'Thor' is probably a better movie if you know the backstory

From the far-flung pan-galactica nature of near-instantaneous interstellar travel where out of sight isn’t sufficiently out of mind for the demigods of Asgard, we have an uneasy truce with the ice giants, secured years ago when Odin took this big blue mystical … thing away from them.

Now Thor is nearly ready to succeed him as king but on the day of the coronation – at the very pronouncement of succession already – a small cadre of ice giants raid the weapons vault to steal the blue thing.

Thor wants to fight them. Odin says no. Thor wants to take his friends and his non-succeeding brother Loki to fight them anyway. They travel to the realm of the ice giants via Einstein-Rosenberg wormhole and take out a bunch of ice giants and this great ice beast and Odin banishes Thor to Earth for being such a hothead, first stripping him of his powers, and to add insult to injury, his great hammer is sent after him but he is powerless to wield it.

He is still more than a match for any merely human fighter, however, and he aligns himself with the team of scientists who pick him up after he falls to Earth through the wormhole.

At this point, they seem to be at something of a loss in terms of movie. There’s been some great fight scenes, a lot of shaky handheld effects which are frankly annoying in 3-D – I’ll add that with the exception of “Alice in Wonderland,” this was probably the least necessary use of 3-D I’ve seen. Even layering the reality of intergalactic travel was a bit expected and while beautiful, not worth the $10 matinee price.

P.S. – Real-D 3D has been around for years now. You could give us a break on the price if we’ve kept the glasses and don’t need a new pair. I know giving us a break on the price is anathema to the operation of a movie theater but it’s a serious consideration because people don’t need to watch things in 3D in order to have a perfectly satisfying viewing experience – especially if the story is a little lackluster at best.

Spoiler alert, Loki is a devious double-crosser, tricking the ice giants into invading Asgard so he can vanquish them and show his father he’s worthy, but again, Odin thinks there’s too much emphasis on war and violence instead of peace and diplomacy. Well, dad, you ascended the throne by vanquishing ice giants, so it stands to reason your sons are going to see that and think that’s what they’ve got to do to win your approval.

So there was that level of ambivalence, along with the fact that Loki’s endgame was really hard to read and his methods were inscrutible – although I suspect if I were more familiar with the backstories I would think this was just brilliant. Thor on Earth, in his quest to become worthy, stood up to a random monster Loki sent that was destroying a town in New Mexico, in order to protect the scientists he’d fallen in with, and the girl scientist he was falling in love with, and he was going to show her the wormhole but got distracted by something, left Earth with his friends, and then he broke the machine that generated the wormholes because Loki was using it to destroy the ice giants and now he can’t get back to Earth. How sad.

But wait, so Thor is just “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in Renfaire garb, beaming around the universe and getting into fights with things? Because as stories go … well, it might just be me but I was having too hard a time figuring out what all of this was about. That Thor would only be worthy to wield his hammer if he was willing to wade into otherwise unwinnable fights without it. He was never not brave and he was never not arrogant and how can you be king of all Asgard without being a little arrogant? Geez, Odin, it’s like you’re upset with him for being himself.

Oh, oddly cast Anthony Hopkins, I can’t stay mad at you.

If it’s difficult to know from this review whether “Thor” is worth it or not … that’s precisely what I was going for. It was visually exciting if sometimes exhausting. The battles were morally ambiguous. (Who the hell is) Chris Hemsworth is physically beautiful with a decent sense of comic timing and a presence capable of presenting an Avenger, and Tom Hiddleston was well cast as Loki because as soon as you see him you want to punch him in the face, so well done you emo dad-always-liked-you-best supervillain. Natalie Portman could’ve turned into a bird again, that would’ve been interesting. Otherwise, my guess is that this was probably way more exciting if you were somebody else not me.

Comedies

I had a chance to see “Outsourced” this past week which is one that I don’t often watch, and I enjoyed it. Attentive listeners know that I didn’t like the episode I watched over Halloween, so has it gotten better or do I just not have standards anymore.

Well, I think it’s clear I watch too much television to have actual standards, and I don’t think it’s gotten better, no.

“Outsourced” is a situation comedy in the classic sense where really there is no character development of any significance from one week to the next, so it was easy to pick it up instantly from the one episode I’d seen before. I take a moderate amount of pleasure in the cultural clash this show so disproportionately relies upon for its comedy, but maybe it was the fact that a wedding was depicted and included traditional Indian dance forms and it occurred to me that I wasn’t watching anything else just now where I was viewing traditional Indian dance forms so I have to say I enjoyed that.

As much as I enjoyed that, however, the episode ended with the groom being assaulted with a traditional, completely out of hand American bachelor party and the father of the bride walking in on the ridiculousness and oh dear, what are we going to tell Mr. Roper? So the season finale is set for Thursday and I don’t know if I can recommend that, either. Except for the fact that it’s taking place in India and there’s just the most banal, broadbrush transmission of cultural insights – I trust them only slightly more than the ones we get almost by accident on “The Big Bang Theory” – gotta say, even “Happy Endings” is still winning for clever comedy.

