In my discussion of Thor yesternight, I forgot to mention the film’s surprisingly antiwar politics. I can’t go into details without spoilage, so I’ve once again relegated them to the comments section.
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Tag Archives | Science Fiction
Viking Cinema
Just saw Thor, which was a lot of fun. Tom Hiddleston really stole the movie as Loki (and the script gave him a nicely ambiguous role to play). Jotunheim looked cool. (Well, it looked like a cross between Mordor and the White Witch’s palace, but that seems about right.) The cameos for Straczynski and Lee were a hoot. And the post-credits sequence promises more good fun to come. (I have a comment on the post-credits sequence, but since it’d be a spoiler for those who haven’t seen Thor yet, I’ll put it in the comments section.)
My only real gripes were: a) Natalie Portman seemed a bit lackluster – closer to her Star Wars performance than to her much better V for Vendetta and (I gather) Black Swan performances.
And b) why can’t they bother to pronounce Norse names correctly? I can see why they might not want to depart from the familiar pronunciation of “Odin,” but why not go authentic for “Heimdall,” “Jotunheim,” “Mjöllnir,” etc.? (Still, at least they didn’t have the Asgardians massacring Elizabethan English the way the comics do. Just how hard is it to learn the differences between “ye” and “you,” “thou” and “thee,” and “doth” and “dost”?)
While we’re on the subject of things Norse-related, I recently recalled, in a comment thread on how the filming of Tolkien’s Silmaterial might be handled, the short animated film of Beowulf from 1998, voiced by inter alia Derek Jacobi and Joseph Fiennes. It’s the most faithful adaptation of Beowulf I know of, and I think the animation style is beautiful. Check it out:
And now, back to Thor:
SPOILER WARNING:
Blogger on the Inside
SPOILER WARNING:
Watch the following video clips only if you’ve seen the latest episode of Doctor Who (i.e., Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife”); in them, Gaiman talks about writing for the show, and describes/mourns some bits that got dropped from the script. (And no, the picture of the Beatles really isn’t a spoiler.)
And don’t forget this bit of cut dialogue (previously blogged).
In related news, the line in this episode about biting being like kissing, only there’s a winner, is a nod to the line in Steven Moffat’s Jekyll about killing being like sex, only there’s a winner. Whether the reference is Moffat’s or Gaiman’s I’m not sure.
Wichita = Gallifrey?
Randall Holcombe, discussing the FSU funding flap, writes (inter alia) that “Charles Koch is well-known for supporting libertarian causes.”
That wording tickled my funny bone, because of its similarity to a Doctor Who villain’s famous reference to “the Doctor’s long association with libertarian causes.”
[To the humour-challenged: No, I am not making either a pro-Koch or an anti-Koch point in this post. Sometimes a joke is just a joke.]
Atlas Shrunk, Part 7: Parturiunt Montes
In related news, I finally saw the Atlas Shrugged movie – twice (once in San Diego during the APA, and once here in Auburn where it surprisingly showed up after all). I disliked it less on the second viewing than on the first, but it still left me mostly cold.
This is actually one of the most successfully Randian-looking images from the film
Admittedly any film of Atlas was going to have a hard time satisfying me; after all, Atlas was the book that introduced me to philosophy in general and to Aristoteleanism and libertarianism in particular, so it’s a pretty important book in my life.
All the same, Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Chronicles of Narnia were pretty important books in my life too, but despite various gripes I enjoyed the film versions of those a lot more than I enjoyed Atlas. (Re LOTR and Dune I’m referring to the Peter Jackson and John Harrison versions respectively; I didn’t much enjoy the Ralph Bakshi and David Lynch versions.)
I could give a long list of particular things that bugged me about the Atlas movie, but in a way that would be beside the point. After all, I could probably produce an equally long list of things that bugged me about Jackson’s LOTR, but those complaints don’t add up to anything like the same sense of overall dissatisfaction. And after all, the Atlas film was relatively faithful to the plot, and the casting was mostly sensible.
The difference is that, despite my many many gripes about Jackson’s LOTR, I nevertheless felt transported into Tolkien’s universe. And in watching Atlas I never felt transported into Rand’s universe. I’m not talking about the decision to set the story in the present day, in a real-world timeline; given the budgetary limitations, the alternative, though preferable, wasn’t feasible. But a skillful director and screenwriter could have captured Rand’s stylised universe despite that constraint. Essentially, what I was worried about here turned out to be exactly right.
The irony is that Rand, presumably in part because of her Hollywood training, wrote very cinematically. It takes a real effort to de-cinematise her scenes; but Johansson, O’Toole, and Aglialoro have unfortunately pulled it off.
Obi-wan Laden
A report from the Empire. (CHT Gary.)