Thor

Here's something worth thinking about: if you could be any movie superhero, which one would you choose? Would you like to have actual super powers, such as Superman (alien living on earth), the X-Men (genetic mutation), or Spiderman (radioactivity, spider)? Or would you prefer to remain completely human and be aided by science and technology, like Batman or Iron Man? There's a third alternative, too--superherodom by way of being a god. The world's religions are filled with interesting deities, and the movies have a comfortable history with a few of them. Jesus has been a star of the screen since the silent era. Greek gods and goddesses have kept busy in supporting roles over the years (Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans). But for the rest of the almighty spirits out there, cinematic work has been hard to find--at least in Hollywood. Good news for them all, therefore, that Thor, the first of the summer's intended blockbusters, is a blockbuster.

Based on another of Marvel Comics' seemingly endless line of costumed crimefighters, Thor is the latest to make a splashy big screen debut in theaters (following closely on his heels, Captain America is set for a July release). Although we officially honor this god every Thursday, he really isn't very familiar to American viewers. A few Norse gods have had illustrious careers on the world's opera stages, thanks to Richard Wagner, but the God of Thunder makes only a brief appearance in The Ring of the Nibelung, and under a different name at that. Fortunately, Stan Lee and his associates at Marvel saw something Wagner didn't, and beginning in 1962 signed him to a long-term contract.

The story, according to the Gospel of Marvel Comics, tells of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), prince of Asgard--heavenly stronghold of the gods--and heir to the throne of his father, Odin (who else but Anthony Hopkins?). Thor is handsome and strong, but incredibly rash, a source of worry to his aged father, who is nearing the end of his life but hesitates to hand over power to his reckless son. To safeguard the cosmos, Odin must be sure that after his death peace will continue between the gods and their mortal enemies, the inhabitants of Bifrost, a forbidding world of ice and perpetual darkness. The malevolent Bifrostians are monstrous ice-men bent on destroying the gods and turning the entire universe into the same kind of frozen wasteland they inhabit, but they're held in check by Odin's authority. It's an uneasy truce, however, and when Thor defies his father and leads a raid on Bifrost, it threatens to result in all-out war. To preserve order in the universe, therefore, Odin banishes his beloved son to earth, where he loses his supernatural powers. Confused and heartbroken, Thor must adapt to a strange new world and learn to accept his fate.

Fortunately, he meets a girl--no less a one than beautiful astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), leader of a team studying the heavens in a remote part of New Mexico where Thor falls to earth, and literally into her life. Disoriented and raging like the angry god he is, Thor doesn't try to make friends with his rescuers, but Jane likes him anyway. Something about his tousled blond hair, granite jaw, and steely blue eyes, quite possibly. He may be mad, babbling about his powers and saying quaint things like "What realm is this?", but he's different, and brilliant but boyfriend-challenged Jane can't resist wondering if he holds the key to many things in her life, including her understanding of the universe (it involves space-time configurations called wormholes--more about them later). Her research partner and surrogate father, Erik (Stellan Skarsgard), warns her that Thor could be dangerous, but even so he helps him escape the police and find a mysterious crater in the desert that's crawling with operatives of a shadowy government agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. (Fans of the Marvel series have already encountered this agency in Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.) They are investigating something that fell to earth around the same time Thor did--the great hammer of Odin, Mjollnir, Thor's weapon in his glory days in Asgard. Odin cast it out after him, perhaps to serve as a reminder of all he's lost. Now it lies partially buried in rock, where it resists the efforts of all who try to remove it. Thor is confident that once he holds the weapon in his hand again, he will regain his powers. But he also fails to free the hammer, and the realization that he is now a mere mortal nearly breaks his spirit.

To parallel Thor's suffering, events in Asgard take a serious turn for the worse. Banishing his favored son is too much for Odin's failing strength, and he falls into a coma, leaving a power vacuum around the throne. Filling it is Thor's half-brother Loki, an enigmatic figure whose true nature is only gradually revealed during the course of the film. While it should come as no surprise that Loki covets the kingship once meant for his older brother, the why and the how of it make the film's web of intrigue genuinely intriguing. Loki is no black-hearted villain but a frustrated younger son living in the shadow of a more popular sibling, one whose arrogance and irresponsible nature make him less qualified for the throne than Loki knows himself to be. His ambition grows from a tragic seed of justified grievance, watered with the poison of envy. But this is melodrama, not Shakespeare, and before too much plot goes by, Loki is doing and saying everything a superhero's nemesis ought to--we watch his soul grow dark in front of us. It's a predictable change, of course, but Tom Hiddleston's fine, shaded performance as Loki makes his inevitable transformation into baddie arresting enough to become the movie's most potent dramatic arc. Loki is not the first supervillain to usurp the hero's place in his own film.

