[After the “noted” “success” of our LOST rewatch two years ago, James and Scott are back to prepare for the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron the only way they know how: by going through the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, movie by movie. We are not very imaginative. Check in every week as we go into way too much detail about pop entertainment and frequently say people are wrong about things.]

James: So right down to business, then! Last week, we talked about the often maligned IRON MAN 2, and found a lot of stuff to like about it! This week, we take on another movie in the MCU that’s often maligned: THOR!

Scott: I honestly have no idea where this malignment is coming from. It has so much going for it, from great acting, excellent action, a suitably grand aesthetic and scale, and two dreamy leads in Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston! Maybe I’m just spending too much time on Tumblr.

James: I mean, I’ll be real with you, my notes about this movie are an awful lot of talking about how good-looking and charming Chris Hemsworth is as Thor.

Scott: And for a character that, in comics, always struck me as distant and not over interesting, that was a really huge piece of the puzzle for the movie. Not only does he look like Thor, but he is charming and juuuuuust a little bit of a fratboy douche but kinda in a likeable way?

James: Hemsworth, like this movie overall, is ridiculously charming. It’s not without its flaws, but I think the reason I don’t quite understand why people hate it so much is because it’s so fun. People talk about how funny IRON MAN is, but I actually think THOR is on the same level as it, in terms of that.

Scott: Fact: One of the screenwriters, the sadly now departed Don Payne, wrote for the Simpsons for many years. Not necessarily the good years, but that’s still credibility.

James: As we talk about it more, I’ll bring this up a bit, but I think the movie’s only significant flaw is that it doesn’t always blend its tones well; the funny scenes and the action scenes are very different from each other, and not always joined perfectly. But honestly, watching it again, I actually liked it even more than I have before.

Scott: It’s maybe a trifle less organic in its tone than IRON MAN but it’s better in that regard than IM2, I’d say.

James: And it also avoids some of the aspects of IRON MAN that I didn’t like as much, namely the fratboy-ish, regressive jokes that popped up occasionally. It’s pretty tightly plotted, too, even if the two halves aren’t always married perfectly. But it has a lot more in common with IRON MAN, many people’s favourite MCU movie, than I think they’re usually willing to realize or concede.

Scott: So let’s hit the ground running with a scene where the protagonist literally hits the ground… not running. Like IRON MAN, the movie begins sort of in medias res, with the human characters of Jane Foster, Darcy and Dr. Selvig looking for science phenomena and getting into a hit and run with the God of Thunder.

James: This scene actually captures two of my favourite things about the movie: its visual majesty and its humour.

Scott: Absolutely. From the moment Kat Dennings appears you know there are gonna be laughs, and the effects look plain gorgeous.

James: Jane has brought everyone out on this night to see some undefined celestial phenomena, basically an aurora borealis, and it looks really cool! It also, however, happens to be more intense than she said it would be. Sexy blond dudes rarely fall onto your van up here in the North.

Scott: And as with IM, it’s smart to start with the Midgard (or “Earth”) stuff first and double back to build the backstory about Thor, Odin and Loki. Gives you a sense of where this is all headed.

James: It also centres the movie in its human element; as much as Thor’s first scene is visually cool and sets up the plot, it’s very High Fantasy. Starting the movie with struggling scientists and their everyday problems is VERY Marvel. That said, Odin explaining his exploits to Adorable Baby Thor and Loki is FAN-tastic.

Scott: But before long, we do get knee deep in the High Fantasy with a narration from Odin, giving us the lowdown on the war between the Asgardians and the Jotuns (Frost Giants.) Spoiler alert: The Asgardians, who wear cool Jack Kirby armour, win and the Frost Giants, who are giants made of frost, lose.

James: It’s honestly the fastest that a Marvel movie sets up its convoluted backstory. Even IRON MAN, as tight as it is, takes longer.

Scott: The Asgardians seal the deal by seizing the Jotuns’ magic icebox. I do love that this is just kind of a story Odin tells his kids. I really like Anthony Hopkins as Odin. He spends half the movie asleep but when he’s awake he makes his presence felt, giving the film an almost Shakespearean weight: “Only one of you can be King, though both were born to it.”

James: Yeah, director Kenneth Branagh is known for his Shakespearean adaptations, and that’s definitely the atmosphere he has Hopkins channel here. It’s full-on-reaching-for-the-cheap-seats stuff, and it works for me largely not just because actors like Hopkins and Hemsworth commit so consistently, but because it matches the atmosphere of their environment. They actually found a way to talk in the Asgardian font from the comics.

Scott: Totally, and it’s only fitting that the central conflict between Thor and Loki has all the elements of Hamlet or Lear: Betrayal, deception, honor…

James: Jealousy!

Scott: Yes! So flash forward a few years, and Odin is holding a coronation for Thor as he prepares to cede the mantle of King of Asgard, and Thor is showing off his pure cockiness twirling Mjolnir in the air like a drumstick and wearing his sweet Jack Kirby-designed winged helmet that I really wish he wore for more than two minutes of screentime in his so-far three appearances. They realized these costumes, especially the potentially absurd headgear, SO beautifully.

