Thor: The Dark World (2013) Loki Was Only Mostly Dead

Thor: The Dark World (2013) Paramount

I feel bad that I watched this movie in the same week I saw Iron Man 3 again because I feel like I was tainted from the non-logical experience of watching that film. Sometimes I feel like I am the only person looking into these films and finding fault with them. Thor 2 introduced something that I have not seen in a superhero movie in some time. It showed us his family. You probably haven’t thought about it but it is difficult to actually see a superhero interact with his own family. Not his real family anyway.

I thought about Odin and Frigga and both characters acted very similarly to earth-like parents. Odin was disappointed that Thor wanted to be with Natalie Portman and really who can blame him. She is a scientific genius that is basically butter anytime she sees muscles (real strength of character). This is a very odd combination and I think most people see the logic in Thor marrying Sif. She is more attractive, warrior minded, deeply caring for Thor, smart, selfless, honorable, fights for Asgard, saved Thors life, do I really need to go on? She is basically the perfect woman for Thor but he would rather stay with butter instead.

Again the best character in the film is Heimdall (played by Idris Elba) who makes a living by kicking ass and staying apart from the Asgardian world. He enjoys the beauty of the universe compared to that of a woman which seems like a trifle to him. He takes down an invisible warship single-handedly and is the most believable alien character.

Tom Hiddleston plays Loki once again and he is always up to his tricks as usual. He is what I would call a conundrum. He leads one of the “Kursed” away from the fighting and towards his mother whom he loves. He then had to deal with the fact that he literally helped kill the only person he cared for. He now has to live in shame because of his actions. He then signs up for the vengeance mission only to fool Thor later on that he was dead at one point and also fooled Odin which repeats the story line from the first film. He also fools the same Odin that shreds matter and is the wisest man in the entire universe. What gave away the fact that it was Loki to me in the ending scene is that he mentioned Loki when Thor brought him up. This is something that Odin would not do because he cares little for Loki after what happened on Earth and previously with the Frost Giants.

One thing I disliked was the Aether and Malekith. After seeing the power of the Aether, Bor (father of Odin) instructs a commander to “bury it deep where no one will find it.” Well they buried it on the same planet they were fighting on which is uninhabited, but within eye shot from the opening of a cave. I feel like there could be several other places better suited for this artifact even if it were in the same hole, just deeper. Thor goes after Malekith in hopes to destroy the Aether which he was told could not be destroyed by Odin. Thor tries to be noble by taking the weapon away from his home planet, but lacks a real understanding of the weapon which makes his endeavors pointless.

Malekith is an odd villain because he wishes for the world to be in darkness where he can rule and rebuild his people. The reason he wants to rid the universe of the sun is unknown, which makes him a pretty regular villain. I am just waiting for the day that Hollywood decides to write about real evil. It’s not often you see a good villain like Heath Ledgers Joker, but there should be more roles written with real evil intent rather than just universal domination.

Electoral Dysfunction (2012) Voting Is A Privilege Dummies.

Electoral Dysfunction (2012) