Friday 16 July 2010

It needed to be said, I hate Marvel Thor

All right, listen and listen closely.

I love the comic book universe, I love comics and read them once in a while.
I love Marvel comics and I for the most part love their multi verse.
I love comic book adaptations, bad and good alike, because almost nothing is as entertaining as watching a really bad comic book adaptation with a group of fellow geeky mates, a bucket of popcorn and a ocean of coke.

I love Vikings.
I love everything about the Norse mythology and take pride at living at the origin place of Norse mythology, I am really smiling of the fact that it doesn’t seem that absurd that I could be a direct descendent from Vikings.
I was fascinated by the Norse mythology since early childhood and I love reading more and more about it all the time.


I freaking hate the Marvel version of Thor and all that comes with it.




It is only with few things in the world of media I can say kind of physically hurts me.
One is film makers who do stupid children's movie and have the audacity to praise their movie to the sky’s while claiming there was thought, consideration and a message in their movie. just saw a feature to ”Furry Vengeance” and I am pissed, if you want to make a stupid movie small children will pay for because the trailer is filled with stupid jokes, fin, just don’t pretend it’s anything but that.
The other is incorrect and down right bad head nods to Norse Mythology, like in ”The Mask 2” where Loki makes and appearance and is a complete brat who only long for a bit of appreciation from his Daddy Odin. and Marvel Thor is a sinner.
He makes me cringe every time I see a picture of him.

Is it because he is a bad character in all by himself?
I really don’t know, I don’t have the faintest idea, he could me an amazingly good character, I am not about to dismiss that, but the fact is, that whenever I see him, I am seeing all red and become blind. It is my blond spot whenever stuff like this happens.

And I know it shouldn’t. Marvel Thor doesn’t even try to honour Norse mythology as it only borrow names from it and nothing else, and that is kind of was pisses me off. Also when the rest of Hollywood want to make a reference to Norse Mythology, they will look at Marvel rather than the original source material, and that makes me so mad.




First of all, the most basic and silly misconception comes with Thor himself, and how he looks.
For some reason everyone who portrays him in America makes him blond… I know the cliché Viking is blond and that’s all right, most people in Scandinavia do happen to be blond.
But here is the painly obvious thing. There are three people, in all of Norse Mythology who have their hair colour specifically described. One is Odin who have grey beard and hair as he is often refereed to as the Gray wanderer (incidentally Gandalf the Gray was inspired from Odin, even their hats are the same) The other one is Sif, Thor's wife who’s hair is made of real gold, which would make her blond, and lastly we have god damn Thor who is a red head, and it says so in the original legends, a head of fiery read hear that matches his incredible temper.
And that’s another problem, Thor have a great temper, he is a positive mad man, and the way he get rid of his temper is by killing someone. Plain and simple.
Well, everybody knows he is the god and thunder, and according the Norse mythology, Thunder is created when Thor is so enraged and hot tempered that he needs to let out, and he lets out all his anger and temper in the thunder and lighting, while the goats who carries his wagon on the sky make all the noises with their hove's. Now that is real bad ass.

Further more as you might noticed before, I said his ”Wife” ”Sif”
Thor is a family father, a married man and a dad to several children, his wife ”Sif” is even the goddess of housekeeping.




And that kind of make Thor god of housekeeping as well, which makes him god of three different things. ”housekeeping” ”Thunder” and ”War” and the importance is in reversed order here as he is a war god first and the other two second.
He is one out of the two official war gods in Norse Mythology, the other one is ”Tyr” and here is why there is two war gods, it’s a very specific reason.

Now, in the Norse mythology you can go two difference places when you die, either you die in battle and go to Valhalla, or you die of something else and go the ”Hel”
Does are the only two options, living a honourable and giving life is bullshit to Vikings, they are actually pretty much like a bunch of Klingons in that matter, without all the stupid rituals, die in battle and your fine, die of something else like illness or age and you suck.

