FLAPJACKS: Hey, you remember how two days ago you were all “oh I want to see new stuff” and then you pretended to be, like, all cool about Thor even though you’re a giant nerd?
ME: I am a nerd, but I’ve never been one of those nerds with a giant boner for Thor. Not least because at this point it is canon that Superman can beat him. Thor’s okay. He’s just not that cool to me and never has been. Jack Kirby, Walt Simonson, I don’t care – it’s all badly mangled medieval English and shouting to me.
FLAPJACKS: So you won’t go see it?
ME: Sure I’ll go see it. I’m just not waiting with aforementioned giant nerd-boner.
FLAPJACKS: Ah, but the trailer is online! I bet you get a giant nerd boner.
ME: We should probably stop talking about giant nerd boners.
ME: Okay, so to guard the hammer in the middle of the wide, flat desert which nobody can lift, they have set up multiple storeys of brightly lit scaffolding. This serves the double purpose of not only being basically useless but also actively working against the whole “secret agents” bit of S.H.I.E.L.D.
FLAPJACKS: But it looks awesome!
ME: And then Thor beats up a bunch of security guards. Why is this impressive? He is Thor. He can, like, mash their faces by shrugging.
FLAPJACKS: But it looks awesome!
ME: And then he gets captured anyway. Way to go, Thor!
FLAPJACKS: He probably held back because he is a noble god and so forth.
ME: A building explodes! That will teach that building to mess with Thor.
FLAPJACKS: He probably hit it so hard all the bricks spontaneously combusted. That is what happened, I bet.
ME: And the big reveal is… he’s Thor! Well, it’s a trailer, I guess.
FLAPJACKS: Chris Hemsworth looks so much like Thor.
ME: If you mean that he is a big guy with long blond hair, then yes.
FLAPJACKS: Why do you gotta be like that?
ME: Okay, I’m pretty impressed with Asgard. It totally looks like Minas Tirith, but metal-plated. That is a compliment. There’s actually a lot of the original Kirby design in this.
FLAPJACKS: Odin speaks! About honor!
ME: Isn’t it one of the things about Thor comics that Odin is, generally speaking, a giant dickhead? Like, Thor comes home and he’s all “father I have slain the dreaded Ogre of Laffafafhafannahaf and saved the villagers” and Odin would be like “yes, that’s very nice, Thor, but what did you learn about yourself in the process?”
FLAPJACKS: So you’re saying Odin is a hippie?
ME: Not exactly.
FLAPJACKS: Volstagg! Fandral! Sif! Hogun!
ME: What’s the over/under on the number of lines they get in this movie, do you think? I’m thinking four for Hogun, nine for Fandral, thirteen for Volstagg and twenty for Sif.
FLAPJACKS: You don’t know! They could be really important!
ME: Based on what we’ve seen so far and the fact that Odin is lecturing Thor right now, I bet the storyline is something like “Odin condemns Thor to go be a human on Earth until he learns to be a proper hero and crap.” Sif and the Warriors Three do not feature heavily in that sort of storyline. I bet they show up right at the beginning, then sit around looking increasingly worried while Loki does Bad Things, and then they get a bit of fight sequence towards the end.
FLAPJACKS: A HA but why are they in the trailer then?
ME: Where did this air? Comicon. This is the movie studio equivalent of foreplay.
FLAPJACKS: That mental image is worse than the one for “giant nerd boner.”
ME: Also, Hogun appears to be holding a colander on the end of a stick.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe he likes pasta.
ME: Ahhhh, there’s the Odin I’m used to. “Thor, you’re an asshole.”
FLAPJACKS: Loki! He’s being sneaky!
ME: There is nothing there that is sneaky.
FLAPJACKS: Black Heimdall!
ME: I can hear the nerds in the far distance saying “I’m not racist, but this godly being should be white, okay?”
FLAPJACKS: …okay, you were right about the Thor being exiled thing.
ME: It’s the most obvious storyline if you want to connect him to Marvel Earth, frankly. I’m not complaining. The story that makes sense is never a bad pick. Unless you’re David Lynch.
FLAPJACKS: What would David Lynch’s Thor be like?
ME: It would feature a meteorologist who dreams surreal dreams of being a Norse god in olden times, drinks beers at O’Denn’s Bar and Grill, and then inexplicably sprays lightning when he masturbates one morning. This would lead him on a vision-quest where he ends up being transformed into a 1967 Chevy El Camino.
FLAPJACKS: I like his delivery of his second line. I personally like it when Norse gods have English accents.
ME: You were expecting them to have Scandanavian accents of some kind? Come on, this is an American movie. English accents are code for “better than you.”
