A film thread: Is anyone else tired of superhero flicks? (Warning - includes Norse myth spoilers) ;-)

[Rath Darkblade]

Just like the title says: is anyone else tired of superhero flicks? Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and more recently (as recently as 2008) the Marvel ones - Iron Man (starting in 2008), Incredible Hulk (also 2008), Thor (2011), Captain America. Enough, please. I'm so tired of it all. It'd be good if someone made a parody of them for a change.

Which brings me on to my real question: wouldn't it be great if someone made a Thor movie that shows Thor and Odin and all the rest as the original Norse myths show them? For instance, the story of Thor losing his hammer to Thrym the Frost Giant because the gods refused to let Thrym marry Freyja ... so Loki disguises Thor as Freyja (and himself as Thor's "handmaiden"), and Thor 'marries' Thrym to get his hammer back. I won't spoil it by revealing how, but it's one of the most famous Norse myths.

Or an unnamed giant who, in the guise of a mortal, promises to build Asgard an impregnable wall in one winter, and if he does, the gods have to let him marry Freyja (why is Freyja's consent never mentioned?) and let him have the sun and moon as a dowry. (What a fair price! But Odin agrees).The gods laugh at the giant, but with the help of his magical horse (what?), he nearly gets the job done, and with 3 days in winter to go, he only has to finish the gate. The gods panic, and Odin actually orders Loki (Loki again!!!) to stop the building of the wall. So Loki transforms himself into a lovely mare (again, WHAT!??) and impregnates the giant's horse (WHAT!) so the horse can't help the giant. (Sneaky Loki! ) The giant explodes in a fit of rage, and Thor smashes the giant with his hammer. But afterwards Odin feels guilty for breaking his promise, and this is the start of the downward spiral that leads to Ragnarok.

Or when Thor stops for the night at a giant's house and dares anyone to beat him at a game of strength, and an old woman steps forward to dare him to wrestle her, and Thor laughs - an old woman can't beat me! - but she does, and he is humiliated ... and the giant reveals that the old woman is actually Elli, the Personification of Old Age, and nobody can beat old age.

But my favourite has to be when a giant (why is it always giants??) dares the gods to make him laugh, and nobody can do it, until Loki volunteers, and he ties his own beard (or in more vulgar and apocryphal readings, his testicles (WHAT! ) to a goat (again, WHAT??? ) and has a tug of war with it, and the giant laughs, and thus Loki saves the day.

I think someone must have been doing magic mushrooms when they wrote these stories. =D But they sound great. I wish someone would come along and film them. Except the last one. 'Cos that'd be ... well ... even weirder than the others (if that's possible!)

What do you think, hmm?

 

[Naomasa298]

When I get tired of a movie genre, I stop watching them.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

If I stopped watching a movie genre because I got tired of it, I'd never watch any movies at all.

Would you care to comment in any more detail about the actual proposal of my post (i.e. to base a movie on stories from actual Norse myth, rather than what Marvel or whoever deem to be correct)?

 

[Naomasa298]

Myth as storytelling is quite boring. It's almost all tell, not show. Once you start doing it as a movie, someone has to invent staging, costume, dialogue, all of that - and who says that's going to be any more accurate than Marvel?

Which Thor? Roman-era Thor (yes, he did exist)? Saxon Thor? Prose Edda? Which local version? Norse myth stretches from Sweden to Northern England, and into Germany. Why are any of these less valid than the other? Or are we going to end up with a Norwegian version of The Passion of the Christ?

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Myth as storytelling is quite boring. It's almost all tell, not show. Once you start doing it as a movie, someone has to invent staging, costume, dialogue, all of that - and who says that's going to be any more accurate than Marvel?

Hmm, that's fair. Then again, it depends how "accurate" you want to get; the original sagas don't usually describe what people looked like (not in detail of their eye colour, hair colour etc). Furthermore, most (all) of the Norse myths were only written down centuries after the Viking Age was over.

I've read a few books about the Viking Age (currently reading Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough) and she emphasizes that although forensic archaeology has done some marvelous things, we still don't know what "the Norse" -- if I can use such a homogenous term -- looked like, in terms of their eyes and hair. That's mostly guesswork, informed by the Nordic DNA of today.

