Which brings me to my topic at hand. I went to see Thor and I enjoyed it but I am not sure if I was enjoying it because I had only paid $5 or if it was actually a good quality movie. I have mentioned before that I like Kenneth Branagh as a director and he did a fine job in this as he always does. There were some absolutely beautiful shots of space and some amazing CGI work as well. So both his directing and the cinematographer did excellent work. But the script. Oh, the script. When I checked the credits I noticed that the writing credits for the movie had 8 names on it. That is right you heard me. EIGHT NAMES!! IT TOOK EIGHT PEOPLE TO TELL THIS STORY!!! I am incredulous. This is a 115 minute movie. I suppose I should be glad that it was over 90 minutes but I mean seriously eight people. These elite eight are as follows Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne with a screenplay credit. Then J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich with a story credit followed up by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby with a Comic Book credit. Now I am not sure how much of these peoples work even made it to the screen or even if this film was based on a graphic novel or was some sort of movie stand alone story. (I know who is who in the comic book world so please do not give me comments citing the importance of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.)
I just think it odd that any film needs to have this many screen writers. It has kind of been an unwritten rule for me that if a film has a lot of screenwriters it is usually not a good film. But that is a discussion best left for another time.
This is a picture of Thor in one of the Marvel Comics
This is a picture of Thor from the movie.
As you can see they used the comic as a guideline for the costume which is pretty cool. I really did like the visuals of the movie but there were times that the dialogue really seemed awkward to me and a little forced. I thought there were some really good actors in the film and a good if not great director so the flaws really had to be with the script itself. That being said it seemed to rise above it script limitations and when Thor left Asgard and came to earth it really took off for me. Do not get me wrong. I enjoyed some of the stuff in Asgard but what went on when he came to earth was just far more interesting to me.
So I think if I had paid full price for this film it would only get 2 out of 4 for me. But seeing it for so cheap makes it be a 3 and a half easy. It is just a plain fun movie. You might not enjoy it as much if you are not a comic nerd but if you are it is a fun time. I say take next Tuesday and check it out.
3 comments:
I'll give it four out of five for the sheer spectacle of it. It's a gorgeous film visually, and it never took itself too seriously -- there was a lot of humor. I had a great time!
wow J. Michael Straczynski working on a non Babylon 5 project...hmmm guess I should check it out.
I'm ambivalent about Thor, I kind of want to see it but I'm concerned about how they'll handle it. The trailer was terrible, I could barely see what was going on. I like Thor as a character a lot but I'm not sure what the story will be.
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