is such a dream boat! Look at this gif of him laughing! Loki 4ever! And then they started drawing him making out with his brother, because this is the internet, and the internet is, if nothing else, a place to see fictional characters get it on regardless of canon relationship.
Lokis role in this movie is so shoved-in, they should have marketed this movie as a sausage . Because you stuff sausages Shut up.
Its a very obvious attempt to pander to the fanbase. Which is, you know, fine, but when its done to a certain degree, your movie begins to feel less like an actual story, and more like you hired some guys from a movie made a couple of years ago to put on their silly costumes and make a movie in order to have a blooper reel and a Graham Norton episode.
But I can't really blame them all that much because what the fuck else could they do? Thor is boring. Natalie Portman may as well have been performing her scenes while scrolling on her phone. Loki's the only character who is interesting, but after hogging the screen in both Thor 1 and The Avengers, his charm has worn thin.
Then some bullshit happens, Loki dies but he obviously doesnt, because the fans eat him up and Jesus knows that the rest of the cast can't carry Thor 3.. They make that Mew-mew joke a few more times, because the Marvel Universe needed its own Bazinga. Thor throws Dr. Who through the Eye of London or something. Time to check Wikipedia for the finale.
Wikipedia said:
Everything is resolved. The only major changes by the end of the movie are that Thors mom died, Loki is playing dead for some reason (And I guess a good guy now, until Marvel decides it needs him to be a villain again), and we got this paparazzi footage of Natalie Portman from the last day of shooting.
Thor 2 is barely a movie. It doesnt feel like these characters have found themselves in this plot, but rather this plot has been shakily constructed in order to get these characters together so that they can be pithy and wear funny hats, but not too much, because our big stars are obviously unrecognizable when they wear a hat.
Its boring. Its soulless. It has no evidence of any effort. Its like it was made by a computer algorithm of things that people who saw the first Thor googled.
Theres no creativity in it. Theres no joy. The entire premise of its production is Like its going to NOT make money. The people making this thing clearly were aware that if they pandered to fans enough then it would sell, and as long as it was made competently, then there wouldnt be any significant backlash or word-of-mouth. It exists because Marvel needed to check off their big "Phase 2" movies, and someone wrote down Thor 2 on the list without thinking about if there was anywhere to go with it. It is the most cynically produced disgrace of a movie Ive watched in recent history.
And listen, yes. I am fully aware that all of these movies exist for the sole purpose of making money and furthering the brand in order to make more money. But you can at least have the decency to pretend like you give a damn.
You know, there are a lot of superhero movies that have been universally panned that have at least one defense: At least they fucking tried. They might have failed, but they tried. Thor 2 didnt try. It just coasted. It knew it was safe, so why bother putting in any kind of effort. And the worse thing is that people actually accepted it. They took this fucking imitation of a movie and treated it like it was real. Thor 2 has a fresh score on rotten tomatoes. It has a 7.1 on IMDB. So fuck me, right?
In a world where shitty criticism like CinemaSins gets passed around and people think everything is a plot hole, how were they okay with the boring, poorly constructed mess that is Thor 2? These aren't superficial flaws. They aren't nitpicking. It's an honest and open analysis of what this movie is obviously intended to be-- a goddamn placeholder on a bulletin board in Disney Studios that nobody got around to filling before they had to go into production.
I'm not a hater on the Marvel Universe. I tend to like most of the movies they put out. Even the first Thor was fine. Even Iron Man 2 had some things going for it. This? This is trash. This is below trash. Trash, at least one point in its life, had a purpose. So I want everyone on this forum to know that when I say I hate Thor 2, I'm not kidding. I hate Thor 2. It's the worst. It's worse than Batman v Superman. It's worse than Batman and Robin. It's worse than The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It's worse than Catwoman.... Okay, maybe not Catwoman. Catwoman really sucks.
There.... That felt good to get off my chest. Now if you'll excuse me, Im going to go watch a fun movie.