FLAPJACKS: They could sound like Stellan Skarsgard. He always sounds like a badass.
ME: That is true, but shut up I am looking at Natalie Portman because she is pretty.
FLAPJACKS: Magic is like science!
ME: Looks like Marvel is wussing out and going with the “they aren’t really gods, they’re like… aliens or something” deal that gets trotted out whenever they’re worried about pissing off whiny Christians. Right now the comics are in full-on “no, they’re gods” mode. Maybe this is gonna be the next big switcharound, like when the Spider-Man comics had him shooting organic webs from his wrists.
FLAPJACKS: And Thor can’t lift his hammer because he’s not worthy of the power of Thor!
ME: Which is also kind of predictable, but again, nothing wrong with it. Gives Kenneth Branagh an excuse to do a “this is what a hero REALLY is” plot. Thor will help old ladies cross the street and will build wheelchair ramps into buildings for the disabled and give kittens to small children.
FLAPJACKS: What if the children are allergic to cats?
ME: Then Thor will give them goldfish – oh, wait, seriously, are they having Thor do the “drop to your knees and go “NOOOOOOOOO”” bit? Really, Marvel? I mean… really?
FLAPJACKS: Shut up. It is dramatic because he cannot play with his hammer. Oh man I just thought of a dick joke.
ME: And another exploding building means that it’s montage time! Okay, so we’ve got Asgardians walking like they are Reservoir Dogs.
FLAPJACKS: An evil looking… monster thingy!
ME: Odin dies! Loki becomes the King of Asgard. Or whatever.
FLAPJACKS: Thor carries a small child to a pickup truck. I bet he learns to become a hero that way!
ME: Heimdall appears to be a vampire of some kind.
FLAPJACKS: Loki has his curvy horn helmet! He is so mad!
ME: An exploding car. There are a lot of explosions in this movie given that it’s about guys who fight with swords and hammers.
FLAPJACKS: Makeouts! The Warriors Three and Sif again – aw you’re probably right about them.
ME: Another exploding building. All of these explosions seem to be in the same town.
FLAPJACKS: I wouldn’t want to live in that town. Because of all of the explosions. “Hey, Bert, didja see Jerry? He was supposed to gimme a lift to the DMV.” “Yeah, I saw him, but then his car exploded.” “Aw, shucks. Now I’ll hafta -” and then he explodes.
ME: Thor and Loki fighting. I guess they’re actually saving the good stuff for theatres in this case.
FLAPJACKS: And title. That looks good.
ME: But wait, there is more – ahhh, the Destroyer armor. That is what was causing all those explosions.
FLAPJACKS: Well, it would do that.
ME: It would indeed.
FLAPJACKS: So are we going to go see it?
ME: Of course we will.
FLAPJACKS: So are you going to take back what you said and admit that Thor is the awesomest thing ever?
ME: Of course I won’t.
FLAPJACKS: How about we watch the trailer for Yogi Bear next?
ME: I may have to beat you with a cudgel.
Related Articles
34 users responded in this post
Trailer’s gone already. Alas.
DC
I will say one thing I liked about the trailer near the end-the lesser characters are not stupid. When the Destroyer starts charging his death beam, all of the agents immediately recognize that is NOT good. They don’t need Thor around to tell them.
He doesn’t have superpowers when he doesn’t have his hammer! It’s explained in the trailer! He’s stripped of his powers and sent to Earth!
It’s really not racist to say that the Heimdall thing is a little odd. I have no general objection to casting black actors to play Norse gods – or Spider-Man! – but that one is weird for specific mythological reasons, and it’s a bit much to be called a racist for cocking an eyebrow at it on mythological grounds when you’re complaining about the ‘they’re not really gods’ angle.
Video removed. :<
For the record: pleasantly suprised that Justin Timberlake got Boo-Boo’s voice right.
Where does one purchase a cudgel in the year 2010?
Video still at http://io9.com/5599251/check-out-the-full-thor-trailer-and-get-hammered for now…
Thanks, Dave.
I’m totally stoked for some of the same reason Chris seems apathetic–the fact that this actually looks like a Kirby movie. The comics post-Simonson seem to have gone out of their way to make Thor more of a generic fantasy hero, but the thing that makes Kirby’s Thor so awesome is that it’s a bugfuck mashup of ideas that go far beyond Norse mythology. The Asgardians-as-extradimensional-aliens-of-some-kind rather than literal “gods” is very much from Kirby, and I’m delighted that it’s in there, along with the robot fights. Obviously I’d love to see some crazy fantasy monsters or something too, but I realize they don’t have an infinite budget…
I’d like for the first time when we see Valhalla– maybe if it starts on Earth and then some S.H.I.E.L.D agent goes “where the hell did this come from…” and then it pans over Asgard and Valhalla and such– some Norse chanting or something. Maybe in the vein of a Tyr song when they start singing in Faroese, which is a derived from Old Norse.
