Between Glorious Light and Terrible Dark Lies Mediocre - TopicsExpress

Between Glorious Light and Terrible Dark Lies Mediocre Grey Last night at the Miller Outdoor Theater, I saw Thor: The Dark World, rated PG-13, which I mention because HISD (the Houston Independent School District) sponsored the event, and I recalled that when I was an HISD student over a decade ago, only G and PG movies were permissible. Turnout was low, I suspect due to the preceding heavy thunderstorm - Thor signaling his approval? ;) Technically, the projection was of terribly low contrast, exacerbated by ambient light, and I believe the image was cropped to 16:9 from cinematic 2.40:1 aspect ratio; I wont return for another movie - live performances only. It was free, though, as are all Miller events. Despite a strong cast of good to great actors (Natalie Portman as Jane, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Star Trek alumnus Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Star Trek alumna Alice Krige as Eir, Doctor Who alumnus Christopher Eccleston as Malekith, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Idris Elba as Heimdall), The Dark World seems a poor science fantasy imitation of Peter Jacksons Middle-Earth hexalogy. Silverscreen goddess Natalie Portman plays an astrophysicist with three degrees and Thors paramour, but despite her high stature in Hollywood, shes absent for a vast portion of this film and does nothing but stand around until the end, when she plays a crucial, though brief, role, but only by using a device created by someone else, a highly eccentric scientist played by Stellan Skarsgard, who steals a shoe from the real Allfather of comics Stan Lee in one of the latters many Marvel movie cameos, and, incidentally, appears to be the only Scandinavian cast member in this story inspired by Scandinavian mythology. Substantive female roles remain elusive, as Hollywood still struggle to place women anywhere between the cartoonish extremes of completely or nearly useless and implausibly useful; The Dark World avoids magically transforming the soft Terran civilian into a hardened intragalactic warrior, but also fails to develop her and justifies her presence solely by the presence of a dangerous preprimordial force which enters her at the films beginning. Thus, the role feels better-suited for a merely beautiful starlet, and wasted on such a true acting talent as Portman (e.g., Black Swan); her development in V for Vendetta mightve been useful to consult. A romance thread shouldnt be obligatory; do it well, or not at all. Ivent seen the first film, but I recall some controversy over the casting of Idris Elba, raised in London and born of a Sierra Leonean father and Ghanaian mother, as Heimdall; comic book continuity purists noted the character had theretofore always been depicted as white, and white nationalists noted (correctly) that the mythological original was known as whitest of the gods. Interestingly, while writing this review, I searched Elbas name and learned his first wife has a Scandinavian name, Hanne Norgaard, but appears to be Afroasian (and she goes by Kim). (Being a Jewess, Portman as Nordic Thors love received some obligatory nationalist criticism, though not nearly as much as Elba.) I didnt mind because a) this is a superhero movie taking extreme liberties with the ancient source material, and b) Elba is a truly superb actor, a welcome relief from the spate of overrated black performers such as the tired Eddie Murphy, the watchable but genericized Will Smith, the philistine Tyler Perry (that perpetual peddler of what Spike Lee dubs coonery buffoonery), and the appalling and absolutely artificial abject absurdity that is Gabourey Sidibe, imported from Nal Hutta solely to service the production of the execrable Precious, which Armond White of Hip Hop and Politics denounced as an orgy of prurience from the unholy triumvirate of Winfrey, Perry, and Daniels which is the most damaging film to the black image since Birth of a Nation. As did Sidney Poitier and does Paterson Joseph (whose loss of the lead role in Doctor Who to the pasty goofball Matt Smith I shall lament forevermore!), Elba transcends racial sociopolitics to succeed not as a black actor, but as an actor, full stop, and his booming voice and fierce visage add a rich texture to this otherwise mostly-bland film. What I did mind, in addition to the aforementioned underutilization of Portman, is the depressingly-typical unconventionality and unbelievability of the story and its imaginary world. The Asgardians routinely travel faster than light and through higher dimensions, manipulate gravity, construct fantastical cities replete with shimmering energy shields, and, most relevantly, control matter - including living bodies! - at the quantum level, yet, in an impossible contradiction, cant cure aging. Odin scolds his son Loki, Were not gods! Were born, we live, we die, just like humans, to which Loki responds, ...give or take five-thousand years, and the Marvel Wiki says the Asgardians are not immortal, unlike the Olympians. Thus, the Marvel Asgardians are even weaker than their traditional counterparts, who are probably the most vulnerable of the ancient pantheons of the world, said to be immortal as long as they daily partook of Idunns golden apples. Conversely, the dark elven antagonist Malekith laments that he can barely remember a time before the light (stars), which would seem to require his being billions of years old, meaning the dark elves are far, far, far older than the Asgardians, and raises the question of how the former failed to extinguish the stars when they apparently have an opportunity to do so every five millennia, with the cyclical - and extremely frequent, in cosmic time - Convergence of the Nine Worlds of Yggdrasil. Also, how could individuals and a civilization possibly remain essentially unchanged over *billions* of years? I also dont understand how the cosmogonies, cosmologies, and eschatologies of the various pantheons (Asgardians, Olympians, and so on...) coexist in the Marvel universes; perhaps someone versed in the comics can enlighten me. As a curious aside, the Marvel dark elves hail from Svartalfheim, which is the home of the *black* elves - believed to be dwarves - in the traditional mythology, and the traditional dark elves are the Dokkalfar. The Dark World is another popcorn movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which I think contains all current Marvel movie productions outside X-Men and Spiderman, which predate the MCU and for which Fox and Sony, respectively, own the film rights), just barely entertaining enough for thoughtless enjoyment. By way of connecting the film to the MCU, Chris Evans cameos as an illusion of Captain America conjured by Loki, who, in the only truly comedic scene (stock battle quips and witty repartee notwithstanding), lampoons Caps retro squareness, and one of Janes colleagues references S.H.I.E.L.D., subject of the ongoing television show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., intended as a hub for sustaining interest between the film releases, as well as sister organization S.W.O.R.D., which have yet to appear in the MCU. I love the unprecedented attempt at cinematic worldbuilding, but unfortunately dont love the stories. Ive never been a huge superhero fan, and the MCU films Ive seen dont approach the first Tobey Maguire Spiderman, the first X-Men, and certainly not that pinnacle of comic book adaptations, the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. While Im interested enough to see the prequel and sequel (hinted at in the epilogue scene with the mysterious Collector, and now confirmed) eventually, Ill do so mostly just to see Natalie Portman (when shes onscreen) and the computer-generated background scenery, while the generic, sanitized battles pass tensionlessly, insufficient resources having been invested for viewers to invest themselves in the characters and their fates.