Saw Thor last night. Saw Sucker-Punch two mondays prior. Both movies were kinda awful. Kinda really awful. I'm not a cinema buff or anything so serious, but I do appreciate good writing enough to recognise when the screenwriter's integrity went AWOL. In both films mentioned, basically the entire production team got it ass-backwards. Visuals serve the story, not story serving visuals. Thankfully, we as an educated bunch, as a whole, expressed this and the films have been universally panned.
Wait, shit, I did that thing where I slip into my realm of fantasy again. Nope, people thought those films were awesome. Yet again I show my complete schism from my generation by not understanding what the fuss is about. Oooooh it's super fucking shiny, who gives a shit? I mean, you know it's all computer generated, fine. But there's nothing to really immerse you in the plot enough for you to get invested in the characters, let alone invested in the scene where some blonde dude with a hammer pretends to kill a bunch of pretend blue guys. I know I should care, because it does look pretty damn cool, but I just can't.
And this isn't a case of me being pretentious (well it kind of is), I just didn't enjoy it. The most fun I had during the entire film was shooting snide comments back and forth with the friends sitting around me. Looking back, the last film I properly enjoyed was The Social Network. And no, it wasn't because of the scene where Jesse Eisenberg reclaims Mjolnir by sacrificing himself to save innocents, thereby obtaining the power to fly and do a whole manner of silly shit (warning, previous sentence contains spoilers). It was because the writing and directing made you actually give a shit about the characters. You actually wanted them to learn and grow, not just shoot lasers out of their dicks. Also, the soundtrack didn't turkey-slap you with string swells. Kudos, Trent Reznor. Now, granted, The Social Network did clean up on awards, but so did Avatar, so that doesn't really mean shit, does it?
I don't know why shiny things can distract people from a complete and total lack of substance, but somehow they can. The actions scenes are cool, in the indulgent, videogame sense of the word, but the movies as a whole were little more than a well polished turd. Yeah, it's plenty shiny, but it's still crap. Is it so hard to be Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? That film had it all, fun characters, great writing, a storyline that was familiar yet not cliched, plus it looked great. And why? Because the visuals served the plot, dialogue and characters, rather than defining them. So, if you want to see a blonde guy fly around and Natalie Portman keep her clothes on, see Thor. If you want to see a movie you'll enjoy (assuming you're not a retard, in which case Thor'll be fine), see something else.
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