James: Can we talk about how amazing Hemsworth is as Cocky Thor, mugging for the crowd and basically being a high school homecoming king? Like, Thor is straight up that dick in high school that you kind of liked anyway, but who thought his entire life was going to be like senior year. PSST: This movie is about growing up.

Scott: And Loki’s the nerd that expects to really come into his own in college. The transition between Cocky-Aggressive-First-Act-Thor and Thoughtful-Heroic-Worthy Thor at the climax is so drastic and yet never feels abrupt.

Asgard looks 100% amazing, too, the glimpses we get of it. I walked into the theatre pretty skeptical I was going to care one whit about what went on in this movie - this was before I ever watched Game of Thrones so I didn’t know if I had a taste for this sort of thing - but as soon as I saw the aesthetic I thought “Oh, it’s like THAT. They nailed it.”

James: And I came at it from a different side; I liked Thor comics and I’ve *always* been a fan of high fantasy, and I was just plain skeptical that they could achieve their stated goal of making Asgard a world where science and magic are one. Looking back at Asgard in this movie, the closest the MCU has gotten to it again has been the alien world/city in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.

Scott: To be fair, those are the only two that don’t take place compeltely in the human world.

James: They absolutely nailed what they were going for here if the same aesthetic can be tweaked and look totally sci-fi, but still feel like weird Norse futurist myth here.

Scott: So while all this revelry is going on, some Frost G’s sneak into Asgard to get their Ice Cube, but immediately get obliterated by the Destroyer, the awesome fase-blasting robot they keep on hand for just such an occasion.

It was not a Good Day.

James: Especially not when Thor is justifiably pissed about Odin not wanting to take revenge, and Odin makes a very good point that he can’t just run off half-cocked and start a war. Of course, Thor listens.

Scott: Oh yeah, totally, he’s a reasonable kid.

James: The next hour and forty-five minutes are just sexy abs and tasing.

Scott: I do love the conflict between Thor and Odin here, because you can see the points on both sides: if you’re Thor, it’s like your dad is just pulling rank, and if you’re Odin then you know your son is going to do something VERY destructive.

James: Thor’s argument is that he was literally one second from being King, so he should get to basically be king. It’s… not without merit. And Odin is realizing that Thor should maybe not be king.

Scott: Thor very reasonably flips a table in anger - a HUGE table - which is very upsetting to his buddy Volstagg, who was totally gonna eat all that.

James: A one hundred percent delightful joke, by the way.

Scott: The Warriors Three Plus One don’t quite get enough personality development, but the two that do assert themselves are Volstagg and Sif, who are rad. They, and Loki, agree to accompany Thor to Jotunheim to get ANSWERS.

James: What I like here is that Loki does seem to actually try to talk Thor out of blowing up the conflict by invading Jotunheim, but he’s also JUST slimy enough that you can tell he’s got ulterior motives. And to Thor’s credit, when they get to Jotunheim, he actually DOES listen to Laufey and Loki’s points about not starting a war. He is ready to walk away until someone makes a homophobic/misogynist joke about him.

Scott: Spoiler alert: the characterization of Loki is SPOT ON in this movie.

James: Yeah, we’ll get to it later, but Loki is just CRAZY good in this. Sympathetic, not evil. He has a very reasonable point, he’s just morally flawed in how he goes about it.

Scott: Laufey warns that The House of Odin is full of traitors and Thor says them’s fightin’ words but Loki diffuses the situation and then Laufey calls him Princess and THEM’s fightin’ words.

James: It’s fitting that Thor is immature enough that he’s actually willing to ruin the peace over a weak-ass joke about his masculinity. But he IS that much of a baby, so they fight, and things get worse in a hurry - Thor flies through a giant monster, tearing a pretty badass hole in it in the process - but he can’t tear down an entire civilization, so Odin has to show up to broker peace.

Scott: It is a pretty great Battle Scene, and introduces a few neat elements very slyly that come into play later for Loki: his illusions and the fact that he doesn’t get freezerburned the way Volstagg did when touched by a Fro-G. Odin does bail them all out at the end and hauls their asses back to Asgard for a stern talking to. And it is a STERN talking-to.

“You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!”

James: They BOTH say some stuff, too. Hurtful stuff. It’s just weird daddy issue shakespearean screaming, something I am totally down for. But really, Odin’s point is proved here: Thor can’t be king, and he needs to go off and grow up. SO! Exile to Earth, anyone? They’re screaming so much that even Loki seems genuinely disturbed by it. Though, well, he’s a liar. But still! It’s a seismic shift in Thor and Odin’s relationship, and the place the movie kicks off.

Scott: The exile scene is really rad, as Thor is ceremonially stripped of his badge and gun.* It puts a nice spin on the whole “If He Be Worthy” thing, too.

(*cape and hammer.)

James: Yeah, I noted that! Normally, from what I recall, the old line about someone needing to be worthy to lift Mjolnir and have the power of Thor predated Thor actually getting the hammer. But here, it’s Odin’s plan all along: the prophecy/curse comes BECAUSE he needs Thor to be unable to pick it up… until he’s grown up.