Obviously that doesn't mean that anything goes. Marvel and MCU, etc., have done some good things and also made some dross. But at least they never tried to make Nordic people look like, say, people from India or Ethiopia. *G*

Leaving accuracy aside for a minute, I simply think that Marvel Studios could benefit from going back to the original myths (or at least incorporate them into a larger story). I feel that the studios take their superhero (whichever one) too seriously, and it would be fun, to say the least, to see someone as macho as Thor have to cross-dress and marry an oblivious giant. *G*

Which Thor? Roman-era Thor (yes, he did exist)? Saxon Thor? Prose Edda? Which local version? Norse myth stretches from Sweden to Northern England, and into Germany. Why are any of these less valid than the other? Or are we going to end up with a Norwegian version of The Passion of the Christ?

True -- if I remember, Roman-era Thor was called *Þunraz (meaning "Thunder") in proto-Germanic, which evolved into Old English Thunor (or Old Saxon Thunaer).

To simplify things, perhaps we could stick with the Prose Edda (and possibly also bits of the Poetic Edda) -- not because they're any more or less valid than the others, but because they're the one most people are familiar with.

Again, I'm not saying that a film should (or even could) follow the myths to the letter, as written down by Snorri Sturluson or anyone else. But it would be fun if they would incorporate a story or two from those myths, rather than make up entirely new stuff that makes the Norse gods different to what they were. (For a start, none of the Norse gods were either particularly good, wise, or even -- shudder -- nice). *G* Right?

 

[Madman Starryteller]

Yeah, I'm pretty tired of superhero flicks. They just don't interest me that much. I consider them immature and simplistic, which can be nice, but the superhero packaging isn't. I suppose they are for a different target audience than me.

Take Ironman for example, he could boost human progress, but chooses to be a selfish prick. And now kids look up to Ironman like some sort of role model, it's bad in my opinion. But I guess Ironman is no Einstein... And I do hope kids grow up to realise better.

And don't get me raving about how everything seems to happen only in New York.

I agree that it would be far more interesting if they brought up all the classical myths, Greek, Roman, Eastern, Northern, etc. And focused on retelling their stories on the big screen. Would be far more interesting in my opinion.

I do wonder what would be more popular. A solid and quality retelling of an old myth. Or another superhero flick?
And Don't tell me about that Odyssey moving that's coming, where Agamemnon looks like Batman, that one doesn't count.

Edit: I guess I'm just sad and mad that money is being diverted into these shallow things rather something more sacred.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

And don't get me raving about how everything seems to happen only in New York.

Of course it does. You need lots of tall buildings in case King Kong shows up to climb stuff. It doesn't matter if he's supposed to be in the movie or not, it's a superhero movie, dammit! How else can the hero be heroic and junk?

I'm surprised no-one filmed King Kong climbing the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July and unfurling the Star-Spangled Banner while fireworks echo in the distance, 'cos 'Murica. (Then everybody salutes the flag while a single tear forms in their eye and rolls down their cheek).

And Don't tell me about that Odyssey movie that's coming, where Agamemnon looks like Batman, that one doesn't count.

I was wondering if Agamemnon even shows up during the Odyssey (Homer's original, I mean), so I looked it up. Agamemnon's shade appears in Hades in Book 11, where he speaks with Odysseus. (This is after Agamemnon had been murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, and he describes his death to Odysseus and warns him about the untrustworthiness of women).

What does he do in the film? Now I'm curious.

Edit: I guess I'm just sad and mad that money is being diverted into these shallow things rather something more sacred.

I wouldn't call any of the sagas 'sacred', but I agree that quite a lot of Hollywood movies are shallow. But I guess they pay the bills for the studios. Most people don't go to the movies to watch something worthwhile, but for escapism.

Let's get in this cool looking car and drive really fast and stuff until it smashes! Let's blow junk up excitingly to distract the audience from how we didn't bother with a plot and broke the rules of physics by letting a character jump out of a plane without a parachute and survive! Who cares about characterisation? We need more explosions! Pow, zoing crash! More fist-fights! BAM! POW! BONK! PEW PEW PEW! *twirls finger and holsters it like a pistol*