THE AVENGERS: The THOR Reaction

The Avengers (2012) – The 6th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joss Whedon – Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof, Stan Lee, Powers Boothe, Lou Ferrigno, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Welcome to the ninth character-specific reaction to Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. I’ve already written a 4,200+ word review of the film, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to write character-specific reactions to delve a bit deeper into the film. You can find all of the relevant AVENGERS links at the bottom of this post.

Also, please note that these reactions are evolving as we go. If you see some line I got wrong or a detail I overlooked, by all means let me know. I’ve seen the movie twice, but it’s a long movie and the audience reacts wildly in parts, so some things get lost or forgotten or misinterpreted. And I’m sure some of the quotes are wrong, but I will correct the mistakes as I become aware of them. Don’t be surprised if these reactions grow a bit in the coming days.

Let me be clear about what’s coming: SPOILERS. Lots and lots of SPOILERS. Read ahead only if you’re cool with that. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want things ruined, come on back when you do.

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“Selvig?”

“He’s an astrophysicist.”

“He’s a friend.”

The more obvious choice for a starting quote to introduce this reaction to Thor, of course, would have been the much funnier, “He’s adopted” line that follows later during this scene, but for me, Thor’s hard insistence that Selvig is a friend provides a far greater insight into his character. It’s a small moment but probably my favorite Thor moment in the entire film because it speaks so much to his character and the transformation he underwent in his solo movie.

Thor, Cap, and Iron Man all get subtle references back to their solo movies which gives a quick nod to the fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe without dwelling on it. There’s a quick scene here aboard the Helicarrier where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is given an update on Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and how SHIELD is protecting her from this reappearance of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), but it’s Thor’s insistence that Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) is a friend that makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel like so much more than separate parts crashing into one another.

“Selvig?” he asks, instantly concerned.

“He’s an astrophysicist,” Banner explains, not understanding that Thor knows him.

“He’s a friend,” Thor snarls back, and even though he’s committed himself to this endeavor thanks to the involvement of his half-brother Loki, it’s the fact that Selvig has been drawn into this that gets Thor’s back up and binds him to the cause beyond familial responsibility. Thor appreciates the role Selvig played in his own transformation from spoiled god to defender of Earth, and he means to rescue him from Loki’s scheme.

Thor’s role in AVENGERS feels muted to me, as he’s the one member of the team that really does feel isolated from the rest of the group. You would think this role would fall to Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and the Hulk, but Stark’s fascination with Banner, everyone’s desire to keep Banner from transforming into the Hulk, and Banner coming out of his shell to become a part of this unit bring him into the inner circle, while Thor stands just outside of it, close but distant at the same time.

We see this in two different areas. First, Mark Ruffalo gets a higher billing than Chris Hemsworth on the poster and in the credits; I have no real understanding of the vagaries of the hierarchy of credit allotment, but it does seem odd that Hemsworth is the only one of the Big 3 who’s not listed in the first three acting credits. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s Bruce Banner who gets to stand with Tony Stark and Captain America (Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans) when they have their “we don’t trust Fury” chat. While this important scene is going on, Thor is on the bridge, discussing the bilgesnipe, an Asgardian beast not found on Earth.

It’s a curious decision.

It’s Thor who gets to stand alongside Iron Man and Cap in the Big 3 money shot after their battle in the forest, but it’s Banner who feels like the third component after that. Thor’s involvement in the film seems designed to play off Loki more than it is to become an Avenger.

After Cap and Iron Man “capture” Loki in Stuttgart and stuff him in the back of a SHIELD jet (which still cracks me up – here’s the guy who stole the Tesseract and Steve and Stark have him sitting free like he’s in the back of a paddywagon), thunder and lightning start gathering around them. Steve catches Loki’s look of concern and asks if he’s afraid of a little lightning.

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” Loki says somberly.

I love that line and it says absolutely everything you need to know about Thor’s power, just like Tasha’s look of fear in that cabin in India said everything you needed to know about the Hulk as a powerhouse. We don’t have to wait as long to get a peak at Thor’s power, as the Thunder God drops down on the jet, forces his way inside, and steals Loki away from Tony, Steve, and Tasha.