Also, Thor hearing some norse-mythology influenced heavy metal and being confused and frustrated as hell might be funny.
“Where does one purchase a cudgel in the year 2010?”
I got mine at a renaissance festival. It’s got brass studs and everything.
Why would they want to remove a trailer? It’s an ad. They should want it to be distributed as widely as possible.
I guess I’ve never seen the Destoyer before. I don’t know who he is. Volstagg looks too small, but I guess it’s too hard to find an actor large enough. Fandral looks exactly like Fandral– that’s perfect casting, at least in terms of appearance.
Well, I just keep remembering how Thor was portrayed in Return Of The Incredible Hulk. No matter how this movie turns out, it’s an improvement.
The Destroyer is there before you need to have Thor beat on something Asgardian and you can’t be introducing Urik and Skurge willy-nilly, this is a Loki story, before the Destroyer works because IT HAS TEH ODINFORCE and I bet the Warrior Three have to kill Thor but they refuse when they meet him and then Loki dispatches the Destroyer to annihilate New Mexico EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Video has been removed due to infringement.
You fiends made me break the law! SHIELD is breaking down my bunker doors as I type this! NOOO! (unleashes the grenade drones) YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE SAMUEL L JACKSON! (slides into a mecha Power Armor Cannon Carrier (PACC) and prepares for battle) DIEEEEEEE!
After the indefinably disappointing Iron Man 2, I’m a little wary of this (the little speech the SHIELD dude gives about how highly-trained Thor is just strikes me as really oddly written, but hey, trailer), but I’m probably going to give it a look.
And I would like to note here that I am pleased Thor has a beard. That is literally why I never liked Marvel Thor- a clean-shaven Norse god of thunder just looks /odd/.
Aw man I’ve got hundreds of Thor comics, and now I’ve got hundreds of nerd boners, that’s right, hundreds. Protect your eyes.
Looks… alright so far? Kirk’s Dad seems to have a better Thor voice than most I’ve heard, because in video games and the like they trend towards cheesy, ren faire Shakespeare. I don’t like that he said Earth, instead of Midgard. I worry that there’s a good chance that there won’t be a hearty “I SAY THEE NAY” with the style of dialogue they’ve chosen for the Asgardians. I am confused as to the apparent lack of Balder.
Costume design looks pretty good, Asgard looks great. Thor having to reprove his worthiness (by going to Medical School, maybe?) is a decent driver to the plot through to the final climactic battle. I’m going to need to see more, or at least better quality, before I pass judgement, though.
Mary Warner- The Destroyer is a big, nasty, nigh unstoppable anti-Celestial war machine created by Odin. If you’ve never seen it before, try to find one of it’s appearances. I think it’s managed to kill Thor twice, so it should make for a good fight in the movie.
Phil- Thor has had a beard before. A few times, actually.
The movie looks pretty blah to me, but I’ll probably see it anyway so I’m ready when we finally get the Avengers movie.
As far as the Yogi trailer goes, good for Timberlake getting the voice right, but bad for him even associating with that project. I thought he knew better than that.
Thing is, for some odd reason I’ve recently been considering Thor and Asgard, and, well, were I a character in the Marvel Universe I’d likely end up as a small blotch on the sidewalk due to being willing to question the godhood thereof.
‘Cause really, the Asgardians just aren’t very impressive as gods. OK, a few of them (Odin, Loki, Thor) are serious badasses powerwise. Otherwise, someone at Spider-Man power levels has a reasonable shot at ’em. Oh, and they live a long time…but what do they do with that time?
Pretty much nothing. When we’re shown Asgard circa 1-2K years ago, seems pretty much like it is at the start of the current Marvel heroes era. No advancement in science. No apparent advancement in magic. All they seem to do is battle back trolls and giants…but they don’t develop way advanced military tactics and/or strategy, weaponry, personal martial arts, etc. It’d seem that your average Asgardian warrior should make Nick Fury/Sgt. Rock/Captain America look like a first day in the Army rookie, but nope.
There’s an old line about there being a difference between 20 years of experience doing something, where over that time you keep improving and learning, and having one year of experience 20 times, where while you’ve worked at something for 20 years, you were just as good at it at the end of year one as you are at the end of year 20. Asgard seems to be the latter times 100.
