Thunder Rolls

We had a great time on Saturday at FCBD. Not only did we get a bunch of great free comics, but I won this awesome Captain America print in a raffle. Booyah! Since we were already in the comic mood, we went and saw Thor.

I tend to ignore movie reviews since my taste in movies varies so greatly from official film critics, so hadn’t paid attention to what other people had been saying about the film. Kris looked at a couple of things and said that a lot of people felt that Thor redefined the super hero genre. While I think the movie was very good and enjoyed it immensely, I think redefining the genre is a little much. I admit I was concerned that jumping back and forth between Asgard and Earth would be too weird or jolting, but I thought it worked very well. I’ve never read any of the Thor books, so other than a general understanding of who the people were, I didn’t know a lot of the details behind most of the supporting cast. I really liked Sif and the Warriors Three. Kris’s big concern was with how powerful Thor was. While his super-powerful awesomeness was fun on screen, it makes you wonder how he will look in the Avengers. They’re going to need to establish something early on in that movie on why or how these heroes are equal because as it stands Thor seems so much more powerful that you wonder why he’d bother working with the others let alone needing them for something.

The funnest part of any Marvel movie is the extra scene after the credits that usually ties the movie into the larger Marvel movie universe. Usually these scenes are interesting but not all that important. This time, however, they’ve essentially laid out the plot for the Avengers movie. Kris and I were stunned, it’s that awesome. If you haven’t seen Thor make sure to stay until the end. If you have and didn’t stay, go see it again.

One of the trailers before the movie was for Green Lantern and it looks more impressive on the big screen than it does on a computer monitor. Where Kris was pretty much ready to ignore the movie completely prior to seeing the trailer, I think we’ve decided that we need to go see it, just without expecting too much. One of the things that Kris pointed out that I never realized is that personality-wise Movie Hal Jordan seems less like Comic Hal Jordan and more like Comic Kyle Rayner. Hal never doubted that he should be a Green Lantern nor that he could overcome whatever he was faced with. Kyle, however, doubted he was the right guy for the job several times (and occasionally still does) just as Movie Hal Jordan does. I’m guessing that Hal’s brash personality without any doubts didn’t fit how every hero in Hollywood has to doubt himself, but it’s probably subconsciously one of the things that has turned Kyle and I off from the movie.

When X-Men First Class was announced, I was not interested in it at all. The bitter taste of the third X-Men movie (really, the whole trilogy disappointed me greatly) left in my mouth turned me off to anything X-Men that Hollywood would produce. The decision to change up who was in the “first class” and the extremely bad original marketing posters didn’t help. However, as each trailer comes out for the film I am more and more intrigued. The new character trailers they just released have really gotten me excited about this movie. It has the potential to be really good and might start to redeem all of the other X-Men related properties. This movie has gone from one I was perfectly fine in ignoring into something that I definitely must see.