So the Vikings loved attacking and plunder each other, just because.
It was common understanding that when two Viking villages was at war the two gods ”Thor” and ”Tyr” would pick each their village to represent, give strength and vouch for.
And off the Vikings go to battle as the gods is vouching for their own team and makes sure the best warriors die so they can go to Valhalla.

Now I bet Hollywood would never even dare to show a story like that on screen.

And also the notion that Thor is supposed to be the next king of Valhalla is purely made up by Marvel, they are gods, they don’t die of age. Ergo Odin wont die of age, ergo he wouldn’t need an heir.
I do say ”don’t die of age” as the Norse gods can be killed in pretty much the same way as a normal human being, one god ”Balder” even did die as he was shot by an arrow. And every single god is destined to die in pretty specific ways in battle at the day of Ragnarok.




Odin, dear lord.
In the Marvel universe and the way he is predicted in most Hollywood adaptations is as a sensible, honourable, fair and good leader.
That is crap, Odin love screwing around with the puny humans and killing people as much as any Norse god, in fact even more as he is the highest being and can get away with anything, and sometimes a god just gets bored.
In his spare time Odin likes dressing up as a grey wanderer with a pointy gray hat and meet humans whom is puts on trials and it most often ends with an awful lot of people die in very bloody and messy ways. And he doesn’t care much for what the other gods is running around doing, in almost no stories have he ever taking direct action in anything the other gods have done, the few times have been when the other Gods took something that belonged to Odin, or did something only Odin was allowed to do, then Odin would get pissed in punish them cruelly and severely. Things as mercy and second chances simply does not exist in the Norse dictionary.


The last god which Hollywood loves to interpretative in awful bad ways I just need to address is Loki.. god the Marvel Loki hurts me physical.
I mentioned the Loki from ”The mask 2” earlier, and how stupid he is, I prefer that Loki way above the Marvel Loki, and here is way. That Loki is in his core a lot more like what the Norse Loki is about than Marvel Loki.
That Loki is only out for himself, and is only there to have fun, further more you just can’t trust him, one incy tincy tiny moment I love in that movie is when the main character strike a deal with Loki, they full fill their end of the deal but when It’s Loki's turn he without a seconds hesitation breaks his end of the deal, when the main character complain he response ”I am the god of freaking miss chief, what did you expect?”
YEAS! That right there! Right there!!!! And then he begins having some sort of scene about father figures or something -_-

This may come as a surprise to some people, but Loki is not Odin’s son. They are not related by family in any way.
The way they are related however is that when Odin was young he did the mistake of his life and became blood brother with Loki, which means they were friends and exchanged blood. Odin have since come to regret that action throughoutly and it means that Odin must look out of Loki and protect him of all time. And that is the only reason Loki is still in Asgaard as he is doing nothing but trouble, no body likes him, nor trust him (probably because he can’t be trusted) and he is basically a pain in the ass to everyone, yet on the same thing keeping things lively.

80% of all norse tales in existence is about Loki making a gamble with the ogres with weighes so high that it’s the rest of the god’s who would have to pay as well, and as they are not very keen upon that, he would have to find a way around the problem.

In the Marvel universe, Loki have an lust of power and control, he wants to be an world dominator and leader. That could not be further away from the Norse Loki if you even tried. That Loki would least of all things want responsibility, he uses most of his time in the stories to try and escape the responsibility, and he absolutely doesn’t want power.
He wants respect and he wants to be liked, he is even insanely jealous as Balder and goes as far to kill him because everyone liked Balder and no one liked Loki.
Balder had no power, and Loki did not gain anything from the kill, he just hated the fact that everybody liked Balder and that was the only reason.
When suddenly Loki realises that killing Balder he needs to face the responsibility as well he chicked out and made a run for it, which of cause failed as all of Asgaard was after him finally permitted to punish him probably.

I have no idea where the ”god of evil” bit came from.
One thing you need to understand is that there is no ”good” and ”evil” in Norse mythology, there is ”honourable” and ”Dishonourable” but does are not the same things.
Loki is self fish, untrustworthy, dishonourable, unable to empathies, filled with miss chief and gets bored easily. But non of these things are down right evil.