Thor’s approach to dealing with Loki is a mixture of grief, relief, and anger. As he tells him when he pulls him off that jet and lands down on a rocky hill overlooking a forest, “We thought you dead.”

“Did you mourn for me, brother?” Loki asks with a sneer.

Thor is clearly emotional about Loki’s return and his alliance with some unknown alien force and his approach to dealing with him is an older brother scolding a younger sibling for doing something dumb and dangerous, but still willing to help the brother right the wrong. To Thor, the solution is simple: get Loki to return the Tesseract and sever his ties with the Chitauri. This is Thor’s attempt to put his foot down, but Loki isn’t having it, and before Thor can make his final appeal – “Listen to me, brother!” – Iron Man has arrived and taken Thor to the forest ground, where they proceed to spend the next few minutes knocking each other around.

I love the Thor vs. Iron Man fight because it starts with a bit of wordplay, including Stark labeling the Thor/Loki matter as, “Shakespeare in the park,” and then quickly descends to a really brutal fight in which neither man pulls any punches. They hammer each other through trees, unleashing the power of Mjolnir and the power of Stark tech on one another and it’s just pure fanboy delight to watch them throwdown. It’s a fight with no lasting physical consequence – we know neither one of them are going to end up with more than a scratch – so we can concentrate on the emotional consequence. Stark takes a full on lightning blast from Mjolnir, and he’s thrilled to hear that the suit is now operating at 400% capacity.

When Captain America arises and challenges Thor to back down, the Asgardian leaps at him and drops his hammer with a thunderous boom right on Captain America’s shield, which sends a shockwave blast across the forest, felling all three of them and bringing some common sense into the equation.

They all head back to the Helicarrier to sit around a table and talk, and this is where Thor’s disconnect from the rest of the group really takes hold. It’s easy to see him as the outsider during that previous sequence, but it’s reinforced here and never really changes. Steve and Stark bond, Stark and Banner bond, Tasha and Clint have a bond, but Thor never really gets to have a heart-to-heart with anyone on the team. He has a comfortable chat with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) about how Asgardians like to think they’re better than humans but come down here battling like Asgardian beasts. He knows Coulson a bit from his solo movie and it’s Coulson, Selvig, and Jane Foster (who, again, is only seen in the film as a picture on a monitor) where Thor’s bonds of friendship lie.

So where Steve and Tony get paired up, and Tony and Bruce, and Clint and Tasha, Thor’s only real bond are with his brother Loki and then people who are barely in the movie. During the Big Argument scene where Loki uses the power of his staff to exacerbate everyone’s negative feelings about one another, Thor’s only real contribution is to remark that humans are “small … and petty.”

Unless you know the comic book history of the Avengers, my guess is you’d leave Whedon’s film thinking the Big 3 were Cap, Iron Man, and Hulk, not Thor.

After Thor’s “small and petty” line, he’s really just muscle for the rest of the film. He gets a great fight with Hulk on the Helicarrier, and there’s two things that strike me the most about this brawl. The first is that I love the way Thor calls Mjolnir to him, which is made even cooler when the Hulk tries – and fails – to life Mjolnir off the floor – a moment that could only have been made better if Thor called Mjolnir to him at that moment, thus bringing a hurtling Hulk towards him. There’s only brilliant shot, though, with Thor just pulverizing the Hulk’s face on a massive uppercut with Mjolnir that sends the green giant backwards.

The best part of this fight, however, is that Thor enjoys it. When the Hulk delivers a battering blow and Thor checks his face for blood, he smiles. He wants this fight. He wants the challenge, even as he realizes that he’s outmatched. During the fight with Iron Man, Thor’s strength enabled him to crush Stark’s armor, but here it’s the Hulk with the advantage.

