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Script Review: Great Odin's Beard...THOR!
Written by
Robert Sanchez
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
Norse God of Thunder! Legendary warrior born! Son of Asgard, the Mighty Thor! Mr. E is back with one of the hottest scripts around, THOR!
Mr. E here. Last night, about 6 PM Pacific Time, I was skateboarding home from work when, from out of freaking nowhere, this "thing" dropped out of the sky onto and into the sidewalk directly in my path, creating a huge pothole - worthy enough to be ignored by the city's street maintenance forces. I skidded to the rim of the great smoking hole and peered in. Directly in the center of the crater was a hammer - it was a single block of something the size of my thumb-tip with a tiny wooden handle about a half inch tall. It was acting as a weight to a stack of papers about an inch and a half high. Climbing down into the mini-pit, I noticed there was writing on the side of the hammer's little head. It read: Whosoever reads this script, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."
"That's cool."
I tugged and I yanked and I pulled and nothing happened. There was not one iota of movement from the half-a-stapler sized hammer.
"Who shall ever be able to move this sucker without getting a hernia shall at least wrench his or hers back out!" I thought to myself.
Pulling with more strength than I thought possible, there was a great KRACCKKKAAA -THOOOOOM of an explosion and I found myself teleported onto my living room couch, a warm script in my hands. The front page read: THOR by Mark Protosevich.
"Awesome!" I exclaimed, and began to read.
THE SPOILERS DOTH BEGINETH BELOW
THOR begins, simply enough, with a black screen and mystical narration, describing THE CREATION OF THE NINE WORLDS. The NINE WORLDS and its inhabitants are then introduced, each paragraph becoming so much more overwhelmingly verbose, that one can nearly hear the film's producers
scratching their collective heads from here.
From the inky void, the seers URD, VERDAND and SKULD describe the populating of the worlds, including A HUMONGOUS COW that feeds YMIR, the first FROST GIANT and his family. GNOMES and FAERIES come into the picture, followed by THE GODS OF ASGARD. There's some godly begetting that goes on - ODIN KING OF THE GODS follows and finally he begets our hero THOR. (Oh yeah, ODIN creates Man and Woman to worship him, too - lucky sod.)
The narration ends, and we are introduced to the adult THOR and LOKI , THOR'S BROTHER, THE WARRIORS THREE (FANDRAL, HOGUN and VOLSTAGG) ASGARD's MOST POPULAR BOY BAND - just kidding here, and BALDER, his advisor as they ride their great horses through SVARTALFHEIM in search of IVALDI, KING OF THE GNOMES.
At some point in the middle of THOR's thrilling battle with a HELL STAG (page 15, I think) I dropped my Norse Mythology for Dummies book in disgust and chucked my battered Engelsk-Norsk dictionary into the wastebasket.
They were slowing me down. I had a script to read and a review to write. Meanwhile, during the hell staggy conflict, THOR saves many gnomes, but his great wooden hammer is destroyed. IVALDI promises to make him a new hammer.
THIS ENDETH THE SPOILERS
THOR is a meaty script. Without doing any serious research, it certainly appears writer Protosevich has worked to recreate the legend as "accurately" as possible.
Nevertheless, I wished I had called Judy at Time-Life books and ordered their seventeen volume set of Norse Myths and Legends. I was already lost in the great confusion of so many throwaway names for so many things. Two pages after reading it, I couldn't even remember if LIDSKJALF was ODIN'S THRONE, or the Ligonberry jelly I bought at IKEA.
But this is not your father's THOR. It's not even Vincent D'Onofrio's THOR from Chris Columbus' ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING. This is not THOR the superhero as portrayed in the Marvel comics - a god on Earth who performs super-heroic feats, rescues damsels in distresses, fights supervillains and does all of the usual stuff straight out of the How To Be A Superhero Handbook. This is the tale of THOR, son of Odin and Prince of Asgard and his journey from arrogant boob (not the good kind-sorry folks) to the true
heroic ideal.
This disappointed me. Despite the well-drawn characters and thrilling adventures , as I was reading the script, I kept wanting to see THOR in present day New York.
Another key element that was missing from the script for me was its portrayal of ASGARD somehow. I was hoping this ASGARD would be some how influenced by the work of THOR co-creator, the late great comic god Jack Kirby. But no, this version will give its Production Designer(s) the chance to create stunning richly detailed Nine Worlds more "realistically", and again, as a comic book geek I was disappointed. I really wanted to get my Kirby on here.
THOU ART MORE SPOILAGE BELOW
THOR gets his new hammer Mjolnir, goes a little bit nuts with it and is banished from Asgard, allowing LOKI to get all GRIMA WORMTONGUE and make plans to take over as ruler of ASGARD.THOR is humiliated and plot plot plot THOR is joined by THE WARRIORS THREE, plot plot plot and regains
his hammer. Theres are a lot of special effects as ASGARD goes to war and THOR faces the treacherous LOKI and there is the obligatory "A New Hero Is Born" ending.
THIS ENDETH THE PLOT SPOILAGE
The hard PG-13 / light R rated telling of THOR's story may be spectacular, but I can't see the movie becoming the next Spider-Man or even the next Ghost Rider for Marvel Films. I simply can't imagine a line of THOR action figures, fast food tie-in toys or any merchandising outside of a soundtrack. Not to mention there's no product placement possible with this script. Well maybe Scandinavian Airlines System or SAS, could get some ancillary action and offer THOR flights to famous fjords (like the one with
Slartibartfast's signature on the glacier)!
Now, I know all of my marketing musings really have nothing to do with the script, but films based on comics have become events, with huge amounts of additional income generated through cross-promotional items, like my still-unopened X-MEN 2 ROGUE can of Dr. Pepper, and despite the film's
many strengths I can't see THOR hitting the kind of financial figures the bigwigs have come to expect.
Despite my geek misgivings and musings of the lack of happy meal toys, what did I think? THOR is a very good script to be sure, but it's humorless. It has some very good action sequences and Kirbyesque imagery or not, THOR does have the promise of blowing movie goers' eye sockets out with amazing
never-before-seen worlds of Norse mythology, especially now that STARDUST director Matthew Vaughn is reportedly at the helm. I can't wait to see it on the big screen.
THOR rates a CONAN THE BARBARIAN out of a possible X-MEN 2, or 7 stars out of 10. Mr. E wonders whatever happened to Maia Brewton of ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING and "Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Serious replies can be sent care of IESB.net.
THOR by Mark Protosevich April 4, 2007.
