Thor: The Dork World

Hey, it’s time for another mockumentary review of a hit movie!  Actually, it’s well PASSED time for another review (and I know that I still have not posted a review of Prometheus yet.  I think it’s going to just be one of those things.), but I had to wait for the right movie to show up.

I was going to do Ender’s Game, but I couldn’t find anything worth making fun on.  Come on, it’s freaking Ender’s Game.  With Harrison Ford.  So I had to wait for Thor.

We last left our hero eating shawarma in a half-destroyed diner somewhere in New York.  After which, he summarily hauled his brother back to Asgard to be tossed into a fairly barren jail cell. 

While Loki, who many will argue is the true star of the film, languishes in what is apparently a holodeck, Thor is off with his friends – Jackie Chan, Xena, Warrior Princess, Gimli, son of Gloin, and Professor Lockhart – trying to quell the rebellion and war triggered after the destruction of the Bifrost.  We join up with them on the planet where Jackie Chan’s people live (who apparently all dress like Guinan, from Start Trek: TNG).  They are fighting off an invasion of leftover extras from the original Star Wars set.  Thor drops in, knocks out the Rock Biter from Neverending Story, and goes back home to mope over Jodie Jane Foster.

Odin, who is turning into a bit of a dick in his old age, doesn’t give a rat’s ass that his son is in love, he’s just miffed it’s a stupid human from Midgard.  Thor goes back to moping, but then Heimdall loses sight of Jodie Jane, Thor panics, and heads to Earth.

Jodie Jane, meanwhile, and her fellow interns, have stumbled upon some interesting gravimetrical anomalies, which means they are playing with portals.  Then Jodie Jane gets sucked into a portal and winds up in a cave somewhere with a really spooky monolith.

BACKSTORY ALERT

Apparently, back before the Nine Worlds were formed, an evil race of Dark Elves ruled the known universe.  Which begs the question: where the hell did they come from?!  Anyway, the Dark Elves kind of don’t like the Nine Worlds, I’m guessing because they have suns or something, and so they take this thing called the Aether, infect some of their soldiers and turn them into, well, really pissed off strong things.  Asgard stole the Aether, defeated the Dark Elf armies, yay.  The leader, Malekith (who looks a hell of a lot like a Necromonger from The Chronicles of Riddick), sent all of his ships crashing down to kill both armies, then ran away like a Monty Python knight.  Odin’s father, Bor, says the Aether cannot be destroyed, and instead must be hidden away.   Clearly, they had never read Lord of the Rings, or they would have known that they could only destroy it by throwing back into the fires of Mount Doom, from whence it came. 

END OF BACKSTORY ALERT

So, anyway, the big scary monolith that Jodie Jane has found is, obviously, where the Aether is being kept.  Like an idiot, she gets too close and it attacks her, flowing into her body and knocking her out for a few hours.  She wakes up back on Earth, where Thor shows up looking for her.  Why he finds her in London is beyond me, but there he is.   The Aether makes its presence known by knocking down a few mortal police officers, and Thor drags her back to Asgard.    Odin, showing an increasing lack of empathy, pretty much tells her she is going to die.  Lovely.

Meanwhile, Malekith sends a Dark Elf (with a weird Aether-stone that will turn him into the Incredible Hulk) to get captured by Asgardian forces and thereby be snuck into their castle.  The Elf gets tossed into the dungeon alongside Loki and a bunch of rejects from The Lord of the Rings set.  Loki, during all of this, is displaying his own pathetic narcissism, which his mother promptly sees through and gives him the guilt trip from hell.  In the last cell, the Dark Elf crushes the stone and – OK, he’s not the Incredible Hulk so much as a Balrog.  Nice. 

So Balrog-dude lets everybody out, except for Loki – maybe he figured he’d be too busy making snarky one-liners to actually be of any service.  They wind up fighting the guards in the dungeon, while Loki reads Cold Days: Book # 14 of the Dresden Files.  Because, come on, what else would he be reading?

Thor leaves Jodie Jane in the care of his mother, who snatches a knife from a passing guard.  Meanwhile, a couple of the Dark Elf ships go cruising passed Heimdall’s guard station (which is really stupid, when you think about it – yeah, just approach the city by a trajectory that takes you right passed the one freaking guard who has super-senses).  He takes one out, but the rest keep on going, so he hurries back to his station to bring up the castle defenses. 

Inside said castle, the Balrog-Kursed guy has found the shield generator and took it out with only slightly less force than Han Solo needed in Return of the Jedi.   By this time, Malekith has figured out where Frigga and Jodie Jane are hiding, and confronts them. Frigga, who, by the way, kicks total ass, slaps Malo around like he weighs nothing, but gets sidelined by Balrog.  Jodie Jane turns out to be another hologram (ha ha!), and Balrog stabs Frigga.  Cue weepy death scene.   Odin throws a fit and imprisons Jodie Jane (because clearly it was her fault). 

Thor wants to take her off Asgard to draw off Malekith, but Odin is being a stubborn snit and refuses.   So it’s time for some treason.  Enter Loki, who is really having too much fun with the whole hologram thing (wonder where he learned that, eh?).  Thor, however, has clearly learned some lessons and they steal a freaking Dark Elf ship and fly off, complete with dialogue straight out of Independence Day. 

It seems Loki knows a shortcut out of Asgard, and they wind up on the former world of the Dark Elves.  It’s pretty depressing.  Thor and Loki have a beautifully staged fight, during which Loki actually acts like a pretty decent fellow.  Then he freaking abandons the rest of the movie, to go off and do whatever the hell he wants.  I think he went to get a gyro.  After all, Thor didn’t bring him any falafel back from New York, which probably accounts for much of his pissiness.  So much for this being Loki: The Movie.

Thor and Jodie Jane get back to Earth and figure out the whole problem because science.  Malekith shows up in London (thank God, because New York is still putting itself back together after the whole tesseract invasion thing) and tries to destroy the entire Nine Worlds, but pretty much fails because Jodie Jane is running around with Halo on her DS, opening up portals everywhere.  Thor wins and yay everybody survives.

The title of this blog post is Thor: The Dork World.  Why?  Because Thor is a freaking DORK.  I mean, he’s chasing around Earth, doing battle with a Necromonger and pretty much getting his ass kicked. It didn’t OCCUR to him to grab a cell phone and go “Yo, hey, Tony – if you’re not too busy, could you fly on over here and give me a hand?  Fate of the world and all that.  Sure, bring Cap if you like.   We can talk righteousness and stuff.”

No, no, he has to handle it ALL by himself.  Admittedly, Tony might still be putting his penthouse apartment back together.  But still.  Thor knew about all of these incredibly handy superheroes running around, and it didn’t occur to him to call on a few of them when it became clear that their world was where it was all going down?

He’s just lucky that humans know how to play video games.

If you haven’t yet watched Thor: The Dork World, I’m not going to disclose the OMG moment at the end. If you have, I hope you stayed through BOTH of the Easter Eggs during the credits.  I just have to ask: WTF was that first one?   Looked like a scene out of a 70s episode of Dr. Who.   Am I going to have to write a crossover about THAT next?