Scott: It makes for a really good - if slightly obvious? - arc for the movie.

James: Yeah, I mean, this movie is never subtle about the story it’s trying to tell. It lays it all out, and the movie simply counts on the way it gets there to be charming and exciting.

Scott: And that brings us to where we came in, with Jane, Erik and Darcy smacking him with their RV and then tazing him when he gets a little confused about where he is. And I’ve gotta say I loved seeing the God of Thunder get tazed, bro.

James: I laugh every time it happens. It’s just CLASSIC comedy styling, with Thor being tazed right in the middle of a sentence, as he declares, “You dare threaten me, Thor, with so puny a-“ BZZZZZT

This movie is kind of a Jack Kirby Vaudeville routine, actually.

Scott: And so begins the movie’s lengthy tenure as a fish-out-of-water comedy and if I was 100% on board after Asgard, I was a further 10-20% when it turned into Perfect Strangers with magic hammers. This is the first of THREE times in less than 15 minutes that Thor is completely waylaid, the second being when he gets forcibly sedated trying to escape the hospital.

James: The hospital scene is great not just because it repeats the EXACT same joke as the tazing, but by how it has so much fun with the characters. Selvig is trying to smooth everything over, Jane is embarrassed about how she ran Thor over, and Darcy is just having fun being an agent of chaos egging everyone on and proudly admitting that she tazed Thor. This movie gets is characters right very, very consistently.

Scott: Darcy is one of the movie’s many strokes of genius. With Selvig and Foster both being mostly level-headed, Darcy’s modern sarcastic attitude contrasts nicely against the guileless exiled Thor, and also enhances Jane’s character by giving her someone to play off of. They managed to avoid wasting another character like Liv Tyler’s Betty Ross in I, HULK.

Meanwhile in the desert, a mysterious chunk of metal with a handle sticking out of it has landed in a crater and various townsfolk including one who looks like Stan Lee try to use their pickups to haul it out of there. I love that the whole thing becomes a huge tailgate party until Agent Stick-in-the-Mud shows up to shut down the fun.

James: Stan Lee as a hick with a pickup is my actual favourite cameo of his.

Scott: So far he’s been Hugh Hefner, an energy drink enthusiast who gets poisoned, and Larry King. And that’s just in the official MCU canon!

After giving a scientific explanation for the Bifrost - it’s an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or Wormhole - Foster & Co. head off to find Thor when they realize there was a human figure in their images of the event and it was PROBABLY him. She then runs him over - his third time being incapacitated that particular day. She also utters a line that, I honestly have no idea why, but made me laugh for some reason: “I just lost my most important piece of evidence… typical.” This is a movie full of great lines and I wrote down this line that was probably in no way intended to be funny, because of Portman’s performance.

James: That is an honestly perfect scene, and it starts with them deciding to go find the mysterious hunky stranger, so of COURSE Darcy pulls out her taser. And then, the way the end of the scene is shot, where Thor appears in the back window with JUST enough time to look shocked as the van runs him over.

Scott: Perfect. Love that taser callback, very subtle.

I’d also like to note that when we saw Coulson roll up to the Mjolnir crash scene in the IRON MAN 2 credits scene there wasn’t a tailgate party going on, so UM ACTUALLY CONTINUITY ERROR.

Jane loans the stranger some of her ex-boyfriend’s clothes, some of which still bear the name tag of DR. DONALD BLAKE for those of you playing codename bingo at home, this is a reverse case.

James: It’s one of the few winky bits that I enjoy, because it’s so screwball; the movie has enough of a heightened sense of reality as opposed to the other two, which were much more “realistic,” that the name things could easily feel forced. Jane handing Thor a t-shirt that for some reason has a nametag on it, and that he wears it, and this is called back to later? Just kind of silly fun.

Scott: Yeah, the fact that it actually comes into play is nice.

James: Plus, it features Jane checking out Thor’s abs, a noble endeavour if there ever was one. None of the other name winks actually means anything in the movies so far, other than this!

Scott: There’s also a billboard later for the state of New Mexico that reads: “LAND OF ENCHANTMENT… JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY” which I really liked.

James: I missed that! So fun.

Scott: It was during the Destroyer scene, very very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. Back to Asgard, where Loki asks Odin for some details about his backstory, and… he takes it pretty badly. He is not at all pleased to find out that he is in fact blue, da ba dee da ba di.

James: GO

TO

JAIL

Scott: ilu james

James: ugh

ANYWAY, this is actually one of the most important scenes in the entire MCU so far for Loki, in that it basically defines who he is as a character. He’s always felt secondary to Thor, and finding out that he’s actually the son of the king of the Frost Giants gives him every apparent reasoning he needs to turn against his family. It’s really relatable, too, and Loki’s not completely wrong, either. Odin appears genuine that he loves his son, but Loki also realizes very quickly - being a superb liar, he’s a keen reader of people - that Odin had a primary purpose in taking Baby Loki home, and that actually loving him was kind of a byproduct. The reason Loki is the best villain so far in the MCU is that he’s completely relatable and the closest to being unequivocally right about his situation. Villains are supposed to be the heroes of their own stories, and Loki is the king of that.

