We Can Have the Wedding on an Asteroid!

Thor is a perfect example of what I was trying to explain to my mom the other night concerning why I will never find the right guy. All the good men are taken, gay, or living on another planet and only accessible by rainbow bridge.

My non-existent social life aside, let’s flashback to May 2010. A little film called “Iron Man 2” comes out in theatres. I really don’t remember that much about that film, other than it seemed to have five different story lines and Mickey Rourke had a pet bird or something? Anyway, what DID catch my attention was that two second bit at the end of the credits. There’s a desert, and a crater, and something in the crater that looks a hell of a lot like THOR’S HAMMER, because guess what? It is Thor’s hammer! To be continued…

I’m going to be totally honest. When that little snippet came out, I had never read a single Thor comic book. (I had read other Marvel comics that mentioned Thor, but never a Thor-centric comic.) Being a nerd, however, I was well acquainted with Norse mythology and Viking culture. So when I started to learn more about Thor, it was another one of those “This is exactly what I like, why haven’t I already consumed myself in this franchise” moments. Add in the fact that Henry V/Gilderoy Lockhart was directing the Thor movie, and I was pretty much sold before even seeing the first trailer.

Well, now that I’ve seen “Thor” I may have a new favorite sci-fi/fantasy sub-genre: space viking. If you don’t know anything about Thor, that’s pretty much what this series is all about. Thor and his peeps are all nearly-immortal beings that live in a place called Asgard. They have this magical rainbow bridge they can use to transport themselves to other planets like Jotunheim (home of the ice giants) and Earth (home of the fleshy not-quite-so-giants.) Thor has a punk brother named Loki, and a pack of multi-racial friends to help him when Loki starts to messing stuff up. Oh Loki! Will you ever learn that Thor loves you just the way you are? You don’t have to impress him by trying to set his friends on fire!

Likely this movie will have its share of haters. It certainly had a smattering of cheese ball moments. Early in the film, the king of the ice giants unleashes what looks like a whale with legs, a stegosaurus tail and some nasty, rock-grinding teeth. No problem for Thor! It’s really not even a fight. He simply flies through the back of the creature’s head, causing it to explode. That is how strong Thor is. He can punch a hole in the back of a ice monster’s throat. By the way, Thor can fly. It comes with the whole “God of Thunder” package.

Comic book Thor is tall and beefy with blond hair and a big ass hammer named Mjolnir. Movie Thor is pretty much the same, only he looks a little bit like Captain Kirk’s dad. (wink wink) Fortunately for movie Thor, he didn’t have to worry about that whole original comic book storyline of getting trapped in a crippled human’s body to teach him humility, which would have been a real drag when he was trying to make out with Academy Award Winning actress Natalie Portman. Heck, the film Thor was so entertaining, I was almost able to forgive Ms. Portman for participating in the atrocity known as “Garden State.”

This film really was one of those serendipitous cinematic moments. Instead of lamenting that a film completely botched the book adaptation, the movie version of “Thor” has gotten me even more geared up to plunge into Stan Lee’s comic world.