Thor gets trapped in the Helicarrier cage made for the Hulk, and is the only one to witness the Loki vs. Agent Coulson throwdown, and in Loki’s attack on the SHIELD agent, you can see that something breaks inside of Thor. He realizes this isn’t just his brother being incorrigible but that his brother really is a monster.

When Thor had challenged the others earlier to remember that Loki was still his brother, and Tasha informed him that Loki had killed 80 people in two days, Thor’s, “He’s adopted” line got a laugh, but now … now Thor knows there’s no going back and he commits fully to being an Avenger. When Fury later says that he manipulated Coulson’s death with the blood-soaked trading cards because the Avengers “needed a push,” we know that Thor has already gotten his push from Loki’s attack and Coulson’s attempt to fight back.

In the big, final battle against the Chitauri, the Hulk once again benefits at the expense of Thor. First, there’s the truly hilarious moment where the Hulk sucker punches Thor after the two of them team up to take down a Leviathan. It’s one of the film’s funnier moments but it does come at Thor’s expense, and then in another of the film’s best moments, it’s Hulk who takes Loki out of the battle. Since Thor’s one real connection in the film is with his brother, it’s a moment that would have worked better – simply from a structural standpoint – if Thor got to take Loki down. Now, I’m not complaining about what we got because what we got might just well be the best scene in the entire film, but it is important to note that it does potentially rob Thor of a big moment.

The same goes for the end of the film, when Thor calls the thunder but can’t shut the portal down. He does stop additional Chitauri from coming through, but stopping more troops isn’t the same as blowing up the Chitauri mothership (that’s Stark’s moment) or closing the portal (that’s Widow’s). What we’re left with, then, is a Thor that never wholly gels with the team (though he and Cap have a nice moment during the battle), and never has a big, signature moment.

None of this makes my enjoyment in the film any less, but it does point out, I think, that Thor is the one main character in the film that is left a bit wanting. I really like Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and he gives the Asgardian a palpable sense of honor and quiet strength. Thor doesn’t need to have the spotlight and Hemsworth makes Thor’s life on the fringes work wonderfully. A somewhat aloof, somewhat reserved, ready for battle, never backing down from a challenge Thor works for me, and of all of the solo movies in the pipeline, it’s THOR 2 that I’m most looking forward to seeing. I want to see Thor continue to develop as a character and Hemsworth continue to grow as an actor.

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THE AVENGERS REVIEW INDEX

THE AVENGERS: THE MOVIE REVIEW
THE AVENGERS: THE HAWKEYE REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE AGENT COULSON REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE BLACK WIDOW REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE NICK FURY REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE MARIA HILL REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CAPTAIN AMERICA REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CHITAURI/THANOS REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE HULK REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE THOR REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE LOKI REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE IRON MAN REACTION

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REVIEW INDEX

1. IRON MAN
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
3. IRON MAN 2
4. THOR
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

YOUR HIGHNESS: I Will Probably Die On This Quest

Your Highness (2011; Unrated Version) – Directed by David Gordon Green – Starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Justin Theroux, Zooey Deschanel, Toby Jones, Rasmus Hardiker, Charles Dance, and Damian Lewis.

It would be wrong to say that YOUR HIGHNESS is disappointing because, as it so clearly advertises, it’s made by the people who made Pineapple Express.

Which sucked.

So it doesn’t really come as a surprise that YOUR HIGHNESS kind of sucks, too.

I mean, sure, I did once say that all I wanted out of modern cinema was to bear witness to a scene in which Natalie Portman played a panflute to draw the attention of a Minotaur with an erection, and that someone would then cut that erection off the minotaur, and later Zooey Deschanel would try to put said sliced erection in her mouth, so I’ll give YOUR HIGHNESS credit enough for that, but other than that sequence, this is a really dreadful film …

It’s a shame, too, because there’s a decent amount of talent assembled in the movie, and there is an honest attempt to both tell a story and deliver a real character arc for Thadeous (Danny McBride). McBride and James Franco (who plays his brother, Fabious) have some decent chemistry, and there’s nothing wrong with watching Portman and Deschanel romp around in period costumes for 100 minutes. I love the idea, too, of a raunchy medieval comedy, but while this film hits the first two fine, it fails in the third. YOUR HIGHNESS is just … not … funny.

