I saw Thor the other day. It was not a bad movie, and I have to say that I enjoyed it more than almost any non-Batman superhero movie, and some of those. You know who I’m talking about, Schumacher. Back to you in a bit. Anyway there was oddness. And not all of it was of the Schumacherish variety.

In the first place, I went into this movie handicapped by two things. The first was a general ignorance of the comic book. The second, unfortunately, was a cursory familiarity with Norse mythology. So when the movie opens up talking about the gods and Valhalla and Asgard and all the rest of that, the brain slides swiftly into mythology mode. And the discrepancies all come piling out. Now this is just stuff off the top of my head – some one who has seriously studied this stuff, or done so more recently, can probably give you a lot more. Mjolnir predates Thor in the film, despite being custom made for him by a couple of dwarves. Not only that, Sif, his wife, (of which fact both of them seem to be rather ignorant) has dark hair. I don’t know what color her hair was originally, but if Mjolnir exists, Sif is a blonde. It is because of her blonde hair that Mjolnir CAME to exist at all! See Loki shaved her head while she was asleep at one point, because that’s how Loki rolls. Then he realized that she’s married to THOR, and furthermore, he is culpable of being alone with Thor’s wife in her bedroom. So he went jumping to fix that situation right quick, and either made or commissioned a wig of actual gold hair, that was magic so when Sif put it on, it came to life, and she had literal golden hair. Loki started bragging about his save so obnoxiously that it led to a bet with dwarf and the result was they would each produce three magical items as gifts to the Aesir and whosever the gods liked best won. Mjolnir was one of the products of that contest (its handle is so short for a weapon because Loki tried to sabotage the manufacturing process to win). So if Thor is running around wielding Mjolnir in battle, he is not going to be all buddy-buddy with Loki, having at least two very good reasons to be ticked at him – the guy was messing with his woman, and messed up his hammer. Also, they never show one of the cooler powers of the hammer – it brings dead goats back to life. Seriously. Thor had goats who pulled his chariot, so when he had somewhere to be, the goats would haul him around all day, and if he had to camp out on a long trip, he’d kill the goats, chop off a couple of steaks or chops or whatever goat chunks are called, and eat them. Then, the next morning, he’d hit the goats with Mjolnir & bring them back to life so they could resume their transportation duties. I would watch the hell out of a movie that showed that.

In other mythology issues, what’s Odin’s deal? He references having a father and grandfather, but IIRC, Odin might not have had a father, and almost certainly did not have a grandfather. He (or his possible father) came about in one of those uniquely colorful episodes of theogenesis involving aberrant meteorology, art projects gone horribly wrong or some other thing inspired by excessive primitive alcohol consumption. Another clue toward his non-paternity, his nickname, used in the movie at least once, was ALL-Father. Not All-but-dad-and-grandpa-Father. Also, this immortal god is training Thor and Loki to be his successors. Why? So far as I can recall, there is no myth about Thor being the crown prince of Asgard (if anyone was, I’d think that would be Baldur, who was absent from this film), nor do divine pantheons tend to have such a thing, as a rule. Most pantheons created by reasonably sensible Europeans don’t count on the boss god going anywhere anytime soon (screw the Egyptians – they didn’t really accomplish much after inventing those gods and the statues etc of them. I wonder if you can infer something about their lack of a future as a civilization from the fact that they killed off their top god? Whereas the Greeks and Teutonic peoples more or less eventually teemed up to create Western Civilization, because their gods are Anthony Hopkins and Liam Neeson and kick ass). They did eventually cover for that one by coming up with this idea that every now and then Odin goes into a coma so his “successor” has to hold down the fort in the meantime. Interestingly, however, it is suggested in the movie that he has done this many times before, but never in Thor or Loki’s lifetimes, so what did he do for a successor the last few times he went in the coma? Did he leave the fire-face robot in charge?

Speaking of Asgardians that seem unique to this film, aside from Loki and Sif, his mythological wife with whom he would now appear to have a platonic comradely relationship, his closest companions are a trio of gods I have never heard of. They are Vandrel, a blonde fruity guy; Folstagg, a burly warrior type who’s all about the food and is played by Ray Stevenson (TITUS PULLO! Percy Jackson & the Olympians had Lucius Vorenus as Poseidon and now Pullo is one of the Aesir), and Hokun, an Oriental Viking God. With an Oriental accent, for his one line in the film. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t insert a Hispanic Viking god in there somehow to round out the affirmative action roster! They did have a black guy, too. Heimdal, the guardian of Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard, is a black guy. Idris Elba, from The Office, The Wire and the movie where Beyonce catfights with Ali Larter. Playing a Viking God. And while Bifrost is kind of fruity as a concept, they went a kind of ridiculous place with it for the movie. Now it refers to a room that is like the transporter from Star Trek in function, and the Ion Cannon on Hoth from Empire Strikes Back in appearance. And Heimdal has yellow eyes. I guess they got their Wheel of Time characters mixed up – Heimdal is the one who will blow the magic horn to call forth the dead heroes to fight in the Last Battle, NOT the yellow-eyed guy.

