Saturday, 19 February 2011

Thor new and extended trailer: Hammering it down?



A new and longer trailer has just been released for the Thor adaptation, directed by Kenneth Brannagh, with Chris Hemsworth as the Nordic god and Natalie Portman as the love interest. The film is now due to be released in a short couple of months at the end of April in the U.K.





This second trailer does not seem to show much more than we have already seen in the first one, which is odd considering it is at least a minute longer, but perhaps not such a bad thing, so fed up that I am with trailers that basically show the whole movie and the coolest bits. Saying that, you can pretty much tell the whole story with the trailer: Thor gets banished to earth, his brother unleashes hell on earth, sends giant robot to destroy it, Thor sides with the humans and fights back.



I have a feeling this is going to be a tough sell to the mainstream audience, which might well begin to suffer from superhero fatigue. And while the studios are enthusiastically churning out adaptation after adaptation, apart from the big three, Superman, Spiderman and Batman, which were well known from the public already, few comic book/superhero adaptation have set the box office alight (Daredevil anybody?)



The big exceptions were X-men and especially Iron Man and its sequel. But then this had Robert Downey Junior in it, a well known name, as a seductive millionaire playboy with wit and charisma, and a more mature feel with not just a hint of James Bond influence to it, that explained the wider audience (even my mum enjoyed these movies!).

Thor, on the other hand, has the tricky challenge of putting on screen a superhero that could easily turn into ridicule (Nordic god, winged helmet, huge hammer...) Plus Kenneth Brannagh is not exactly the most inspired director there is, let's just say he is at best competent, and I cannot see him infuse the film with a strong personality the way Bryan Singer or even Jon Favreau did with their own Marvel adaptations.

And then obviously I cannot mention Thor without referring to that hilarious scene in that 80's classic, Adventures in babysitting, with Elizabeth Shue, where Thor was outed as the gay icon he truly is (notice the latent homophobia in that scene but hey, it was the 80's!)



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