Scott: It sums up everything Loki hates about himself, Thor and Odin, but has never until now been quite able to put a finger on. And the scene is SO well acted that even when Loki basically shouts Odin into a coma it feels stirring and real.

James: And that scene is played so strongly that you actually empathize with Loki. After all, when his outburst upsets Odin so much he goes into Sad Dad Sleep-oops, I mean the Odinsleep, Loki seems genuinely worried. There’s no audience there, either. He’s actually worried about his dad, as much as he hates him, as much as he’s already formulating plans to become King.

Scott: You really feel all the hurt, the heartache and resentment in Loki that if it weren’t for everything he does through the rest of the movie, he would seem like the protagonist himself.

James: That’s Loki in a nutshell, really: he’s ALMOST good enough to be a hero. And tragically, he knows it.

Scott: That’s probably why Tumblr loves him. That and Tom Hiddleston’s puppydog eyes.

James: Listen, as much as I like Loki, I ain’t drinking out of a Loki collectible Slurpee cup from 7-Eleven right now.

Scott: Back on Midgard, Thor enjoys a cup of coffee with his new friends. Like, really enjoys it, in another of the movie’s classic laffs. Also great is the dopey smile Thor gives when Darcy takes his picture on her phone, which comes back as his falsified Donald Blake ID later in another great callback.

James: Chris Hemsworth’s dopey smiles are like my third favourite part of this movie. They’re just so guileless, which marks him as a counterpoint to Loki; one can’t lie, one can’t help but lie. I mean, he’s acting boorishly in this scene, smashing cups and just getting up in the middle of a meal to interrupt some strangers, but you never feel like his heart isn’t in the right place.

Scott: The amazing thing is, as soon as Jane tells him “Oh, we don’t smash cups here, just ask for another,” he is basically like “Okay true, I won’t. My bad.” Thor is really just a good dude!

James: And it doesn’t undercut his fight with his dad, because they’re not challenging who he is as a person. I’ve heard people say that Thor’s character change happens too soon, and that he’s not enough of a dick on Earth, but I mean, he’s basically an animal in the hospital, smashing well-meaning people left and right. That’s pretty bad. But when he’s able to calm down and think about things, he’s starting to be more thoughtful.

Scott: In Asgard, he’s had everything handed to him, so of course he gets reckless. On Earth, he doesn’t know the rules but is willing to learn. All he has to do to become worthy again is basically bring that attitude back to Asgard.

James: That’s an interestingly consistent part of Thor’s character from the comics to the movie, too; Thor’s always portrayed as having a soft spot for humans, and getting along with them well. It’s his dad and his responsibilities he’s less great with.

[One small quibble I have with the movie, though, is that Thor just hears there’s some object that fell, and as soon as the rubes say nobody can lift it, he knows it’s Mjolnir, even though he wasn’t present for Odin’s curse that made it super heavy. It’s the one sloppy bit of screenwriting that I noticed.

That said, it’s IMMEDIATELY followed by Darcy asking, “Meowmeow? What’s Meowmeow?”

Scott: All it would have taken to make that make sense is to reverse the way things happen: have Odin curse Mjolnir BEFORE exiling Thor. There’s not REALLY a reason not to.

James: I think it works to have Odin curse Mjolnir after, so really, all the script needs is for one of the rudely-wearing-a-hat-indoors diner patrons to say it’s shaped like a hammer. The script gives a good opening for that, and it’s just kind of left there.

Scott: Either way, it’s an easy fix. Thor barges off on his own - literally walking down the middle of traffic, which also amused me for some reason - while the Science Gang lets him go only to find that all their research has been confiscated by SHIELD!

James: I like seeing SHIELD get a bit of an amped-up role here. First, the movie ties into AVENGERS very directly, introducing Hawkeye, Loki and the Cosmic Cube. Second, it lets them be a little more varied in their role here. Instead of being totally good, they’re actually an obstacle.

Scott: They basically saved the day in IM2 - or at least gave Tony the means to do so - so it’s refreshing to see them this way. It also doesn’t feel TOO forced, because this is the way things would generally work.

James: The opening status of Avengers - Selvig working for SHIELD - is predicated on SHIELD’s interest in his research, too. Which is set up here! This movie very quietly, mostly through lack of attention, sets up a lot of Avengers. Waaaaay more than people think, and maybe secondary only to next week’s movie, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER.

Scott: The scene where Jane resolves to help Thor, driving him over to SHIELD’s makeshift HQ built around Mjolnir, features some totes adorbs flirtation.

James: There’s also a great line, before Jane picks up Thor to drive him to Meowmeow’s crash site, where Thor walks into a pet store and, since they don’t have horses, asks for a dog, cat or bird big enough to ride.

Scott: I was miffed to be cheated out of the sight of Chris Hemsworth attempting to ride a Labradoodle down Main St. but them’s the breaks.

