Movie reviews - POTC4, Thor
May. 28th, 2011 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoSo I watched the latest Pirates of the Caribbean last weekend when it came out and I just saw Thor today. I figure I'd get both of them in the same review. Spoilers ahoy!
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The only other POTC movie I saw before this was the first one. It was okay for a popcorn flick but I wasn't all that impressed with Will Turner and barely moreso by the female lead. I'm sorry Mr. Bloom, but my love of Legolas was proven not to cross franchise boundaries since Troy tanked. This latest sequel... or I guess it can be said to be the first of a new trilogy... did not have either of those two characters in the billing, thankfully, so I thought it was safe to try.
Overall, it was an okay film - fun, funny, nice elements of legend madeCGI real that all of the POTC films are known for, and the characters were all generally likeable. The best part was that, even though some elements of the plot was totally foreseeable standard Hollywood fare, there were twists that pleasantly surprised me. My favorite parts:
* The big surprise was at the big fight near the end. The English were fighting fairly evenly with Blackbeard's crew, and then the SpanishArmada forces show up at the 11th hour. Instead of being there to claim the Fountain of Youth as feared (hence why the English crown even financed the shebang), they set about destroying the place as blasphemy. A nice if surprising poke at the Inquisition. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
* The female lead character was a much more interesting character than Elizabeth Swann. Elizabeth was an ivory tower tomboy who, according to wiki, spontaneously developed not only the skillz of being a wannabe swashbuckler but also the hypocrisy of righteously leading a bunch of pirates. (Yeah, yeah, the audience is supposed to sympathize with Jack Sparrow cuz he's a main character, but are we really meant to sympathize with pirates/piracy in general? Hello, Somalia?) However, this film's leading lady, Angelica, makes no bones about being a bad girl from beginning to end. She cheats, she lies, she backstabs - in fact I was with Jack all the way in being surprised that she really was Blackbeard's daughter and not just using the legendary pirate for her own ends. (To be fair, she got over his death reeeaaally fast there.)
* Phillip/Syrena - I know these two are really minor characters, but there was so much potential there. While I don't expect a spinoff of anything, it would be really awesome to read a decent fic following this pairing. Syrena (the mermaid), whose species is depicted to be man-eating Nightmare Fuel - is she really different from her sisters as she claims or is she just playing innocent to buy her escape? Phillip - a bleeding heart priest who has had his faith rocked already by weirdness (Blackbeard's cursed ship/sword, the existence of mermaids, the Fountain of Youth...) and fancies himself in love with a creature "not of God". Their story after the film can be a twist on any of the versions of The Little Mermaid - whether it be the starcrossed lovers version, the Christian redemption version, or the Lovecraftian horror version. *sigh* Too bad there doesn't seem to be much fic on this pairing from what I've found. *pouts*
Of course it's not perfect. Or even a "great" film. The throwaway cameo with Jack's father that didn't really amount to anything (so why was it there?)... some of the convolutions of the plot made little sense and seemed quite forced... the English crew was disappointing when you compare their expedition to the Spanish one (both were financed by their respective Crowns) and I have to wonder if there's some kind of anti-Brit sentiments at play...
All in all, it was a decent summer action flick. I'm not going to see it again, but I'm not sorry I shelled out the $10 for the theater.
Thor
I confess, I went into this film with higher than usual expectations due to the hype I've seen online. Alas, while the movie isn't bad, the reality didn't quite meet the hype.
What I liked:
* The world-building was the best part, and it pretty much made up for a lot of failings. It did so in Avatar, and it did so here, IMO. Asgard re-imagined is very very cool. Bifrost (especially when active) in particular was very very *makes grabby hands*.
* Heimdall was my farvorite character, even though he was one of those man of few words types. He just gave off an awesome aura of...awesomeness. Yeah.
* The SHIELD guy... Was it Agent Coulson? Well, SHIELD in general made me smile. For a shady (covert?) government agency, SHIELD manages not to live up to the stereotype of their genre and actually be reasonable human beings. Here's to hope that the Marvel movieverse won't take the road of the Ultimates and make SHIELD into a propaganda gripe about US military doctrine and political policy.