Now. let’s take a moment to consider the ethnicities question. Either these guys are the gods of the Vikings, in which case, blacks and orientals don’t belong, anymore than white people should play ninjas or running backs or Indians or scantily clad tropical savages… oh. Never mind. Hollywood. Right. But still, the alternate explanation for the Aesir is that they are the users of Arthur C Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology,” but in that case, we’re still talking about a very limited breeding pool (one city), in which there should be a rather limited set of phenotypes, no? And why is the only black guy in Asgard the doorman? Do they even BOTHER to think about this stuff?

And on that “gods or aliens” issue, what does that make the relationship of Thor with Jane, Natalie Portman’s character? Bestiality? Is that why his wife doesn’t seem to mind them sucking face five feet away from her? Maybe to her, he’s just doing something silly and a little gross like letting your dog lick your mouth?

And back to the mythological issues: No Tyr (personal favorite), no Baldur (who would have been a great foil for miscreant-youth-Thor), and no Freya for your token hot goddess. If you can scrounge up a real oriental for a single line of dialogue, why not a blonde supermodel to play the Viking answer to Venus? I recommend the disproportionately-chested lady from the last Adam Sandler movie (don’t watch it; even she can’t save that pile) for the sequel. And she had a brother, and I’m pretty sure Friday is named after one of them. Also, Loki was not raised in Asgard, he predated it, because he was critically involved with its construction. Specifically, his job was to seduce the horse that was helping the giant building the wall so he couldn’t finish his job, and the gods would not have to pay him. The horse was male. Yes. Loki turned into a she-horse and, presumably because it was his first day as a horse and a woman, did not properly use his/her horse birth control, and got pregnant! And then drank or something because the horse had eight legs. Odin had no problem with that and started using his adopted son’s horse-child as his regular mount. I THINK he was supposed to be riding that very horse in the movie, but it was flailing its legs so much in the two shots of Odin on a horse that I couldn’t get a count. Actually, in retrospect, its not all that hard to see why they left so much of the mythology out, or portrayed the story in a way that negated the mythology. The real question should be “What was Stan Lee thinking when he read Teutonic mythology and thought ‘children’s entertainment!’?”

Other odds and ends:
- I mentioned Joel Schumacher above and I have to wonder, was he involved with the fire-face robot? Because it had a sculpted ass. Seriously. At what point in the design process was it decided to make that the most anatomically accurate feature on the robot that looks like it was assembled from horizontal metal bands and a helmet with no face (or anything but fire inside).

- I’m going to give them a pass on making up Folstag (maybe he was supposed to be Thor’s bad influence – a Germanic version of Falstaff? ) and leaving out some gods who could have made this movie even better, because I have come up with a back-story for him. When Caesar Augustus dispatched the legions under Varus to put the Germans in their place, would he really trust THAT guy with this job? Of course not. He would have sent his top henchman, Titus Pullo to do the job. Odin and company would have been on the Germans’ side, and knowing that Arminius would have no shot against Pullo, bribed him to switch sides, probably by invoking his late wife Ireni’s ethnicity and origins. And for a guy like Titus Pullo, ascension to divinity when he died, like Kellenved & the Bridgeburners in the Malazan books, was pretty much a given. So that’s Folstag’s backstory, and I’m sticking to it.

- This was a reflexive thought, but then I reconsidered, recalling my trip to Washington DC back in February. When driving into town, I was under the impression it was bitterly cold. Not only were the people on the street wearing winter coats, gloves, hats and everything else, they were wearing them all bundled up, zipped to the top, and huddling into them. The valets at the hotel looked utterly miserable, but it turns out they were all from Africa. The rest of the Washingtonians had no such excuses. Once I got into my and could ditch the coat I walked around for the next three days in just a two-piece suit. And I’m from Jersey, not like any place known for cold weather (we’re quite a bit south of England for you overseas people unfamiliar with our climate). So obviously there is a wuss-factor the farther south you go. But would people REALLY be wearing coats in a desert town in New Mexico? Almost everyone in this movie does, and Natalie Portman and her friend wear scarves and coats whenever they go outside. When Sif & the fake-gods come to town, a woman wearing a leather coat in the desert stares at them like THEY’RE the weirdos. There might a theater or LARP-related reason to be wearing armor and swords, not to mention the obvious, if unlikely, practicality of such garb. There is no reason to bundle up in New Mexico at low altitudes. And whose idea was it to set a movie about Viking gods in New Mexico?

