Nurb said:
Comic book fans hate any change to established characters, cannon or not, except this time they didn't see the racist label coming when they complained about a god character's race change instead of a costume. Yes, I'm aware some genuine racists complained but they'd be the minority from what I read. I'm not a fan of thor or comics really, but it's annyoing to have that label thrown around so casually about criticism and the comics' source material
Well, contreversy generates attention, and I suspect that is one of the big reasons why they did this as much as anything. There is nothing special about this actor or the way he plays Heimdall, and he sticks out like a sore thumb.
While it hasn't been covered too much on The Escapist, one also has to understand that a lot of the accusations of "racism" are tied to how people complain about Heimdall, but nobody complains about Hogun The Grimm who is played by an Asian, totally missing that Hogun looks like a Hun or a Mongul or something in the comics, complete with a furry asian hat (which seemed to be missing in the movie oddly enough, which I suspect was done to highlight the "hey look, it's another non-white"). Basically this was all racial contreversy bait to begin with, and it's exactly why this is never likely to be viewed as the defininitive Thor movie. All the groans about Thor assuming the identity of Donald Blake as opposed to BEING Donald Blake are another issue, but they don't get the attention the whole racism card does.
At any rate, the satire potential here is incredible. Given that Loki's "OMG, I'm actually a frost giant" (that doesn't look line one) is a driving part of the plot, a lot of people are waiting for "Thor 2" when Loki approaches Heimdall and shocks him with the news that he is adopted too... leading to tear jerking scenes as Heimdall shows he was just as oblivious as Steve Martin in "The Jerk", before massive rage and the team up of the century! An alliance over reasons we could never suspect.... complete with movie promotion saying "see, it wasn't politically correct, we planned this all along! Heimdall is just really, really, stupid and fans should have picked up on where this was going... after all why didn't Loki kill the guy? He had mercy on a fellow adoptee".
It's not as funny when I do the whole "sequel joke" as others are far funnier with it, but the point is that this is ridiculous.
I'll also say that I think (on a more serious note) it says a lot about the slant of reviewers that not many of them have the guts to actually call the movie on the political card it's playing to hype itself up. In Moviebob's case his political leanings are obvious, but at the same time I think he's so excited about the idea of seeing shared-universe super hero movies and a crossover between them that he's unusually blind to their flaws. Even removing Heimdall and the whole problems with comic continuity (which to be fair can't be held against it so heavily since the change in format requires some changes to the material in order to flow properly), the movie is mostly just passable. It doesn't suck, but it's also a long way from being really good.
I'll also say that the guys doing the marvel movies will probably wind up kicking themselves in the head over casting Natalie Portman as Jane Foster. As an actress she's a geek icon, and pretty receptive to doing "action girl" type roles. She's the kind of actress you'd expect them to want to hold off on contracting until they wanted to do a female super hero or villain and then tap her to play that in a starring or co-starring role. Given that they have Sif wandering around (played by that girl from "Kyle XY" can't remember her name off the top of my head, but I usually remember it) and she's ultimatly going to be Thor's big love interest if they continue this into a franchise, it seems like kind of a waste since other than some tear jerking "torn between two lovers" stuff which she ultimatly uses, Natalie is more or less isn't looking for much of a future here if they DO build up a marvel comics continuity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Foster_(comics)
Incidently, this is also one of the big reasons why I think the Thor movie fails, because it really fails to capture the essence of the character "Thor". Right now they have sort of re-done the continuity to try and imply that Donald Blake was *ALWAYS* Thor, having been cast down. Yet as you can tell from the above and the mention of an old "What If" scenario that this is hardly the case, with Thor being more of a possessing entity as "what if Jane had picked up the hammer instead of Donald" is one possible scenario. While they wound up explaining things a little differantly in the stories, this was a popular enough idea that it inspired "Thor-Girl" who was "Thor" in the "Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X" stories.
Also if you've ever read Warren Ellis' run on Thor (hail the master storyteller of comics) such as the limited series "World Engine", they kind of have things backasswards. When Thor is cast down to earth, it's more because Thor favors mortals too much, not because Thor is being a rockhead. In fact one of the reasons why Thor routinely clashes with Odin is because of his love for Midgard, and on a few occasions he winds up getting a ton of crap because he's not present when Asgard gets conquered by something or other, and he has to come back and save the day.
I was also admittedly a little put off on the presentation of "The Destroyer Armor". To be brutally honest it's been around a long time, but half the point of it being around is that Thor can't handle it in a straight fight. I might have missed it somewhere but I've always kind of wanted to see a Juggernaut Vs. Destroyer Armor one on one, because Juggernaut was apparently so powerful that the only way they could deal with him in Asgard was to imprison him if I remember (or the animating force rather). Still I'd say Juggs would probably have that one because where both are basically indestructable, Juggs has that whole "irresistable force" power where nothing can stop his forward momentum, "The Destroyer" isn't immovable and has been damaged by uber-enough attacks so I'd imagine it would eventually get chipped down... this is of course irrelevent though, especially in the movies where Juggs is a pathetic shadow of his self in the comics, apparently being a mutant rather than a guy empowered by the Crimson Bands Of Cytorak (the only person to ever damage him that I can think of was "Longshot" and that's because of massive probability manipulation and the fact that he can literally 'do anything' when acting in a good cause. He stuck some throwing knives in Juggs if I remember, but that's another one of those stupidly overpowered abillities that is rarely written properly).
All rambling (way off the subject) aside, the point is that I consider Natalie Portman kind of wasted here, and I suspect that in the long run this will be remembered as similar to the Michael Keaton "Batman" movies, decent, but hardly great. Though truthfully I think those movies did have a little more respect for the character of "Batman" than the Nolan movies do (even if they are better as films). I think "Batman Returns" probably captured the essence of the character, complete with the utter cheeze (Cybernetic Penguins gogogogo!) being presented seriously better than any other movie.... and umm, with no offense ot Heath Ledger, I think his version of "The Joker" benefits from his death. Jack Nicholson pulled it off better... probably because he wasn't acting. >
<cuts off his own ramble and runs away from his own giga-post>