The storyline is fleshed out with the expected elements: a love story, heroic sidekicks, a final showdown between hero and villain, and the promise of a sequel. It's the superhero action formula we've grown accustomed to, and obviously like, given the continued success of these movies. Thor doesn't vary it much, but a spirited tone, imaginative imagery, and appealing performances make it seem refreshing despite the familiarity. Hemsworth has the muscle tone of a displaced god, if not quite the awe-inspiring presence, but under Kenneth Branagh's attentive direction, he makes that presence felt when it counts, particularly during the energetic climax. Even better, Hemsworth's Thor, while appropriately humbled by his ordeal, retains just enough pride at the end to suggest that arrogance tempered with wisdom is the quality not just of a god but of a great leader. Portman--still decompressing from Black Swan, perhaps--gets to display her sense of humor as the smitten scientist, a welcome tonic to the implausibility of her character's romance with an ancient deity. "Awkward" and "nerdy" are not adjectives one usually associates with the chic actress, and fortunately Branagh doesn't ask her to push Jane too far in that direction, or the results would be harder to believe than Viking warriors walking down a 21st century street. But she gives Jane enough of those qualities to lend credence to her confusion around a hunky male, as well as a touch of sweetness to the growth of her shy attraction into love.

It must have been tempting for director Branagh to view this film chiefly through the wide angle lens of epic--Homeric, Shakespearian, Wagnerian, George Lucasian. It's filled with themes that epics love: good vs. evil, brother against brother, the intermingling of divine and mortal worlds, love crossing the barriers of space and time. The New Testament contributes a father god sending his son to earth in mortal form (perhaps Odin knows all along Thor will be humanity's salvation). Even Arthurian legend makes a cameo--the hammer in the rock that can't be moved until the Right One tries is a chivalrous nod to the Sword in the Stone.

But these aspirations to epic are wisely kept under control. Branagh's resume is rife with overblown versions of classics such as Hamlet and Frankenstein, so it's something of a marvel he's able to exercise restraint at the helm of this muscular hero tale. Much credit goes to the even-tempered screenplay by Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne. Despite an angst-ridden background filled with family conflict and betrayal, there's a loose, often playful feel to the script, which packs a lot of material into 115 minutes so economically the film never feels crowded. Branagh's straightforward, uncluttered direction perfectly complements the writers' thrift, guiding the dual storylines at an animated but never hurried pace, and keeping things in sensible perspective: no scene is overdone, no moment overstuffed with emotion. As a consequence, the movement to the movie's climax feels effortless, which gives it a greater impact than a noisier, more deliberate build-up would have. Like the best of the recent spate of superhero flicks, Thor is a comic book made by and for adults.

The movie's knowledge of classical literature is matched by its skill in mixing film genres. Genre and myth are closely related anyway, but superhero movies bring them even closer together by merging the archetypal stoies of myth with the iconography of popular culture. When filmmakers display a command of both the cinematic geneology and the cultural roots of their pop stories, as they do in Thor, the combination strikes sparks. Thor's master plan is ambitious, crossing adventure epic with science fiction and fantasy--the hero's journey takes him across time and space, from 900 A.D. Asgard to the present-day American Southwest. The aforementioned wormholes allow Thor and his friends to travel almost instantly between two epochs and two distant corners of the universe, but this quasi-scientific explanation is given a mythological correlative in the film's most spectacular creation, the dazzling Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, which according to legend connects the gods to the far reaches of the cosmos--as well as ancient religious beliefs to contemporary scientific inquiry.

Just as successfully, Thor bridges the gap between action spectacle and intimate drama. Relationships are central to the dynamics of the story, not incidental, and the care with which the film treats the domestic and romantic entanglements of the characters makes their actions emotionally credible, despite their comic book origins. The warfare between the kingdoms of Asgard and Bifrost has epic scope but is viewed through the prism of family drama, lending it a touch of Greek tragedy. If this association seems a bit high-toned for action fare, the film earns it--it's not forced on us in any self-congratulatory kind of way, but rises unpretentiously from the logic of the story.