James: And yeah, the flirting when Thor and Jane get to the SHIELD crash site is pretty adorable. My exact notes when Thor gives Jane his jacket are, “Oh my god they are going to go to bonetown”

[Scott: SMOOTH AS SILK, THOR. This leads to an extended scene of Thor PRO WRESTLING SHIELD AGENTS.

James: It’s fun, it’s flirty and it actually plays into the buildup to the scene where Thor tries to get Meowmeow back; he gives her his jacket because sure, he’s attracted to her, but also because she’ll “need this” when it begins to rain when he and Meowmeow are reunited.

Scott: Thor fights his way through the base taking down several low-level functionaries with relative ease. We get cameos not only from Hawkeye, but also Maximiliano Hernandez as Agent Sitwell, who will play a prominent role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier several years later!

James: Another thing I noticed! But yeah, uh, people who somehow haven’t seen the movies yet and are watching along with us (hi, Katie!), uh… spoilers.

The Thor vs SHIELD fight scene also has a notable element: Thor straight-up mud wrestling another guy. This movie is not afraid of indulging the gaze of people attracted to perfect blond Adonises.

Scott: Once he front dropkicks his foe into oblivion, he goes to retrieve Meowmeow in a “Sword in the Stone” moment only to find - in a scene just on the right side of overdramatic - he can’t!

James: The melodrama in that scene, I think, works because it’s built up so well. Thor tells Jane that he’s going to fly back to her. He proudly struts to Meowmeow, as the very heavens themselves open up to greet him and his pecs. It’s set up very much like a moment where he’s going to be rewarded. But of course, all he’s done is show up and be kinda charming; he hasn’t changed yet, and he leaves the complex deflated and in cuffs.

Scott: There was also that Hawkeye cameo, which we kind of skimmed over. It has some of that “Obvious Avengers Setup” juice that I noted from IM2, and Hawkeye doesn’t really do anything besides offer some sardonic commentary while Thor wrecks those dudes.

James: I mean, Hawkeye doesn’t really do anything in AVENGERS either, so it fits.

Scott: He does shoot at least one arrow in it, though.

Thor is interrogated-ish by Phil Coulson, who shows off his impressive knowledge of Places Thor Might Be From, but during a brief break, King Loki comes by to lay some master manipulation on Thor and wear the hell out of a houndstooth scarf.

James: One thing I really like about the Thor/Coulson interrogation scene, that I didn’t notice the first time I saw the movie, is that Coulson runs through all those places but then sizes up Thor and says he seems like someone without loyalty, a soldier of fortune. It clearly crushes Thor to be so brutally and accurately sized up. This sequence is him at his most vulnerable, since he arrived on Earth bellowing and full of swagger, and it’s treated well. Thor has to be at his nadir before King Loki comes in to lie to him about Odin being dead, otherwise he might actually insist on coming home.

Scott: Ooh, good catch. Thor definitely looks wounded and hangdog all over scene.

James: It’s another solid Loki scene, too; he tells just enough truth (the Frost Giants won’t tolerate Thor coming home so quickly, something Loki already told Sif and the Warriors Three), but adds in a devastating lie: that Odin is dead, and that heartbreak about Thor did it. Of course, Odin is alive, and Loki is the one who broke Odin’s heart enough to send him into a coma, but it’s that good blend of truth and lies that convinces Thor he has to stay on Earth. We also skipped over a very good scene between Loki and Rene Russo as his adopted mother, Frigga, where we can see just how much closer that relationship is than Loki’s with Odin.

Scott: Oh yes, and that comes back in a big way in Thor 2.

James: Exactly! It’s a really smart scene. In addition, it recontextualizes Loki in his family as someone who actually is wounded by Odin being in a coma, though he’s obviously not above capitalizing on it, and it gives him a varied, layered background. If he just hates everyone, he loses some sympathy. If he loves his dopey brother but resents him, and is a total mama’s boy, then he’s someone we can look at and identify with. So when you get that scene and then his with Thor, the latter carries more weight because the relationship feels that much more lived in.

Scott: Loki has also had to modify his lie depending on the audience - he tells Thor that he can’t come back to keep the peace with Laufey, and he tells the Warrors that Thorcan’t come back because it wouldn’t be good politically to undo Odin’s final command.

James: Plus, that’s a scene where Thor straight-up apologizes to his brother, asks to come home and accepts that he can’t. It’s really the moment where Thor’s journey enters its homestretch.

And really, neither of Loki’s statements there are really lies; sure, it’s advantageous for Loki to keep Thor away (otherwise, Loki can’t be king), but it really WOULD look bad if Loki’s first act was a fuck you to the previous beloved ruler, and when Loki shows up to talk to Laufey, the tension really does seem real; Laufey wasn’t in on any big plot yet, and Thor coming back probably WOULD have destroyed the peace.

Scott: You’re right - it’s inaccurate to call those lies, which is what makes Loki’s con work so masterful. Sawyer would be proud.

