Monday 10 April 2017

Thor: Ragnarok, New Teaser Trailer (SPOILERS!).



By Niffleheim's nifty nipples, it's time for me to stumble into a Nordic cave, bash a gnarled stick against a wall and unleash my mystical blogging powers - because Marvel Entertainment have unleashed the teaser trailer for their upcoming epic, Thor Ragnarok.

I must confess I have mixed feelings about the Thor films we've been given so far. I greatly enjoyed the first one, which I found to be far lighter on its feet than I'd expected but the second one mostly left me confused and bored. I still don't have a clue who the bad guys were, where they came from, what their plan was or how they got to wherever it was that they'd got to. For that matter, I didn't even know where they were.

Still, I enjoyed Iron Man 3 more than Iron Man 2, so perhaps the same pattern will occur with the thunder god's movie career?

As for the trailer itself, I'm not overly excited about his clash with the Hulk. We've already had that in The Avengers and I was kind of taking it for granted we'd see another punch-up from them at some point.

Call me a grizzled old fashionista but I must confess that what really excites me about the trailer is that Hela gets to wear her big fancy hat.

I know that finding such a detail the most thrilling thing in a trailer that's packed with incident and Led Zeppelin makes me the saddest man alive but, I mean, come on, as fancy hats go, that's the fanciest - and it'd make a great place to hang your washing from when you need to get it dry in a hurry. If I were a death deity - which I still hold out high hopes of one day becoming - I would definitely wear a hat like that.

Is it my imagination or is Chris Hemsworth sounding more Australian with each film he does? At this rate, by the next Avengers movie, he'll be talking like Steve Irwin and riding into battle on the back of a kangaroo.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. If you have opinions on the whole thing, you are, of course, free to share them in the comments box below.

If you don't have opinions on the whole thing, you're free to share that too. That's the kind of blog this is. One that stirs up apathy at every opportunity.

19 comments:

Aggy said...

I th8nk it's a shame they are burning off the Planet Hulk story as a side story in a Thor movie. It would have been a great standalone movie and a bridge between the Avengers and GotG films.

Shame no sign of Anthony Hopkins as Odin.

And I think most people prefer IM3 over 2. Not me though I hated the Manderin reveal (ermmm... spoiler warning?).

Anonymous said...

Not much into the Marvel flicks, and I can't stand Led Zeppelin so I'm inclined to agree with you about Hela's hat, Steve. You really know your stuff when it comes to this criticism lark.

I actually saw the first Thor film on tv recently, and it was better than I expected. Possibly that was down to Kenneth Branagh? I know he can be a bit of a knob, but to be fair he does know his stuff and he's not a run of the mill Hollywood type director.
And I liked Idris Elba as Heimdall (not so much because of his performance but just because it annoyed so many dodgy gits that one of the Norse gods was black. Brilliant casting)

Mind you, the digital fx version of Asgard and all that was inevitably going to be disappointing after Kirby's comics.

-sean

Kid said...

Ooooh, that looks good. I'm excited.

Anonymous said...

I can't stand that damn baby-faced Hulk. Why.
As far as the Zeppelin, men of good will may disagree.

M,P.

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

Hela's hat does it for me too, along with the Led Zep.

And someone somwpewhere has spotted that behind the Grandmaster in the Royal box there's some Kirby artwork swiped from a piece of machinery in an FF panel. I've no idea how they found it. Google "9 things I from thorn trailer that will ragnarok your world".

Steve W. said...

I've just checked it, Dangermash and you're right. Those people clearly have very good eyesight.

By the way, when I Googled it, your comment on here came up as the second search result. You're now officially famous.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

I'm not sure if I'm apathetic because I am still awed by your blog on U.K. Marvel comics last week! And I am truly puzzled why Marvel would burn through its back issues so quickly. It sounds like they burned through 10 years of spider man in 3 years? This leads me to wonder if U.K. readers perceive the Marvel universe the way It is perceived by US readers, but not sure how to compare that.

Steve W. said...

What did surprise me when I first got access to the internet, was discovering that distribution of American comics was as hit and miss in America as it was in Britain. It does make me wonder if that meant British kids in the 1970s may have had a more complete picture of Marvel's history than American kids did, simply because the weekly reprints meant they'd read virtually everything Marvel had published in the 1960s and 1970s. Life can be full of such strange ironies.

PS. Thanks to everyone who's commented on this post so far and to everyone who might comment in the future.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Was it hard to read that much in a month? Logistically I had $1/month to spend on comics which bought me 5 comics (almost all Marvel). I never would have had the money or time to read 5 per week. So I would basically buy Spider-Man, fantastic four, Avengers, Daredevil, Iron Man... every month but maybe only 75% at best due to poor distribution. E . G., I bought Avengers 92 and the next issue was 100! So I might have bought a Marvel Tales or Marvel Greatest which reprinted Spider Man and FF respectively, or a JLA or Brave and Bold from DC. But I can't imagine that amount of comics hitting me weekly instead of monthly... never could have afforded it.

Steve W. said...

I think I only ever read about five Marvel UK comics a week at most. Fortunately, comics were generally cheaper in Britain than they were in America. "Mighty World of Marvel," cost five pence when it was launched, at a time when US comics had a cover price of 20 cents. The exchange rate back then was $2.50 to the Pound, so a British comic worked out at around 12.5 cents. I suppose that was the big advantage of printing in black and white. Also, the Marvel UK mags were printed in the Irish Republic then sent to Britain, which apparently kept production costs down.

