Because the old “skin tight spandex” looks great in comic books, where you can draw an idealized male nude with a few color changes. It doesn’t look as good in live action, especially since your lead should be able to act so you can’t just go down to the gym and pick out guys with the right body type. This is why no modern superhero movies attempt to replicate the classic spandex outfits of the comics. And you’re never going to find a slab of muscle with the body type of Thor, he’s literally inhumanly muscular in the comics.
Thor was clean-shaven throughout most of his comic book career, but that was just silly. Any character named “Thor” should have a beard. And in classic comic book continuity Thor and the asgardians aren’t really gods, they are powerful alien beings who were worshipped as gods. Besides, the Norse conception of the gods wasn’t as all-powerful beings, just super-powered humans. Not too far from Stan Lee.
Look leave aside the question of whether a Thor costume should be the same as the comics. We have to concede that wjat works in a comic doesn’t always work on screen, so leave that behind for now and ask yourself this; if you’re redesigning the costume from the ground up, is it good?..
Lord Jesus no. Quite honestly, that’s an absolutely terrible costume. There isn’t a single thing about it that invokes the idea of Thor. It’s just a generic 2000s Action Hero Costume; black pleather with hockey pads. We’ve seen that costumer a thousand time before. He looks like an X-Man (as per the movies) not a Norse god.
It looks like a costume put together from Big Bob’s House of Hollowe’en Stuff, not a professional Hollywood customer designer’s work. It’s shit.
Their only real chance is if it stirs up controversy – e.g., Christian fundamentalists picket the showings for the paganism and White-Nationalist Asatru flock to see it.
I’m confused. I thought the alien Asgardians concept was from the Ultimates series or some such recent nonsense.
In classic continuity their godhood was unquestioned. There are ten million comments in the old books from characters saying “I’m standing next to a real god!”
I’m not an expert on Norse mythology, but I’m pretty sure your conception of the Norse gods as not being godlike is also wrong.
This is the same pic from the previous thread. Interestingly, it almost contradicts the description quoted in B. Serum’s post:
“For one thing, it does not appear to be made of vinyl or plastic when you see the costume in context and in motion.”
Really, HitFix person? The black stuff looks like rubber. Unlike the comic Thor in the side-by-side comparisson, the round metal disks look like they were machined and pulled off (as a Farker said) an Audi. The comic Thor’s metal disks look like they were pounded out by a blacksmith and have already been dinged up a bit from a few rounds in battle.
ETA: FIrst comment on that website even says “too rubbery”.
Wow, die hard comic book geeks sure are an entertaining lot! I’m, at present, not sure which geek subculture is more fun to listen to/read bitch: comic book nerds or Trekkies (yes, I ended the word with “ies”).
And despite whether you like the costume or hate it, it’s still in no way as shitty looking as the rubber Thing in the FF movies.
To be fair, it probably looks like rubber because it is a computer generated image, not a photograph of actual material. It’s worth remembering that this is concept art and we have to reserve some judgement until we see a representative image of the real deal.
My post was referring to the actual production photograph, with the actual guy, in the actual costume, in astro’s link. The stuff looks like rubber.
ETA: Unless this is also computer generated. (Re-posted link.) There was previously a thread about Chris What’s-His-Face as Thor and this was the first image they released to the public.
While of course they couldn’t do spandex, Thor shouldn’t be in spandex in the first place. I’d expect something more like crude-sewn brown leather lined with fur. You know, like a Viking.
I think that’s why the rubbery looking stuff doesn’t work. Maybe it’s supposed to look leathery, but it’s too neat. But production stills can look a lot cleaner, so maybe it’ll look more scuffed up in the movie. The metal bits though are way too perfect and uniform. The metal stuff should definitely look more smithed. (Is that a word?)
Well, what exactly is a god? Small g god, that is. The Norse gods were supernatually powerful, but Thor still kills giants by smashing them with his hammer, not by waving his hand. Thor walks around, or rides in a chariot pulled by magic goats, he doesn’t just wish himself from place to place. He doesn’t have any supernatural senses, he can be tricked, lied to, or fooled. The Aesir live in halls, they eat food and drink mead, they even get old if they don’t eat the golden apples of Iðunn. In other words, it seems to me that if you took the character of Thor from Norse mythology and dropped him into Marvel continuity, he wouldn’t be too much different than the comic book Thor. Except he’d have a beard, and red hair, and would have a different personality–earthy, enjoying simple pleasures, quick tempered, irritable, and inclined to use violence as a first resort.
It’s kind of a semantic argument, it’s just that it seems to me that the word “god” has different connotations for modern people than it would for ancient ones. Like, say, the word “Kami” in Japanese. When they dubbed “Spirited Away” in english they used the word “Kami” as “spirit” rather than “god”. Saying something is a “river spirit” gives a different idea than a “river god”, even though it’s the same idea as the ancient Greeks had–every locality, every rock and river and forest and hill and valley has (or is) a god. But modern people might get the wrong idea about that.
Any time you talk about something that doesn’t exist you get into semantics, don’t you? (Or does somebody out there want to argue for Thor’s reality?)
All you’re saying is that man made god in his image, not the other way around. That’s certainly true. What that doesn’t mean is that all gods have to be omnipotent beings as in the mythology of any certain religion. Gods can be anything. Pantheistic gods are always different in concept from monotheistic gods.
Stan Lee said over and over again that Thor was a god. I don’t know today’s Marvel continuity, which is why I asked about it. But there is no possible doubt about the first decade or two of Thor’s existence. I read every one of those comics as they came out. The gods were real, but they were not omnipotent beings. Thor was a god of the Norse. Hercules was a Greek god. Other members of the pantheons also appeared. Stan couldn’t do a Christian god for obvious reasons, but he could call Thor a god and get away with it. So he did.
Was Thor more like the Thing or Hulk than the Christian God? Yes, he was. But he wasn’t mortal, either. Marvel’s gods were like superheroes but in a different phylum, so to speak.
Will this have any bearing on how they treat the movie Thor? no idea. But for me there is only one classic continuity, and it is what Stan Lee wrote in the 60s. Nothing else matters. And in the 60s Thor was a god. 'Nuff said.