Though Thor is clearly not the type of male who enjoys bantering with the opposite sex, the film's romantic angle has enough deft touches to recall classic Hollywood romanti-comedy as well. This lifts the movie's spirits considerably. Portman plays the game nicely, as noted before, and when Thor finally tumbles to Jane's attraction to him, Hemsworth seems to be flexing his muscles a bit more self-consciously. But there's another model behind their mismatched courtship, a more deeply embedded narrative--the romance between two people of unequal class backgrounds, in this case between a wealthy or well-bred lady and an unsophisticated working man. The love-across-class-lines formula pops up everywhere: in classic romanti-comedies such as It Happened One Night (1934), westerns like The Virginian (1931) or My Darling Clementine (1946), even thrillers (Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 masterpiece, Rear Window). Tennessee Williams memorably enshrined it in the lethal flirtation between Blanche Du Bois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. And Disney did it with dogs in The Lady and the Tramp (1955).

Thor borrows most heavily from one of the more unlikely tales in this collection: Tarzan. Like the legendary hero of the jungle, Thor is a Natural Man, an unspoiled alpha male from a "less civilized" world, whose unpolished manners and elementary outlook are in stark contrast to those of his more refined and articulate mate--who, interestingly enough, is also named Jane. The cult figure of Tarzan is a potent nexus of popular culture and classical mythology, as well as a movie franchise that is practically its own genre. In a way, nothing better reflects how mythology is created for consumption in America, which absorbs hero tales from all cultures and turns them into easily digestible cine-fables, stamped with the American brand, that are fed continuously to the world's entertainment markets.

We have the industrial and cultural machinery to do this, of course. The "Hollywood" film is a recognized commodity worldwide, and an important part of it right now is the Marvel brand with its successful product line of superhero sagas. Thor is just the latest to make the hero's journey to the heights of popular mythology by way of cinematic fame. And the latest, and of course not the last, to reflect the underlying irony of these resurrected hero tales. No simple throwbacks or odes to nostalgia, they are instead somewhat uneasy explorations of what we're nostalgic for. Good still battles evil, as of old, but now the struggle takes place in the ambiguous moral landscape shaped by our modern sensibility, which renders every outcome--and its meaning--a little less certain than it once seemed to be.

Morning Glory

It makes me feel a bit guilty to say unkind things about a film that wants to be liked as much as Morning Glory does. Just like its pretty, perky heroine, Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams), this movie really, really wants you to like it. How can the viewer resist me? it seems to ask. I'm so cute, full of energy, and awkward in an adorable kind of way. No question, Morning will brighten your day at times, but ultimately there is little glory to be found in its eager to please but all too familar story.

It's set this time in the competitive world of morning television. Here's the scoop: Fuller is the enthusiastic assistant producer of a morning show in New Jersey, whose lifelong dream is to one day work for the Today Show. Budget cuts at the station force them to let her go, and she begins the frustrating search for a new job. After a stream of rejections, she interviews for the position of head producer at DayBreak, a ratings-starved counterpart to the Today Show and its more successful imitators, on the fictional IBS network. Improbably, she is hired on the spot by the doesn't-really-give-a-damn station manager (Jeff Goldblum), who employs the kind of logic that exists only in movies and decides that the show is so far gone he might as well take a chance on someone as unlikely as Becky (she comes across as both desperate and kooky in her interview). Why, making her head producer is such a crazy idea, it just might work... Oh sure, why not? Every journey down a familar road begins with a first cliche.

In order to begin saving the DayBreak, Becky needs to quickly prove herself to the demoralized crew, especially long-suffering co-anchor Colleen Peck (a good but underused Diane Keaton), whose years of frustration with the substandard working conditions have made her wary both of new producers and hope in general. Becky comes up with a bold idea--pair her with a renowned TV newsman who was recently relieved of his anchor position to make room for younger talent. Embittered by IBS's treatment of him, and contemptuous of morning television (and seemingly everything else, except his award-studded career in hard news), Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) is not exactly the ideal fit for DayBreak. But then, we wouldn't have much of a movie if he were. Egocentric and insulting, Pomeroy joins the morning news team under serious protest, sulking in his dressing room, refusing to banter on air with Keaton, and drinking heavily in his off hours. Becky has her hands full getting the spoiled, grumpy star to appear on camera, let alone do the job she hired him for. He lends the failing show no help, as is his intention, and the ratings fall even faster than before.

