While I am sure that Thor: Love and Thunder will be fun, the trailer does give me some reservations. It does seem to be leaning a bit to heavily into humor, but that might just be the way the trailer was cut. What bothers me more is the ongoing trend to keep emasculating Thor. He's shown needy for attention from the Guardians of the Galaxy, overpowered for control of Mjolnir, remembering to the minute how long since he's seen Jane while she can't even get the years right, and publicly stripped, chained and humiliated while the female heroes have a chuckle about it (imagine the outrage if Marvel ever presented a scene like that with the sexes reversed). I don't need my heroes to be perfect, but I also don't enjoy them being beclowned at every turn either.
23 comments:
First off, love the concept on this cover. Any villain doing that with Mjolnir would be the absolute biggest threat Thor's faced in ages.
As for the humor stuff in recent Thor movies... while I love me some epic fantasy stuff in my Thor stories, Marvel had two misfires in a row with that... 4 if you count the character's portrayal in the first two Avengers films. It's easy to see why they got gun shy of doing Thor "played straight".
For good or ill, Waititi's approach hit the right spot with movie audiences. It rejuvenated the character and the actor, getting Hemsworth interested in doing more movies, instead of leaving after his original contract expired, so this is the way it's gonna be for awhile.
The lack of Thor's serious movies working out, might be in part due to Marvel's aversion to sincerity as a whole. They can never let a movie get too somber or serious without a compulsive need to throw in a "tension" breaker joke. Best example is the scene between Starlord and Gamora during Infinity War, where she forces him to promise to kill her instead of letting Thanos take her alive.
If they'd ended the scene with a kiss, or a sweet caress and swelling music, it'd be awesome. Instead, we get the "invisible Drax" bit showing up to immediately deflate the moment. That joke's funny, but it could work at nearly any other point in the story, it doesn't have to be in that scene to work. It's in that scene, because the directors and writers are letting us know "Hey, whoah, we don't really mean this. We know this mushy, feelings stuff suxx, okay? We're all about the action and the laughs guys. Sorry if we seemed like we want you to feel genuine empathy for these characters. Now let's get onto some action."
I'm rambling, but I think you get the point.
Also, yeah the sexual assualt/forced stripping scene played for laughs is definitely a double standard thing here.
1) I've seen the trailers for "Love and Thunder" three times now. Where was the s&m scene?
2) Parasite absorbing Mjolnir's power and channeling the lightning through his eyes? I haven't seen that plot gimmick since JIMMY OLSEN #129 when he became "Ultra Olsen" for the first time! You've got a good memory, Ross. :-)
Ross, nice to see you can still weld a "light touch" with the hammer. What would be the hammer's kryptonite while within Parasite? Hard to nail Parasite that way.
During the Silver Age, that kryptonite would've been the sixty second time limit on the hammer being separated from Thor. When it reverted to being a mere wooden cane, Parasite would've lost all that extra power.
Well, the meteorological magic, anyway.
I didn't know that the Parasite could draw power from items, as well as from people...or does Mjolnir count asa person? The Absorbing Man has certainly done this in the past, though, so...
At first, I thought Thor was in a heap of trouble; then I saw Tobor's and Cary's note on the sixty-second time limit. Thor needs only hold out for that long, and hope that Parasite doesn't clock him while he's plain old half-crippled Donald Blake.
But I congratulate you, Ross: every outing that the Parasite has had on this blog has been an interest-grabber (my personal favorite being when he fought the Power Couple). It'd be interesting to see him using his powers on Professor X!
Regarding the humor in Thor: Love and Thunder, in addition to what Greggory said about the first two solo and two Avengers outings, Chris Hemsworth was ready to leave the role after the third film but changed his mind after it was finished, because he'd had so much fun at it. This trailer does make it look, as you say, as if the movie's going into full-on comedy, which is too far in that direction (the "naked Thor" bit you cite being one big example, for the reasons you cite and more), but the humor does make the franchise continue to exist.