James: RIP, southern homie. (NOTE FOR READERS: Read Rewatch! The LOST and discover just how much we love Sawyer)

Scott: And just when Thor hits his lowest, the lovable Erik Selvig comes to bail him out and take him to get crunk!

James: As you mentioned earlier, this scene features callbacks, both to the earlier Donald Blake scene, and to the picture Darcy takes of Thor, which come together in the form of a fake ID that obviously doesn’t fool the government agents. And really, it’s just adorable to see Eric give Thor the concerned dad speech about Jane (who doesn’t need it) and then for the two to get drunk and become friends. I’d forgotten about this scene, and so I’d forgotten that it actually comes back in AVENGERS when Thor refers to Selvig as a friend. It’s a stronger scene in AVENGERS if you remember that Selvig and Thor actually had a solo bonding adventure where they drink, fight and make Eric’s ancestors proud.

Scott: Selvig tells Thor, “I don’t know if you really are the God of Thunder… but you should be.”

James: DE

LIGHT

FUL

And at the same time as Thor and Selvig are becoming friends, Loki visits Jotunheim to make a deal with Laufey. It’s a really interesting scene, because it lets the audience know that Loki actually didn’t betray the house of Odin by letting the frost giants into Asgard because it was a dastardly plot; he actually did it because, well, it was fun, and also because he knew it’d keep Thor from being king - for a time. The fact that Loki didn’t actually do it out of spite or to become king himself is telling; he only took it for himself once he realized the truth of who he was. Of course, NOW he’s letting frost giants into Asgard out of spite. (-ish. Plans within plans, and all.) Like I said, this movie is really tightly plotted, and it’s all based around keeping the characters’ motivations and arcs robust.

Scott: Absolutely. Loki starting to draw the strings of his plan together is a really great bit of plotting, where it turns out that this wasn’t planned out from the start but as the situation changes and his ambitions grow, he adapts his plans. It also pays off in a big way later when we find out what he’s REALLY up to.

James: Spoiler alert: he’s playing everybody for his own gain.

Scott: Meanwhile, Sif and the Warriors Three decide that despite what Loki said, they need to do something about this situation and pay a visit to Midgard. Which gives us a chance to check back in with Idris Elba as Heimdall, who doesn’t have a ton of screentime despite playing a pretty big role in the plot as the gatekeper of the Bifrost bridge. He’s even on the cover!

James: He gets just enough characterization that I like his role; he’s all about duty, but he’s so worried about a disastrous Loki rule that he undermines his duty by basically telling Sif and friends, “I can’t help you, WINK, now I’m going to walk away and maybe you’re not here when I get back, I dunno.” Plus, casting a black dude as a Norse god really pissed off racists.

Scott: OMG that was SUCH a thing.

James: The b-list Asgardians actually get good bits of characterization. Heimdall is about dedication, Sif is steely and intense, Hogun is stoic, Fandral is rakishly charming and Volstagg is a glutton who tells stories. It’s not particularly DEEP characterization, but it’s effective enough that they each have reason to be named, distinct characters.

Scott: Yeah, they’re not cardboard cutouts by any means, there just isn’t enough time to get deep into them. And as far as I’m concerned, Idris Elba can play whatever the hell he wants.

James: Meanwhile, back on Earth, Thor flirts with Jane, who is really flustered about him seeing her research trailer, and tries to hide a full bowl of cereal in an overhead compartment while communicating primarily in blushes. Thor, meanwhile, continues his journey by apologizing to Jane for his earlier boorishness. “I’ve been far less grateful than you deserve,” he tells her. “Perhaps I had it coming.”

It’s kind of moving how quickly he’s been humbled by Loki’s visit and Coulson’s assessment, but that he’s past wallowing in it. He wants to make things right, and part of that is not only apologizing to Jane, but giving her back her research notebook, which SHIELD had stolen. And he’s even bashful about it, since he promised her that he’d get her back EVERYTHING, but could only do a fraction of it. Thor’s still discovering his new self, but he’s clearly hit the fulcrum of his journey with SHIELD and is already coming out on the other side. So he and Jane stay up late, flirting and talking about the stars, as he explains the nature of the universe and Asgard.

Scott: It’s a nice late-in-the-game infodump to go along with all the flirtation

[James: It’s pretty vague, too; not a massive dump, just a fleshing out of stuff we’ve already seen. I’m not sure, but I think it works better here than it would have if it had come during Odin’s big spiel at the beginning. Plus, here, it actually serves a purpose for characters, so it’s not just pure exposition.

Scott: Absolutely. It’s just sort of a “by the way.” That doubles as a pretty legit

bonding moment.

James: We’ve seen them be attracted to each other, but this scene is necessary to sell them as potential romantic partners. No matter what my letters to Marvel Studios might have said, it can’t be ALL Chris Hemsworth abs and sexings. Plus, it gives us the amazingly charming scene the next morning, where Thor and Jane serve each other breakfast and Thor has the dopiest, happiest grin on his face. Like, the fact that we don’t see Thor so genuinely happy on Asgard as in that scene serving up eggs and pancakes is kinda the entire movie, and his character, in a bottle.