Faced with the threat of cancellation, Becky turns to desperate measures. What follows is the most entertaining part of the film, a loose montage of wacky stunts and on-air gaffes that begin to catch the public's attention and edge the ratings upward. Silly programming and the clashing egos of the stars, who begin to trade insults instead of the requested happy talk, finally do what "serious" programming couldn't--get people tuning in to see what's happening on DayBreak each day. A combination of inspired hunch and happy accident having reinvigorated the show, Becky is all at once the toast of the business. And, of course, she's approached by the Today Show, offering her the position she's dreamed of her whole life. Should she stay or should she go? Oh, the hard choices faced by beautiful, talented people in glamorous industries.

The film badly wants us to sympathize with Becky, so it drives home the point that the demands of her job have taken a toll on her love life, which at the start is a mess. An early scene illustrates the challenges she faces--she's forced to meet a blind date for dinner in the middle of the afternoon because she rises so early in the morning for work. But that might not be a problem if she weren't also endearingly odd--a compulsive talker and a hopeless workaholic, she chatters non-stop during the first few minutes of their meeting and tries, but of course fails, to ignore her cell phone, which rings every couple of minutes. The date beats an understandably hasty retreat.

Becky's clutziness and failure to attract a partner, despite her obvious charms, might have added an extra layer and a touch of poignancy to her story, if the film had pursued the theme seriously, but instead it quickly discards this opportunity for a little depth. Soon after joining DayBreak, Becky meets a dreamy ladies' man (Patrick Wilson), who conveniently works in another division of ISB. With only the mildest of courtship difficulties, they fall into bed, the results of which must be happy, although we're not treated to details. He's instantly Mr. Right, which just as instantly drains the romantic subplot of tension, as well as interest. With hardly any struggle, the script hands Becky a cute, sensitive guy--so, what was the problem before anyway? You just can't get a good date in New Jersey? Despite some nice interplay between McAdams and Wilson, their later scenes are for all purposes irrelevant, and after a promising beginning, Wilson is wasted in a dead-end role.

The setting of this film may be television journalism, but little in it is news. Part 70's sitcom (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl), part Broadcast News (with maybe a dash of Network), Morning Glory relies heavily on story ideas that have been pitched many times before. To a great extent, the movie is Broadcast News lite, following James Brooks's terrific 1989 film in its aim to situate the conflict between a professional woman's career and her personal life within the struggle between serious journalism and entertainment in the television news arena. We've already seen how Woman vs. Career fared. Serious Journalism vs. Entertainment gets better treatment, mainly because this is where the film's interest really lies.

The question of how an unpopular show captures an audience without abandoning all credibility is centered around Ford's character. More than centered--Pomeroy physically embodies it. The whole reason for his presence in the story is to provide a human battleground for the fight between hard news and the soft news format of morning television. Pomeroy, Hard News personified, does not want to give in, regarding everything around him--perhaps even the chair he sits in--with hostility. The work of the narrative is make his square peg fit into DayBreak's round hole without doing too much damage to either. As the film passes midpoint, the tug-of-war between Pomeroy and Becky over these issues takes center stage: screenwriter Aline McKenna reveals it to be the film's real subject, and theirs the story's critical relationship. What do you know? She buried the lead.

Although the relationship between Becky and Pomeroy isn't a romantic one, their story arc follows the prescribed steps of romanticomedy coupling: meeting "cute" (in an elevator, where Becky embarrasses herself by gushing over him), initial antagonism followed by a clumsy "courtship" rife with misunderstandings and setbacks, slowly developing affection and respect, and the critical moment of bonding that leads to a happy ending (the final shot of the movie actually has Becky and Pomeroy walking into the sunrise). The film's emotional climax comes when Pomeroy realizes his behavior may have led to her defection to the Today Show. Although the decision is hers, he's the one who effectively makes it. And Becky's journey is complete when Pomeroy finally understands that there are larger issues at stake than his own principles, or the memories he clings to of his glory years in the business.

McKenna was smart to personalize the debate between entertainment and news in television journalism because it's an old argument, reintroduced here with little reflection of today's climate. Where is an acknowledgment of the influence of politics on news coverage and the issue of bias, or the impact of 24-hour cable news programming? The media landscape has changed tremendously since Broadcast News, which came at the sunset of the Big Three networks' dominance of TV news. You wouldn't know it from watching Morning Glory. It's set in the same world as that earlier film, as if 20 years hadn't changed a thing, or perhaps even gone by. Not surprisingly, the conflict feels more than a little dated, as if drawn from an old script the filmmakers dusted off and were in too much of a hurry to revise. Becky even says to Pomeroy in the middle of one argument, "The debate between news and entertainment is over. We [entertainment] won." She's right, and the audience knows it.