Finding time to read them was never a problem. At Marvel UK's publishing peak, I think I used to get a comic on Friday, then two on the Saturday and then two more on the Sunday.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

OK, forgive me for asking, but that would be the entire comic printed each week? IT wasn't like the 20 pages were spread out over 4 weeks, so you only got 5 pages / week? (I need to reread, and reread, that blog last Weds, to recall all you have written. I think my brain is calcifying now, at 55.)

Logic would demand that you got the whole comic, each week, if Marvel burned through 10 years of Spidey in 3, I would think.

UK readers very well may have had a better picture of the Marvel Universe. But, in a weird way, Stan Lee's Soapboxes, the Marvel Checklist, the footnotes that were in the story, the letters, the full-page ads showing comics for sale... they kind of, sort of, maybe a little, helped plug a lot of the gaps.

But in general you are right. I mean, read Avengers 88 - 92 then read 100 like I did. I was really out of the continuity (not to mention missing Neal Adam's work on all of 93!) And I missed the Inhumans, Rick Jones, Ronan, the golden age heroes popping up in 97... I mean each of those issues is loaded with story. It was maddening.

I guess I should be thankful that I was able to buy Spiderman 100, 101, and 102 each month and leave it at that.

Anyhow, I am sure guys my age can tell you all kinds of crazy stories about hunting for comics, finding important comics in the insignificant of places... E.g., I found Defenders #1 in a very tiny town (Winthrop Harbor, Illinois population 4500 at the time in the middle of nowhere, sort of) in a very tiny drug store that had all of 5 comics for sale.

Steve W. said...

The length of reprints varied. Spider-Man's comic would often (although not always) reprint an entire Spider-Man issue each week. The lead strip in, "The Titans," tended to be twenty pages, with the others being ten. Other comics would routinely split stories into ten page installments, while other strips would be split into five or six page chunks. The early Avengers tales were also reprinted in full each week, as were the early Dr Strange, Iron Man and Thor tales.

Probably the worst victim of acceleration was the Hulk. For a long time, he got twenty pages a week but, because most early Hulk stories were only ten pages long, that meant we'd get two Hulk stories reprinted each week, meaning his stories were being reprinted at eight times the rate they'd originally been printed. It took, "Mighty World of Marvel," just a year to get from the early 1960s Hulk tales to the late 1960s Hulk tales and it took them just two years to get from the 1961 tales to the 1971 tales.

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

Yeah. Marvel UK was always going to fail through lack of planning. Rather than going through all of the strips at the same rate (so that crossovers would have made sense) they maximised short term thrills/revenue by shooting through Spidey and Hulk too quickly. Once Spidey caught up with the US version, Marvel UK seemed to fold.

ColinBray said...

On the Thor movie, spoilers be darned, I don't especially care. It's nice to know they are there but I take the Alan Moore line on these things which is, that comics and the movies are two different mediums. And I'm a comic guy thanks very much. But if the comics are any guide I'm sure Hela gives good hat.

On Marvel UK's hectic publishing schedule, I'm sure Neil Tennant didn't care. He knew that not too far into the future he would be a rich pop star.

Charlie Horse 47 said...

You know, I'm now kind of curious about Tennant's Pet Shop Boys career. Had he already started down that path while at (before?) Marvel?

Anyhow, I can't imagine reading 5 comics a week or 20 a month. My folks would have banned me from them soon enough (ruining my school grades for sure!) I mean, I had to duck and weave to get 1 a week in the house at times (hide under the shirt, take my sister with for a bicycle ride, whatever). Always insisted I needed to read real books, LOL!

pete doree said...

Between me and my friends we managed to buy everything ( and I mean everything ) and just lend each other what we'd bought. Like I never bought Thor 'cos I didn't like it enough, but was happy to read my mates copy.
For a while though I was allowed three comics a week instead of pocket money, and dropped Spider-Man Comics Weekly in favour of Buster 'cos it had The Leopard From Lime St in it. Stan eventually forgave me.
Oh, and Sean Phillips still tells the story about when me & him were invited to a school pal's birthday party, and Sean asked if he could have a comic instead of a piece of birthday cake. There's a fan!

Steve W. said...

I really do worry that I didn't know of the existence of the Leopard of Lime Street until recently. If he was better than Spider-Man, he must have been totally awesome.

Paul McScotty Muir said...

This film looks amazing to me, Hela look very Kirbyesque. I haven't read Planet Hulk but the concept looks simple enough even for me to understand and anything with Hulk for me is an instant hit (except the new versionin the comics yuk) - I know a few folk are not keen on "Thors" throw-away funny comments (and Australian accent) but if being true to the original comic he would be speaking ancient (made up )English which is as absurd really and the fun was evident in early Kirby / Lee stories (in general) si Ilke to see that in the film the comics today seem so dark just for the sake of it and if you do Superhero films to seriously they can look a bit silly - A Led Zeppelin soundtrack (or song - one of my favs) is a bonus add a few Bowie tracks and that would be it for me.

Steve W. said...

I agree. A Thor movie done totally serious would be almost completely indigestible.