No one in the movie acts like this is anything more than a high school play. It’s honestly one of the worst acted movies in recent memory, with all of the principals putting off that ridiculous vibe of, “Hey! We’re making a comedy here! Aren’t we being silly? Aren’t we saying dirty things?” Watching YOUR HIGHNESS is like watching an extended SNL skit where the actors are purposely being stupid with their performances and looking off-camera for their lines. McBride, Franco, Portman, and Justin Theroux all completely overact – I get that this is the point since everyone is doing it, but it’s just not that funny and it just doesn’t work.

In fact, this is one of those movies that is so bad that watching the Gag Reel is infinitely more rewarding than watching the actual movie.

I’m sure these folks had a grand old time making the movie (it’s obvious from the bonus features), so it’s perhaps doubly unfortunate that so little of that humor made it into the actual film.

The premise here is that Fabious is the perfect son and perfect prince and perfect hero and Thadeous is the imperfect son and imperfect prince and imperfect hero. Fabious is about to marry Belladonna (Deschanel) when Leezar (Theroux) shows up and kidnaps her because he believes he’s the chosen one who is destined to impregnate a virgin and control a dragon. Fabious, of course, decides to go on a quest to rescue her, and Thadeous (who skipped the wedding because his feelings were hurt) is like, “Good luck,” but their father the King (the always good – even here – Charles Dance) makes him go along with them.

Soon into the quest, Fabious is betrayed by his men, forcing Thadeous and his squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) into a more prominent role. So then … things happen. They join forces with the duplicitous Isabel (Portman) and there’s lots of sword fighting and killing and sexual jokes and Courtney getting raped by the aforementioned Minotaur. They save Belladonna, she and Fab get married, and Thadeous and Isabel go off to defeat an evil witch and get her chastity belt removed. For much of the time spent watching this movie, I had the feeling that this movie was made because McBride, Franco, and director David Gordon Green got roasted and thought it would be awesome to make a movie where they could get Portman and Deschanel to say as many naughty words as possible.

YOUR HIGHNESS is good for a few small laughs (there’s a musical bit in the film between Deschanel and Franco that works, and another in the Deleted Scenes that’s good, too), but in the end it’s just not very good because it’s just not very funny. The film would have been better served using the extended scenes included in the bonus features. There’s one with Portman and McBride and another with Deschanel and Theroux that are funnier than most of the gags in the film, but were cut, presumably because they go on too lon.

They don’t. The film does.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED: It’s Like a Crime Scene in My Pants

No Strings Attached (2011) – Directed by Ivan Reitman – Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Greta Gerwig, Jake Johnson, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Kline, Chris Bridges, Olivia Thirlby, Lake Bell, Ophelia Loviband, Abby Elliot, Talia Balsam, and Cary Elwes.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED is the kind of movie that tells the wrong story. It concentrates on the relationship between Adam and Emma (Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman), but it’s the most mindless relationship in the film. Adam is completely in love with Emma and Emma is emotionally distant. She just wants to have sex and he agrees because he’s infatuated with her, so they have lots and lots of sex and things get awkward because, well, they’re having lots and lots of sex and he’s infatuated with her and she doesn’t want to feel anything but can’t help herself.

So we have to spend 1 hour and 47 minutes watching them go through all the motions and back and forth and it’s rather tedious. I get that this is kind of the point of a romcom, but does it have to be so bland and predictable and stupid?

I’m much more interested in either the bizarre relationship between Adam’s dad (Kevin Kline) and his ex-girlfriend (Ophelia Loviband) or the growing relationship between his friend Eli (Jake Johnson) and Emma’s friend Patrice (Greta Gerwig). I’m much happier watching Eli and Patrice in their brief bits of relationship growth than in watching Adam and Emma struggle through their issues. That’s the relationship I want to see develop. Is that stupid? Is that wanting something romcoms don’t deliver? Wouldn’t people rather watch that than see two people cause each other misery for 90 minutes until finally realizing what we saw in the first frame?

