So I'm (hopefully) going to go see The Avengers this weekend. In light of this, I gave in and watched Thor last night. Just so you know, there are going to be general spoilers, so if you're worried about that sort of thing, you have been warned.
I was kind of hesitant, because I'd heard that it was the weakest of the set of movies leading up to Avengers. I heard that the main plot was 'Scientist Chick meets Magic God, gives up Science', which was worrying for obvious reasons. I was expecting the sort of train-wreck that was Iron Man II (seriously, take all the character development from the first movie and throw it down the garbage disposal? And then take moderately-badass Pepper Potts and then render her incapable of running the company that she's basically been running because Tony Stark can't get his sorry steel butt in to work half the time? Puh-leeze!) except with more long-haired screaming men waving large hammers. I expected it to be a case of tough jock beats up treacherous little nerd. Honestly, I was only interested from a sense of obligation (because OHMIGODJOSSWHEDONAVENGERS?OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!) and the general sort of interest that any applicably-oriented individual might feel about watching long-haired screaming men waving large hammers.
The plot is simple. A group of scientists in the New Mexican desert are nearly turned into hamburger when the atmospheric anomaly that they are studying turns up on top of them. As if near-death were not enough, a guy falls out of the sky on top of their truck. This is Thor, who's just been booted out of Asgard because he went off and broke a hard-forged peace by going berserk on the Frost Giants' planet when their king called him a princess. His father, Odin, was accordingly unamused, stripped Thor of his powers and his right to the throne, and banished him. In a moment of creative manipulativeness, he chucks Thor's warhammer after him, with the promise that, if he is worthy, he will get both the hammer and his powers back.
While Thor rattles around on Earth, gets tased and tranquilized and hit with trucks and arrested, his brother Loki is putting a cunning plan into action. He enlists the Frost Giants to help him take control of Asgard and kill Thor (the rightful heir) and Odin. But Thor's buddies in Asgard come to Earth to get him back to foil Loki's plot. Shenanigans ensue.
It was fun. Despite the rather predictable plot, it was some of the most fun I've had in ages. For one thing, it passed the Bechdel Test within the first minute or so, which is not something I usually expect from a superhero movie. (Captain America, as much as I loved it, barely scraped by with one female character giving another a code-phrase. Iron Man, as best as I can recall, failed.) And it continued with this. No, my fellow scientists, our heroine does not renounce the ways of logic in favor of Chris Hemsworth's gleaming abs. Instead, she learns what she can, treats it like science, and incorporates it into her research so she can go looking for him after the movie ends. (He is pining for her in Asgard, she is looking for him--seem like a long-awaited reversal to anyone?) They don't just flop into bed for the sake of some fanservice--their relationship is a very early, tentative one, and mostly just plain sweet. One gets the impression that, if they do have sex in some future movie, it will mean something to the characters rather than just fulfilling the desires of the audience, which is a nice break from the norm. Also, she is far more active in initiating it than is usual, which is also really nice.
Most importantly, I was entranced by the characters. Honestly, I would have been perfectly content to watch the lot of them playing cards for 150 minutes. Loki stole the show, as you've probably heard from another hundred and fifty reviewers. I'm a huge sucker for sympathetic villains who think that they're doing the right thing, and Loki hit all my 'aaaawwwwww!' buttons. And I wound up liking Thor a lot more, too. It wasn't so much that he had a character arc as that the plot put him in new situations that showed the good aspects of his character. His relationship with Loki was wonderful and complicated, and by the end I wanted to take both of them home and feed them cookies and tell them it was all going to be fine.
The heroine, Jane Foster, was smart and ruthless and above all snarky. Sif, the goddess of war and one of Thor's buddies, was incredible fun to watch--I love it when a movie treats a female warrior like one of the guys and doesn't insist on sexualizing or weakening her. The rest of the supporting cast was fun and didn't get in the way too much (the requirements of a good supporting cast, if you think about it).
I am running out of time and must go to dinner, so I will wrap this up quickly. Thor is worth the time to watch. Indeed, I enjoyed it enormously more than the masterpiece of literature that we're reading for class, and I think that it was far more satisfying and less inclined to do things for the shock value than said book is. (Sorry professor!) It left me both happy and wanting more; I can't wait for Saturday now!
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