Monday, May 9, 2011

With Great Power Comes Great Humility

I'm not going to write a review of the movie Thor as there are countless other reviews posted about the interwebs. Needless to say, it is as great as everyone says it is. Marvel Studios keeps knocking their properties out of the park! Even before Marvel studios took over the productions of their superhero films, the Spider-man and Hulk movies showed that the Marvel characters and stories are full of pathos and depth that are perfect for the big screen.

The Thor movie is pure entertainment which captures the Marvel concepts of the characters and situations amazingly well. Jack Kirby would be proud of the cosmic drama that unfolds in this picture filled with the depth and grandeur of the Gods of Asgard.

Oh and there's plenty of eye candy for the ladies in Chris Hemsworth's thunder god so your wives/girlfriends will enjoy this geek outing as well.

Thor was never one of my favorite Marvel characters and rereading the Marvel Essentials of the 1960's stories validates my feelings. I love him as an Avenger but on his own, I never really clicked with those godly tales. For the most part, from '66 on it seemed that Kirby was pushing the book and stories in what would become his iconic bombastic cosmic tradmark and define his books when he moved to DC in the early 70's.

Still, the movie captured all this to a perfection and I enjoyed the film immensely (as did the wife for the reason mentioned above).

Now all these Marvel films are building up to the penultimate Avengers movie, which I have to say I'm pretty excited about especially if what I've heard about the direction of the plot is true. Growing up I was all about Captain America, Spider-man and the Avengers. Those were the super-hero characters / stories I resonated with (this was still before the rebirth of the X-Men). Seeing the Avengers on screen in the near future will be quite spectacular. Marvel studio's concept of tying in all their films is very reminiscent of their comic concept of the intertwined Marvel universe that they developed in their earliest superhero books in the beginning of the 1960's. It was something that was never seen before in comics. It was exciting then and it just as exciting now in the movies they're bringing to the screen.

Excelsior indeed!

One other thing to note is that the previews they ran before the feature. I love previews, BTW and if any of you have a Roku box be sure to activate the Flixter app. Plenty of movie previews to keep you busy for quite a while.

Anyways, there played a preview for Conan the Barbarian movie. The preview did look much better on the big screen than on a computer screen but it still just looked like a swords and fantasy movie and not much of a Conan story especially since the title character is only shown very briefly. Audience reaction? Not much.

The big preview if you haven't seen it yet is for Captain America: The First Avenger. Now that's a preview! Coming out later this summer it is the final prequel to the Avengers movie. You can read about my thoughts of the preview here but needless to say, this is one I'm looking forward to. Howling Commandos, WWII, Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube! Nuff Said!

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