I don’t get it.

Part of the problem is the script, which is terrible, but part of the problem is the odd pairing of Portman and Kutcher. Portman is way too good an actress to be in something this lame and predictable and lifeless and Kutcher spends most of the movie with a wounded puppy dog look on his face. It’s supposed to convey the fact that he’s in love and knows he can’t admit it to her or he risks losing her, but it comes off like he knows he’s in over his head just being on screen with Portman and Kevin Kline. I’ll say this for Kutcher, though – he might not be able to hang with Portman or Kline but he’s committed to the movie and committed to his character and he ends up coming out okay.

Kutcher is at his best when Portman and Kline are at their worst and it’s largely because of the script. When we get to the point in the film where Adam professes his love for Emma and she rejects him and he gets hurt and says they’ll never see each other again and then they spend months apart, only to have Emma finally realize she loves him and wants him back and blah blah blah, she drives her car and cries and eats doughnut holes and wipes powdered sugar across her face. It has to be one of the worst moments of her career.

A few scenes after that, Adam’s dad is in bed, recovering from an overdose of Purple Drank and Kline has to say, “I’ve six pictures of my c*ck on my phone and two of someone else’s, and I’m still pretty high on the cough syrup, so you can take this with a grain of salt, but we don’t pick who we fall in love with. And it never happens like it should.”

Honestly, someone wrote that and Kevin Kline agreed to say it.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever watched, and there is a certain crashing of worlds going on here that gives the film a car wreck vibe to it, but it’s really just a film that’s one-half short of being mediocre. When I had cable I used to refer to movies like this as “AMC Movies,” because AMC always used to show a lot of really mediocre films with really big name casts. That’s what this is. In ten or twenty or fifty years people will stumble across this movie on whatever passes for their TV dial, see the list of actors, and settle in for a watch and maybe get some small enjoyment out of it.

For me, though, it left me wanting to see the stories we didn’t see rather than the Adam/Emma plot we got stuck with. Greta Gerwig hasn’t been in anything I’ve ever seen, but I’d like to see more of her because she conveys more about her character through her facial expressions than the silly dialogue provides. (Plus, she gets the best line of the film, complaining about her monthly menstrual phase and complains, “It’s like a crime scene in my pants.”) Same goes for Abby Elliot, who has a brief role as a waitress, but still manages to have a real presence on the screen that drew me in to her character far more than Portman did with the empty Emma construct. A romcom focused on the secondary characters who have to live through the silliness of the obvious Adam/Emma relationship would be a hundred times more interesting, and if they could get Gerwig, Elliot, Johnson, Mindy Kaling, Chris Bridges, and Olivia Thirlby to star in it, all the better.

Because that’s really where NO STRINGS ATTACHED falls apart. There’s an actual, honest-to-goodness story here about how single, professional women can be caught between their careers and traditional gender expectations but the film really isn’t interested in exploring any of that. It just wants Emma to be a woman with a job who likes to have casual sex but then gets waylaid by emotions. That’s it – there’s no exploration of that idea beyond her getting drunk at a party, getting jealous over thinking Adam is hooking up with two women she decides are skanks, and then bursting into his apartment.

Alternately, this film could have presented a very real story about Adam and his love for Emma and the gender expectations of his buddies telling him to hook up with anyone and everyone to get over the girl he’s clearly not going to get over. Adam’s a good guy, but he’s a sap, and if STRINGS was actually interested in telling a story, he would have found someone else, someone who had as good a heart as him. Or it would have simply let him gain an identity that wasn’t tied to being in love. Unfortunately, STRINGS doesn’t want to tell a story – it just wants to feed our expectations and so at the end of the film, Emma cries and Adam takes her back and happily ever after is promised.

For nearly everyone.

Just like in real life …