As for Jane not getting the years right, please note that her estimate of the years is about five years short. Clearly she was Blipped.
Respectfully, of course there'd be issues if the sexes we're reversed. We live in a patriarchy so comical attacks against women would be "punching down" and inherently unfunny. Insofar as Thor being emasculated, perhaps you should read some of the old Norse stories beyond the comics.
Plus the old Greek myth about Heracles and Queen Omphale.
You're right. Canonically, the Parasite can only absorb energy from living beings. But this is Earth-STF, so...
Btw: I saw the trailers for "Love and Thunder" at my home town multiplex, again. Still no s&m scene.
Maybe there's an alternate trailer on the Charcoal-gray Web.
@Anonymous: you're close. I found it on Youtube!
There's a clip of Zeus (apparently played by Russell Crowe) presiding over a public trial of Thor somewhere in Olympus. At one point, Zeus uses a storm wind to get rid of Thor's toga...and the Olympian goddesses evidently swoon over Thor's (ahem!) other hammer.
LOL! You mean, Zeus might not have the biggest thunderbolt in Olympus, anymore?
Something like that. :-)
Yes, anyone who ends up getting smacked by Rocket needs some serious counseling.
I also sensed a sort of desperation by Marvel to put up an image of a powerful, but non-toxic male hero. The MCU kind of took Thor away from the humbling, but noble struggles that he faced in the original Norse mythology. While the original Thor in the old comics could be loud and brash, he could also use his noggin when he had to. And he had a good heart, but that probably came from his mother.
Getting back to the cover, IF the good guy has a plausible way out, then the story works. Otherwise, the metaphysical rules become too foggy, and it turns into a bad game of D&D where players sprout all kinds of new powers w/o explanation, and an easy dice roll brings someone back from the dead.
Yo-ho! Toh-hoh!
@Simreeve and Anon205: Let's compromise. Who's to say that the Parasite didn't drain Crusher Creel's power (to assume the physical properties of whatever inanimate matter he touches) just before this fight?
@Anon1228: Nobody with half a brain buys the "patriarchy defense".
Carycomic said...
"@Simreeve and Anon205: Let's compromise. Who's to say that the Parasite didn't drain Crusher Creel's power (to assume the physical properties of whatever inanimate matter he touches) just before this fight?"
Okay, that works for me. Let's hope that he also absorbed Creel's limited intelligence, which keeps him from using his powers in the most effective way possible...
@simreeve and Cary: I second that emotion. :-)
@Anon
"Respectfully, of course there'd be issues if the sexes we're reversed. We live in a patriarchy so comical attacks against women would be "punching down" and inherently unfunny. Insofar as Thor being emasculated, perhaps you should read some of the old Norse stories beyond the comics."
So it's okay to punch down on beefcake men? Or punching those men is a sideways punch or punching up? C'mon man. C'mon.
This is the kinda joke that would have been culturally acceptable, or at least less offensive, if done to Jane Foster back in the '80s. Same with doing it to Thor Odinson in the '80s.
It's no longer acceptable to do that to Foster now... but still okay to do so with Thor, in at least some people's eyes.
I honestly wouldn't mind the joke so much if there weren't a double standard at work, but there is, so I do notice stuff like that from time to time.
Also, defending it with "Just look at what they did in the old norse tales" is weak sauce. There's also a lot of scenes of Thor splattering brain matter in the old tales, but no one's getting blood and gore on them in the movies.
By the way, sexually assaulting a man isn't "emasculation" it's a violation and an example that rape culture in the U.S. is alive and well... if the target is approved of in advance.
The point's academic. I finally saw the film in its entirety. And it was so lousy from beginning to end, compared to its predecessors, that I unapologetically call it THOR: LOVE & BLUNDER!
As in, those movie-goers in their right minds should consider themselves economically violated for wasting their hard-earned money on it.
@Daviticus: true. Those with a sensibly whole brain would buy it.
Such as anti-patriarchal feminists tired of system-wide misogyny!
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