Scott: All Thor wants to do, it turns out, is retire to New Mexico and open a breakfast joint with Jane Foster.

James: J. Michael Straczynski, who has a story credit on the movie, did a THOR comics run where a short order cook featured prominently.

Scott: Could that be J. Michael Straczynski’s one positive contribution to the world?

James: I actually really like his THOR run, and that is basically the one thing he did that I like.

Scott: No sooner do the Warriors find Thor than the town is beset upon by the DESTROYER, who is instructed by Loki to “DESTROY EVERYTHING,” which seems simple enough. Thor tells them they have to fight without him given his recent de-powering, but he still helps any way he can by evacuating and securingthe area while the Warriors attempt to take down the giantwalking Death Robot.

James: It’s a good signal of his growth that he knows not to run into a fight, and is instead concerned with saving the vulnerable. Plus, when Sif and the Warriors Three end up being unable to defeat the Destroyer, it sets up Thor’s greatest moment: a heartfelt speech to his brother, who he’s just found out lied to him. He pushes past his anger to try to remake his connection with his brother: “Brother, whatever I have done to wrong you, whatever I have done to lead you to do this, I am truly sorry. But these people are innocent. Taking their lives will gain you nothing. So take mine. And end this.” Then a giant robot sucker punches Thor.

Scott: Almost to death!

James: Luckily, a sleeping Odin hears Thor’s plea to his brother, and he is found to, at last, be worthy. Note: this scene makes me weirdly weepy and I can’t explain it.

Scott: Meowomeow returns to him, and he is reborn as the true God of Thunder, red cape, Jack Kirby armour and all!

Jane: “Is this how you usually look?”

Thor: “More or less.”

James: This movie’s commitment to charmingly awkward flirting is commendable.

Scott: After destroying the Destroyer, Thor returns to Asgard. Meanwhile, the Jotuns close in on the Casket of Unlimited Winters, only to be destroyed… by LOKI???

James: I actually really like that the confrontation with the Destroyer is so one-sided after Thor is repowered. Because him being able to beat people up isn’t the point! Thor-with-Meowmeow is mostly used to show moderately inventive ways to wreck motherfuckers, not actually carry the movie. Also, Thor swinging Meowmeow like a baseball bat to knock the Destroyer’s beams back at it is just plan cool

The Jotuns’ approach on Odin is interesting for two reasons:

1. a) Frigga pulls a sword out of a bed and kills one like a boss;

2) The reveal of Loki’s full plot, which is pleasingly complex and selfish.

Scott: Absolutely. He’s not in it out of a newfound loyalty to the Frost Giants at all. He wants to destroy them better than Thor ever could, so that he could secure his claim to Odin’s throne.

James: I really like the Loki reveal, because it really doesn’t make sense for Loki to all of a sudden love the Frost Giants, and the earlier scenes showed that he really DOES love his family, even if he has complex, often fraught relationships with them. It wouldn’t really make sense for him to want everything burn. He just wants to prove that he’s Thor’s equal.

Scott: I was very thrilled by that final twist, both the first time I watched it and this time, since I had totally forgotten what Loki’s endgame was.

James: Me too! I’d thought Loki’s endgame was just helping his birth father, and was really pleased that it was something else. One thing I like about Loki’s reveal is that he identifies fully as a son of Odin, explicitly. He completely rejects his birth parent, embracing his adoptive family and home. He doesn’t always like them, but he’s accepted that he’s one of them.

Scott: Loki’s big plan is to let the Bifrost run and destroy Jotunheim with it, bringing back a plot point from the beginning of the movie.

James: TIGHT. ASS. SCRIPT.

Meanwhile, Thor knows he has to return to stop Loki, but not before he promises Jane he’ll be back, and charmingly kisses her hand. She takes charge, though, and kisses him right on the lips, my exact notes being, “THEN HE KISSES HER HAND AND THEN SHE SMOOCHES HIM OMG”

Scott: Talk about a whirlwind romance!

James: BOOOOOO

Scott: :DDDD

James: So Thor shows up to stop Loki, and they argue over their father’s body in the movie’s most literal metaphor.

Scott: Then they fight, and considering Loki is pretty explicitly a non-combat character — certainly when it comes to fighting Thor — he holds his own pretty well, including a great callback of his illusion/duplicate trick. In general the action in this movie was very engaging and inventive - each of the Warriors, and Thor and Loki, have their own gimmick and fighting style, and each fight gives them chances to show them off.

James: It’s not as impressive as the final fight scene in THOR: THE DARK WORLD, but it’s well-articulated, clear and, like you said, is true to the characters.

Scott: It also has really great stakes: Thor knows the only way to thwart Loki is to destroy the Bifrost, which means never seeing Jane again despite his promise.