So if there's no point in replaying a match whose outcome is known, what is the point? What is this movie about? Maybe those two words: we won. If Broadcast News showed us how the game ended, Glory is the victor's celebration in the locker room afterward. In Pomeroy, we witness the Old Guard's final holdout bowing to the new reality of TV news and taking his place in its ranks. But it's hardly a grim fate--don't forget that sunrise in the final shot. The filmmakers imagine the sun rising for Pomeroy, not going down. Broadcast News ended on a gray, cloudy day, its disillusioned charcters sheltering themselves from the rain.

Planting the film's central conflict inside a character's psyche may explain Pomeroy's mercurial temper and extreme reactions to his surroundings, but I'm not sure it can explain Ford's truly weird performance as the veteran newsman. He plays Pomeroy as a charmless, humorless, graceless boor, completely lacking in charisma or any semblance of real professional pride. On camera, he's simply awful, betraying no trace of style or hint of personality whatsoever. He doesn't smile, change his tone of voice, or, it seems, even blink his eyes. He reads every story like it's an obituary. With his droning delivery and inflexible mask of a face, he appears only marginally human. In the real world of TV news, there's no way this guy would have lasted as long as he has, let alone become a "legend." Not only would he not have been hired for his first job, his audition tape would have been burned.

There's a scene--ironically meant to establish his character's credibility--in which Ford is seated at a table with three real-life news figures: Chris Matthews, Morley Safer, and Bob Schieffer. Its effect is just the opposite, emphasizing how completely Glory fails to create the illusion that Ford is one of them. I found myself wistfully thinking how each of these men would have performed their DayBreak duties: Matthews with his acerbic wit, Safer with his voice dripping irony, Schieffer with the ever-present twinkle in his eye. Demotion to DayBreak would be a trial for each of them, but unlike Prima Pomeroy, they'd all act like professionals and do it with style. All that can be said for Ford's unbelievable characterization is that at least it keeps the film's treatment of him from being too harsh. Pomeroy is so insufferable that when he finally bends enough to accept his role of morning TV personality, it's not a moment of defeat for him. He doesn't surrender his dignity, rather he discovers it--and finally acts like an adult.

Despite its shortcomings, Morning Glory is enjoyable to watch, and that's chiefly due to McAdams. The picture is designed as a showcase for her, and she makes the most of this star-making opportunity. Candy-coating the nerdy, over-achieving side of her character with wholesome girl-next-door sexiness, she turns Becky Fuller into a goofy but irresistibly sincere charmer. She's way too good at it, in fact, and almost too attractive for the movie's romantic premise. The dating disaster scene at the film's open can't help but ring a false note. Who would really care about her volubility, cell phone addiction, or need to go to bed absurdly early? She's so pretty and appealing that it's hard to believe any guy wouldn't put up with these quirks for the chance of winding up there with her.

McAdams' charm is the film's strength, but also the source of its weakness. The movie is so enamored of her it really wants to do nothing more ambitious than display her cheery disposition and gaze at the effect it has on DayBreak (which turns out to be very simple: the show has no personality, so Becky gives it hers, and it becomes a success). The film's message to everyone, and especially Pomeroy, is lighten up. Stop already with the tortured examination of TV's soul: TV has no soul, and that's OK. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Becky Fuller is indeed the new face of television journalism. The victory of entertainment over information is embodied in her combination of rootless energy and flirty dedication. She is more conventionally attractive and personable than her Broadcast News counterpart, Holly Hunter, but also much less complex and interesting a character--driven but not compulsive, neurotic but not angst-ridden. And as goes the heroine, so goes the film as well--it's much less compelling than that earlier one. Of course, there's not nearly as much at stake in the story this time around: Glory is a diversion, a puff piece about morning TV, not an editorial on the death of television journalism's Golden Age, which Broadcast News memorably made both sad and funny. In contrast to that film, Glory's cynicism about the industry carries as much weight as the petals of a flower. No, the industry is all right, it reassures us throughout, as long as it produces, and is produced by, cuties like Becky Fuller. Her journey--and ours with her--heads straight toward the sunrise.

The only problem is it's a fake movie sunrise. And, I'm sorry to say, there's no happy ending to that story, Morning Glory.