Oh, and “Raising Hope.” My God, Chloris Leachman trying to take the batteries out of Hope recently to get her to stop crying? And then we had Burt Bigelow, Lawn Gigolo? Seriously, Garret Dillahunt is a truly underrated actor, as is Martha Plimpton. Everyone in that cast is operating at exactly the right speed and near complete lack of self-reflection (with the occasional horrified realization of that lack of self-reflection, like “Oh my god, we’ve got to be so much better people than we are!” and then not really achieving that), and Lucas Neff is perfect as the completely overwhelmed single dad of an executed serial killer’s daughter. All the actresses playing Baby Hope need to do is sit there looking adorable so mission accomplished.

"Grey's Anatomy"

Another show I needed to talk about briefly was “Grey’s Anatomy,” the white wedding installment this week, where Callie and Arizona are both experiencing disappointment in the wedding on some level or another. Arizona is sad because her father has refused to include a moment of silence for her brother, who was so supportive of her when she came out, and Callie’s mom, well, where to start? She rejects the marriage because it’s to a woman and she rejects her granddaughter because she was born out of wedlock. Callie buys into this, saying that without the support of the law and the church and her family she and Arizona are just a couple of little girls playing dress-up.

It takes Miranda Bailey to point out that her own completely traditional marriage eventually fell apart so …maybe not the best pep talk for cold-feet Callie, but the problem here is structural. They want to present the opposing view with respect but they’ve got to arrange an entire wedding in a single episode, so really nothing is getting the right amount of discussion. People aren’t able to dialogue properly. I mean look at this from Callie’s mom’s point of view. Her daughter was dating men less than a year ago, and her traditional point of view insists Callie is going to hell. Well, probably she isn’t, but her having a gay secretary isn’t the same as having a gay daughter. At least Callie’s dad is trying to be supportive.

Oh, and the dismissal of Mark Sloan as “the sperm donor” by Arizona’s father is offensive. Say he were to be cut out of Arizona’s life, how would he react? Sloan is father to that child.

I wasn’t clear on the point they were trying to make, intercutting Callie and Arizona’s ceremony with Derek and Meredith’s justice of the peace thing. That straight marriages are easier? That they don’t hold the same significance? That if you’re two girls you have to work harder and jump through way more hoops than if you’re boy-girl? Because Callie and Arizona could’ve had a commitment ceremony alone in the woods that would’ve been plenty meaningful and just as significant.

I feel like “Grey’s Anatomy” works so hard on the narrative but there’s so many characters it gets over the top and compressed. They completely blew it on that clinical trial. Alex Karev is too self-involved and Meredith Grey is sufficiently motivated that there’s no way anyone would’ve known about that Desdemona’s handkerchief of a clinical trial switcheroo.

Think of it from Karev’s point of view: “Oh, there’s Meredith with a folder, she’s probably taking it somewhere. One of a zillion things I see every day in this hospital.” Just for some reason they feel like they’ve got to make this important. But they can’t. There were random assignments, and every reasonable precaution was taken to keep it secure. Two folders got switched. The guy getting the placebo signed up knowing that was a risk. The trial is in no way marred. And on top of all that, all Meredith would have to say if confronted was that she wanted to reassure Chief Webber about his wife.

This is the kind of made-up conflict that makes me mad at television. Same with Altman and Yang, get over yourselves. Yang is arrogant and ego-mad and you made her put down the Moljnir scalpel of Asgard for a few weeks. That should’ve been plenty, but no, Yang’s got to agree with Altman about her arrogance and ego-madness as well? I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, babe.

“Grey’s Anatomy” needs a nitrous oxide leak. It takes itself way too seriously. Derek and Meredith are adopting one of the African babies for chrissakes. Everything’s just way too significant these days.

Coming up

Coming up, “The Event” is still limping along Monday on NBC. They seem to have gotten rid of “Harry’s Law” to run “Law & Order: Los Angeles” in that spot, but they’re keeping this tedious alien invasion nonsense. I suppose someone is watching it but I just want it to wrap up and end already.

They got rid of Deangelo Vickers on “The Office” this week and it needed some serious doing. If only they could’ve thrown him from the roof. Really? Mime juggling? And locking Jim down for suggesting the mancave hijinks and ignoring the female department heads made the women in the office feel excluded. OK, fine, yes, I watched it, dammit, I watched it, Will Ferrell or no. I’ll just watch it with probably more satisfaction now that he’s gone because after he reprised his George W. Bush impression on Funny or Die this week, I realized that I really just dislike Will Ferrell.

It looks like “Blue Bloods” is planning to further address that mystery they raised in the pilot episode with the secret society of police officers called the Blue Templar. Which I suppose will be enjoyable, but feels a little obnoxious to me. That New York City police don’t have enough to deal with between long hours and public funding and the police union there’s a secret secret group of police officers who are really in charge, who mark each other for death and oh yeah, on top of everything else they’re just beat cops? Roiiiiight. That’s CBS Friday at 10/9c.

Apart from that, “Dr. Who” turned in a real clinker this past week, but next week’s episode, titled “The Doctor’s Wife” should be entertaining to say the least. That’s Saturday at 9/8c on BBC America.