James: As always, I love the character beats. Loki confesses to his brother that, “I never wanted to be the throne! I just wanted to be your equal,” and after all the buildup, it works. Thor gets the impressive character moment of actually fighting FOR Jotunheim, a realm he was explicitly arguing about committing genocide in the movie’s first act. And as you said, he saves them by committing a great personal sacrifice. It’s Thor at his best, able to put the needs of subjects above his own desires. It’s his kingly moment, to the extent that it actually wakes up Odin, who comes over to settle his sons’ squabble. As kingly as Thor is here, it also highlights how unsuited for the role Loki is, besides that whole committing genocide thing.

Scott: Which sadly ends with Loki rather plummeting into the abyss than live in Asgard with Thor.

James: Loki actually whines at his father about how he could have done it if he’d only let him, daaaaaaaad, and Loki, ever the perfect teen goth, raises his voice a few octaves and would rather fall into the void of space then admit he was wrong. What a baby.

Scott: And so, the Monarchy is restored, at a rather bittersweet price.

James: That actually struck me, how bittersweet the ending of this movie is. The family mourns the death of a member, and Thor gets the fatherly approval he spurned earlier, but at the cost of his love.

Scott: We know Loki isn’t dead and that Jane Foster will eventually be reunited with Thor, but it’s a rare movie where everything isn’t wrapped up in a nice bow.

James: Jane, for her part, looks totally awesome setting up her new research lab and staring off into the distance optimistically.

James: And with Thor mustering some optimism looking out over the broken Bifrost, the credits roll!

Scott: And after those, we pick up on Eric Selvig at the SHIELD compound, where none other than Nick Fury himself shows him a mysterious blue cube they keep in a cool metal briefcase. What is it? “Power… maybe unlimited power.”

James: Meanwhile, an invisible Loki - not dead, le gasp! - controls Selvig’s mind behind the scenes.

Scott: One of my favourite credit scenes in these things - What is that cube, and what power does Loki have over Selvig? Way better than Tony Stark meeting with Gen. Ross in a bar. Really effective and economical. And with that, we wrap up another edition of FAST AND FURY-OUS. Thoughts?

James: I’ll get this out of the way: watching this movie again, I still have vey little idea how this is someone one of the most-criticized movies of the MCU. I just don’t get it. It’s funny, it’s well-cast and it’s tightly plotted in a way that still gives characters room to breathe and develop. Relationships in the movie don’t feel forced, at all. Like, this movie is half action fantasy, half goofy romantic comedy, and the seams are pretty well covered, even it’s more two distinct halves than the slightly more organic THOR: THE DARK WORLD. But, I mean, I’d call it on IRON MAN’s level. It’s more genuine and less sarcastic than that one, though, and I will concede that genuine emotions seem to confound a lot of comic book fans.

Scott: Easily. It’s a total package: it’s grand, impressive and Shakespearean on one hand, but down-to-Earth, human, funny and sweet on the other. I didn’t really see a problem with its two halves gelling: Thor as a fish-out-of-water could have been gimmicky and weird, but instead managed to feel like a natural direction to take the character in order to explore who he is, who he needed ot become, and why he’s our hero.

James: I definitely liked the structure more than I did the first time I saw the movie, and I still liked the movie then.

Scott: As we said, it’s EXTREMELY tightly plotted, maybe moreso than the IRON MAN movies, especially 2, which meandered in the middle. There was never a moment where it felt like it was stalling for time.

I also noticed the Thor-Jane relationship more than I did the first time around. We didn’t talk a ton about Natalie Portman for her performance, but she does a lot with a character who could have easily been underwritten. She has a natural sweetness that comes tempered with a slightly jaded worldview. And she’s helped immensely by Stellan Skarsgard and Kate Dennings.

James: It’s definitely one of the Marvel movies that utilizes the least wordplay; it’s extremely genuine and on-the-level. And yeah, this is a really well-cast movie.

Scott: And we talked a ton about Hemsworth, and come to think of it he does get the short shrift in praise next to your RDJs, Chris Evanses and even his own brother Tom Hiddleston, who plays a pitch-perfect Loki.

James: Hemsworth manages to have that goofy booming voice as Thor and make it work. It doesn’t feel like a put-on at all.

Scott: A few weeks ago someone asked me what my favourite MCU movie was, and I actually said this one, largely on the strength of Hiddleston, but there’s a ton of other stuff going for it.

James: Plus, is he is really, ridiculously good looking. I don’t know if I’d call this one my favourite, even though all the faults I find with it (like a slightly too-fast-moving third act, even one that’s rewarding & tight) are relative nitpicking. But it’s definitely up there; I’m a big fan of it and the Cap movies.

Scott: I just wanted to say something other than GOTG, which is amazing but also has the benefit of being the most recent.

James: This one brings the goofy smiles and romantic comedy, while Cap, as we’ll discuss next week, brings a moral earnestness that makes me actually cry every time. But I think we can both agree that THOR is extremely underrated. Also, Chris Hemsworth is really, really good looking, and spends a good portion of the movie shirtless, wet or muddy.

Scott: I’ll fight anyone who doesn’t think this movie is a solid A, yes. So join us next week for yet another inspirational superhero adventure starring a handsome Chris!

James: The THOR-CAP combo is really great. See you next week, folks! I hope you enjoyed being wrong as shit.