What sucked:
* The plot was...um...not very well thought out. At least the Asgard parts of it. It seemed that characters were being forced to do things that were utterly idiotic even to a retarded child, just to force certain things to happen. I dunno, maybe a lot of the stuff that explained why things happened were cut out to make the movie under 2 hours long. But if that's the case, they cut out too much.
* Loki was...badly handled, I think. The film tried to make him sympathetic and unsympathetic all at once and ended up making him an incompetent moron. Or an obvious directorial sockpuppet.
* The moral of the story was? So, Odin enchanted Moljnor so that it can only be wielded by someone who's "worthy". Moljnor flies to Thor when he...sacrifices his life to save a mortal town. So, Odin only criteria for "worthiness" is the ability to self sacrifice? Oh, Odin... your standards for your heir is so... low. And even then, how does this new found love of mortal-kind somehow cause Thor to care two wits about Loki wiping out the Jotun? How does one even equate to the other? It's not like Thor was bloodthirsty for human blood before or learned any lessons about not solving problems with violence... *boggles*
My personal head-canon:
I bet Odin masterminded the whole. damn. thing. Yeah, he knew blowing off Thor about the break-in during his not!coronation day would totally motivate his hotheaded son off to do something stupid. Then he'd have an excuse to exile his eldest son to teach him a lesson about humility right on the eve of Odin's (pretend) hibernation thing, thus leaving a power vaccuum that would totally put Loki, who's just told of his true Jotun origins, to a test of his loyalty/allegiances... The test Loki fails when he plots with the Jotun to assassinate Odin in his "sleep" and sent the Destroyer to assassinate the crown prince. So Thor is given his mantle/powers back after passing the token BS bar of achievement. This forces Loki to change his betrayal mid-plan cuz he knows Thor was coming for his ass, double-cross the Jotun king, and try to genocide Jotun-land as an excuse to cover up his dealings, while changing his sob-story on the fly. Of course neither Thor nor Odin buys it at this point, which Loki must have realized, thus taking his chances with the black hole swirly thing instead. And in the end, Asgard has rooted out the hidden/potential traitor, their enemies lost their king, and Thor has a few scraps of sense knocked into him. Though poor Thor still thinks his old man didn't have everything exactly in hand.
...Yeah, see? I can fanwank with the best of 'em.
Ah well, it was an okay film overall as long as I ignored the plot and just focused on the shinies (it's how I got through Avatar, twice).
I have less high hopes for Green Lantern now, but hopefully it can still surprise me. And of course, then there's the Captain America film that I'm very much awaiting with baited breath.Not just because Totally because Cap/Iron Man is my new OTP.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The only other POTC movie I saw before this was the first one. It was okay for a popcorn flick but I wasn't all that impressed with Will Turner and barely moreso by the female lead. I'm sorry Mr. Bloom, but my love of Legolas was proven not to cross franchise boundaries since Troy tanked. This latest sequel... or I guess it can be said to be the first of a new trilogy... did not have either of those two characters in the billing, thankfully, so I thought it was safe to try.
Overall, it was an okay film - fun, funny, nice elements of legend made
* The big surprise was at the big fight near the end. The English were fighting fairly evenly with Blackbeard's crew, and then the Spanish
* The female lead character was a much more interesting character than Elizabeth Swann. Elizabeth was an ivory tower tomboy who, according to wiki, spontaneously developed not only the skillz of being a wannabe swashbuckler but also the hypocrisy of righteously leading a bunch of pirates. (Yeah, yeah, the audience is supposed to sympathize with Jack Sparrow cuz he's a main character, but are we really meant to sympathize with pirates/piracy in general? Hello, Somalia?) However, this film's leading lady, Angelica, makes no bones about being a bad girl from beginning to end. She cheats, she lies, she backstabs - in fact I was with Jack all the way in being surprised that she really was Blackbeard's daughter and not just using the legendary pirate for her own ends. (To be fair, she got over his death reeeaaally fast there.)
