The redoubtable Harry Knowles drops the leak-hammer on the upcoming Thor movie. To wit:
This isn’t a Donald Blake, doctor on vacation story. Instead, this is a genuine TALES OF ASGARD story. In the first few pages the creation of everything takes place… the origin of the gods, their universe and how midgard (that’s are [homonyms, Harry, homonyms! -- ed.] place in the universe) came to be.
It has Thor and Loki as brothers – the best of friends… and it shows how that goes bad. The origin of the uru hammer, Thor being thrown from Asgard to being a mere mortal… it’s a HUGE story – easily the most awesome script that a MARVEL project has ever had.
That’s a big endorsement, that last right there. To be honest I never cared about the squabbling-brothers side of Thor’s story. Yeah, yeah, one’s good, one’s bad, we get it — it turns into an Asgard family values story, and who wants that? I actually liked all the Donald Blake stuff, the idea of an amnesiac god exiled on Earth whose power is accidentally restored to him. Or the Ultimate Thor scenario, where at first he’s presented as a lunatic who believes he’s a god, and you have to figure out if he’s crazy or not. Though again, the whole idea of Thor has always been quite confusing, this thing of a god fighting among mortals. Bit of a disconnect there. If he’s really a god, doesn’t he have responsibilities? Shouldn’t he be off, I don’t know, reigning or something?
Casting will be interesting. Might be a good moment for Sean Bean to quit playing villians (note approved Internet spelling) and put that big square jaw to use. Or Aaron Eckhart? Both too old?
And is anybody else following the World War Hulk arc? Deeply, deeply awesome stuff. The premise: an alliance of superheroes does what somebody should have done a long time ago, which is exile Hulk to some other planet: he’s way too strong and way too nuts to be left running around Earth. Long story short, Hulk ends up liking his planet of exile. But in a way that doesn’t make sense, though you don’t really care, the heroes of earth wind up destroying Hulk’s new home and killing his new wife (don’t think about Hulksex, don’t think about Hulksex, lalalalala…) Now Hulk’s really pissed, so he comes back to Earth to kick ass. End of exposition.
It’s the thought-experiment we’ve always wanted: if Hulk really wanted to ruin every superhero on earth like a Japanese banquet, could he? Huge bonus for bringing in Black Bolt — anything with BB in it automatically wins. (That’s him in the image below — note Hulk’s fetching new partial body armor. Wee little tuning fork won’t save Black Bolt from Hulk smash!)