- Finally, as they did in the Iron Man movies, they appear to be setting up an Avengers film. Part of that included one of Agent Colson’s minions, who, when told they needed a shooter on overwatch when Thor breaks into their camp to get his hammer back, deliberately selects a bow and arrows instead of a gun. When it’s RAINING. He has about one line of distinctive dialogue, aside from tactical jargon, and was played by Jeremy Renner, who last I noticed was starring in movies, not taking single-line roles the movie would not miss if his every line and frame was cut. This strongly suggests he’s being set up for the Avengers, whom I am fairly certain had an archer character. The question I have to ask is WHY? I am recalling this guy from an ad in Marvel comics when I was a kid (Transformers & GI Joe comics) for a subscription offer, who was doing a William Tell on a blonde chick with comic books instead of apples. I also recall a Cracked.com article ridiculing obscure and useless superheroes citing him as useless because he had NO powers other than archery, and in one instance, when their butler was tied up by villains, demanded to be allowed to untie the man with a trick shot, rather than let someone sane use their non-sharp hands. So of the various characters a superhero team would have had over the last fifty years, they are going with an archer with no superpowers. Unless he’s also a qualified ninja, genius detective, and billionaire, he is not qualified to hang with Batman, let alone a Viking god, a rage-powered green monster & a man whose powered armor makes Johnny Rico and the Blood Ravens look like guys who settled for the buggy early versions of futuristic battle armor. Where on earth are they going to find an array of super villains who can provide a challenge to a god of thunder, the Hulk and a walking tank, and at the same time be beaten in a way that a non-powered archer can reasonably contribute? The Punisher could take this guy down without breaking a sweat! Do the cops and soldiers and Navy SEALS of the Marvel setting REALLY need help from a guy with a bow and arrows? Unless he is going to find the mystical bow of Apollo lying in a desert somewhere or invent a quantum nano-tech laser bow, why are they introducing this guy? They already have Samuel L Jackson as a badass type who can hang with superheroes just because of his big brass danglies. Adding a physically unprepossessing archer is just sad. Come to think of it, I have seen Jeremy Renner in five roles, and four of them could kick an archer’s ass. He played a SWAT cop who goes bad, a vampire who tears up a briefing room full of LAPD cops, a bank robber who uses automatic weapons and a bomb disposal technician in Iraq. The only guy the government archer could take out would be the drugged-out patient on House MD whose brain was messed up so all his music was discordant. Do you REALLY want an Avenger played by a role who could get beat up by all his other roles? How many Robert Downey Jr characters could take Iron Man? How many Ed Norton or Eric Bana characters could take the Hulk? You know why Daredevil flopped? Because I suspect that most of Ben Affleck’s characters could take the blind guy in leather ninja gear. If I was putting together an Avengers team, I would want the guard who went toe-to-toe with Thor for a couple of minutes before I recruit a guy who picks a bow over a gun when it’s raining and someone is tearing through your buddies single handedly. Do his arrows maybe explode like Scarlet’s crossbow or Lady Jaye’s spears on GI Joe?

- Also, regarding the secret government agency that is behind all of the superhero stuff in the Marvel films, they kind of suck. They show up and start snatching up all of Natalie Portman and Stellan Skaarsgard’s research and personal notebooks and phones and the laptop of their non-scientist minion who’s just in the movie to make Natalie Portman look better by standing next to her. When she protests that they are taking her life’s work, Colson basically challenges her to build it back up again. He’s confiscating all her work in the name of national security, while encouraging her to compete with the government security apparatus? What the hell? Is this what he does to people he catches building WMDs? Confiscate all their material and walk off, casually suggesting that they try again? Any idiot running a shadowy government operation knows in a case like that, you co-opt the scientist or kill her. Also, when you show up at the scene of people trying to lift a magic-god-hammer with your black-suited minions and black, tinted-widow SUVs, who don’t just chase off the eyewitnesses to blab about it in a truck stop later that day (which is how Thor finds out where the hammer is so he can break in and try to steal it). At the least, you intern them all and “quarantine” them “for their own good,” even if you are not going to leave them in a mass grave when you depart the area with your findings and confiscated research. Colson complains in disgust that Tony Stark never tells him anything, but does he think that maybe it’s because Tony doesn’t take his half-assed sinister government agency seriously? When you’re getting something like that off the ground, you have got to make your first few disappearings HURT, just to teach the international clandestine world and fringe scientific community who’s the boss!