* Phillip/Syrena - I know these two are really minor characters, but there was so much potential there. While I don't expect a spinoff of anything, it would be really awesome to read a decent fic following this pairing. Syrena (the mermaid), whose species is depicted to be man-eating Nightmare Fuel - is she really different from her sisters as she claims or is she just playing innocent to buy her escape? Phillip - a bleeding heart priest who has had his faith rocked already by weirdness (Blackbeard's cursed ship/sword, the existence of mermaids, the Fountain of Youth...) and fancies himself in love with a creature "not of God". Their story after the film can be a twist on any of the versions of The Little Mermaid - whether it be the starcrossed lovers version, the Christian redemption version, or the Lovecraftian horror version. *sigh* Too bad there doesn't seem to be much fic on this pairing from what I've found. *pouts*
Of course it's not perfect. Or even a "great" film. The throwaway cameo with Jack's father that didn't really amount to anything (so why was it there?)... some of the convolutions of the plot made little sense and seemed quite forced... the English crew was disappointing when you compare their expedition to the Spanish one (both were financed by their respective Crowns) and I have to wonder if there's some kind of anti-Brit sentiments at play...
All in all, it was a decent summer action flick. I'm not going to see it again, but I'm not sorry I shelled out the $10 for the theater.
Thor
I confess, I went into this film with higher than usual expectations due to the hype I've seen online. Alas, while the movie isn't bad, the reality didn't quite meet the hype.
What I liked:
* The world-building was the best part, and it pretty much made up for a lot of failings. It did so in Avatar, and it did so here, IMO. Asgard re-imagined is very very cool. Bifrost (especially when active) in particular was very very *makes grabby hands*.
* Heimdall was my farvorite character, even though he was one of those man of few words types. He just gave off an awesome aura of...awesomeness. Yeah.
* The SHIELD guy... Was it Agent Coulson? Well, SHIELD in general made me smile. For a shady (covert?) government agency, SHIELD manages not to live up to the stereotype of their genre and actually be reasonable human beings. Here's to hope that the Marvel movieverse won't take the road of the Ultimates and make SHIELD into a propaganda gripe about US military doctrine and political policy.
What sucked:
* The plot was...um...not very well thought out. At least the Asgard parts of it. It seemed that characters were being forced to do things that were utterly idiotic even to a retarded child, just to force certain things to happen. I dunno, maybe a lot of the stuff that explained why things happened were cut out to make the movie under 2 hours long. But if that's the case, they cut out too much.
* Loki was...badly handled, I think. The film tried to make him sympathetic and unsympathetic all at once and ended up making him an incompetent moron. Or an obvious directorial sockpuppet.
* The moral of the story was? So, Odin enchanted Moljnor so that it can only be wielded by someone who's "worthy". Moljnor flies to Thor when he...sacrifices his life to save a mortal town. So, Odin only criteria for "worthiness" is the ability to self sacrifice? Oh, Odin... your standards for your heir is so... low. And even then, how does this new found love of mortal-kind somehow cause Thor to care two wits about Loki wiping out the Jotun? How does one even equate to the other? It's not like Thor was bloodthirsty for human blood before or learned any lessons about not solving problems with violence... *boggles*
My personal head-canon:
I bet Odin masterminded the whole. damn. thing. Yeah, he knew blowing off Thor about the break-in during his not!coronation day would totally motivate his hotheaded son off to do something stupid. Then he'd have an excuse to exile his eldest son to teach him a lesson about humility right on the eve of Odin's (pretend) hibernation thing, thus leaving a power vaccuum that would totally put Loki, who's just told of his true Jotun origins, to a test of his loyalty/allegiances... The test Loki fails when he plots with the Jotun to assassinate Odin in his "sleep" and sent the Destroyer to assassinate the crown prince. So Thor is given his mantle/powers back after passing the token BS bar of achievement. This forces Loki to change his betrayal mid-plan cuz he knows Thor was coming for his ass, double-cross the Jotun king, and try to genocide Jotun-land as an excuse to cover up his dealings, while changing his sob-story on the fly. Of course neither Thor nor Odin buys it at this point, which Loki must have realized, thus taking his chances with the black hole swirly thing instead. And in the end, Asgard has rooted out the hidden/potential traitor, their enemies lost their king, and Thor has a few scraps of sense knocked into him. Though poor Thor still thinks his old man didn't have everything exactly in hand.
...Yeah, see? I can fanwank with the best of 'em.
Ah well, it was an okay film overall as long as I ignored the plot and just focused on the shinies (it's how I got through Avatar, twice).
I have less high hopes for Green Lantern now, but hopefully it can still surprise me. And of course, then there's the Captain America film that I'm very much awaiting with baited breath.