So, other than said powerlevels for a few of ’em, why should one be very impressed with the Asgardians? I’d be more impressed with Marvel humans, who’ve developed to the point that they can challenge these so-called gods, either biologically or technologically (other than Odin, Thor, Loki, and Hela, name an Asgardian you’d bet on as a favorite in a fight against Iron Man).
http://thor-trailer.blogspot.com/
There better be some fucking Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack.
If the Asgardians are “aliens” instead of actual gods, I think I’m going to have to boycott this movie.
Seriously. Are they from Zeist?
I don’t understand the problem with expecting a Scandinavian god-figure to look like a Scandinavian. It’s not like Nick Fury or the Kingpin – both roles which are well-enough served by an actor of any ethnicity of adequate talent.
The Asgardians of the Marvel U. have always been ultradimensional entities of such power that they’re indistinguishable from gods. That’s the comics. I like it, because it sets them apart from the many other “gods who come to Earth in the present day” we see in fantasy movies, tv shows, books, and comics. And it’s very much of a piece with the Marvel Universe as a whole, which of course being made at the height of the Space Race was all about gadgetry, not magic.
In fact, given how there’s been so much talk from the fanboys about how the fantastical Thor will seem weird in the Avengers movie aside those oh-so-realistic SF-based heroes, you’d think this would ease their complaints.
Walt Simonson didn’t use mangled medieval English, MGK.
And do you dismiss every fictional character who’s canonically unable to take Superman in a fight?
Nope, looks like the trailer is yanked from io9 and blogspot.
@Andrew: Marvel Asgardians are not Scandinavian.
I have no problem with the slight modification in Thor and the Asgardians’ origin and it is not like it is the first time we have seen things re-written for the sake of either convenience or what the writer/director feels is an improvement. Spider Man got organic webbing because Raimi probably felt it unlikely a sixteen year old kid was going to be able to 1) create an all purpose super glue and 2) design a delivery system that is so compact it does not show up under his tights. In X-Men Rogue does not have Ms. Marvel’s powers because then you have to introduce Ms. Marvel. In The Incredible Hulk Banner’s origin can’t be a gamma bomb going off because above ground testing has been banned for decades.
In the case of Thor I think Brannagh might feel this origin will sell better to general audiences. I am willing to trust a director who gave me the awesome spectacles of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Frankenstein, Dead Again and Hamlet. He is a good director and a great actor. Part of me wishes he was playing Odin instead of Hopkins.
Superman is without doubt THE most ridiculous superhero of all time. From his powers to his costume to his villans to his jesus complex.
How his popularity has continued on to the 21st century is beyond me.
Thor is positively shakesperian in comparison.
The trailer looked a bit of a mess though.
In fact, given how there’s been so much talk from the fanboys about how the fantastical Thor will seem weird in the Avengers movie aside those oh-so-realistic SF-based heroes, you’d think this would ease their complaints.
Maybe it would, but personally, I prefer my gods to actually be gods.
@katefan- Not disagreeing with you on general principle, but are you sure you’d call Frankenstein ‘great’? Because, um, I’m pretty sure that film was a trainwreck from start to finish.
His ‘Much Ado’ was good, though.
“I prefer my gods to actually be gods.”
@malakim2099 – sure, I find the notion of the Asgardians having a cultural history, a presumed iron and stone age and, say, Asgardian space-monkeys to have evolved from a bit wierd myself. But what _sort_ of gods?
I mean, presumably Marvel-earth was not assembled from the body of a dead giant, and man was not created out of Ash-wood by Odin and his brothers: so they’re not creator-Gods. And if we go with the old “Gods created by belief” chestnut, the Gods are going to be either dreadfully Old Norse (and that’s dreadfully as in “something to dread”: let’s start with the human sacrifice and more on from there), or constantly under revision (hey, wasn’t there something like that going on in Earth-X?)
So, what sort of origin do they have? Born from a primordial chaos, mating with other species and producing strange children, inhabiting a strange multi-dimensional realm tied together with ours by the endless twisting roots and branches of the world-tree, served by stunted underground creatures, one legend has it, created from the maggots in Ymirs dead flesh…
Perhaps the Asgardians are Elder Gods, or possibly Great Old Ones. Maybe they only look human when manifesting in our dimension, and their true selves would blast mortal minds with madness…
“…their true selves would blast mortal minds with madness…”
Jane Foster to thread. As I recall she got blasted with madness when she visited Asgard, to the point of telling Thor he was completely insane and so was his entire society. (They did lock her in a cupboard with a Fear Beast, so it’s not an unreasonable comment from her POV.)
…It’s frightening how right you were about all this.