Thor, Tyr and Odin takes downright pleasure in watching human beings slaughter each other, I kind of find that to be much more evil.

Loki is like the little guy to all of that, annoying and out of control yeas, but evil?


If you are not shaking your head and says ”my god, what an annoying full page, she is doing nothing but ranting over silly things that does not really matter”

Your quite right, this is nothing but a page long rant by yours truly, but I hope you could get a bit of information from it anyhow.

Take care, and see yah around.

9 comments:

  1. It's just a terrible movie idea.
    The movie is gonna fail at the box office and I think Marvel is gonna see what a fluke the first Iron Man movie was.

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  2. @Akuma

    Fluke? I don't even know what that word means.... I am going to assume to you mean it was a bad idea and a bad movie, I kind have to disagree at that point. I like that movie, and I like the Iron Man character, I loved the idea of them making a movie from day one, and my prays were that there were going to stick with the totally wasted Tony stark from the comics instead of making him the average superhero, and they did. Tony Stark is probably the most wasted superhero in the universe and there is only one of him, he is just so odd yet entertaining when he appears in the comics, and I personally can't wait to see him play up against some other superheroes as that is how the character works best.

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  3. @sofie
    I mean fluke as in they kinda got lucky that Iron Man turned out so well and that not all there characters are meant to have movies of there own, it just doesn't work.
    I liked Iron man as well, thought it was well written, well acted and the casting was good.
    I just think that Marvel see's Iron Man as "see, that worked, it can all work" kind of mentality.

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  4. @Akkuma

    Ah, I see. honestly I really did have no bloody idea what "Fluke" is, never in my life have I encountered that word.
    Though you need to know, I can be stupid when I encounter such language difficulties.
    Once I had a conversation with a British person, real life, he said "That's mint!"
    And I went all.. "no it's not, it's Danish and that is how it work."
    and he had to go all. ".... you do realise mint is just another word for cool right? that was all I meant."

    ".....oh"

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  5. Bob just put up another picture of Thor.
    AND Loki has his horns.... haha.
    It actually looks somewhat decent ill admit.
    Still not sold on the movie or anything, but its kinda sparking my interest a little more.

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  6. @Akkuma

    really, I think it looks absolutely fugly.

    What is that? the Romulan base of Star Trek? absolutly not Norse mythologi, if you want to see awesome representations of Norse Mythologi, watch "The Lord of the rings" again, Rohan is an absolutly gorgeouse and beautifull reprenstation of how the vikings probably lived (safe the horses,they did not have horses) but the buildings, veapons and clothing is beautifull and seemingly very accurate. go watch that!

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  7. Hi everybody,

    I really agree with the point of view...

    Only I really like Thor Marvel and the movie as well. Let's make it clear, this is entertaining. And as graphic designer, I like the FX.
    By the way, I like Eric in True Blood too.

    It's not like you can watch a Master piece like Lord of the ring every weeks... Anyway, that's wasn't really my point.

    Just wanted to say that it was a very nice article to read, funny and cultural.

    Best for you guys. :-)

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  8. @Remy

    Oh hey...

    To be very fair, urh, I wrote that article long before the movie came out. I went to the cinema to see the movie, wanting to hate it, I wanting to point fingers and hate.. and well... I couldn't, I could not hate that movie.
    It forced me to realise and accept that what Marvel Thor is, is its own mythology merely borrowing names never having tried to be faithful to Norse mythology. And ones the movie forced me to accept that, I could not hold on to my hate any longer.. and, I did honestly like the movie as it stands on its own. It's a good movie :/

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  9. It is nice that you realized that. At first, I was also a bit upset that Marvel was so different, but, as you said, it doesn't even try to imply it's the same thing, much like many comic book heroes based on mythology. They do have their similarities, such as Thor's immense temper, Loki's mischief-oriented powers, that sort of thing.

    That said, I did learn a lot of things I didn't know from this rant, such as Gandalf being inspired by Odin. I did not know that.

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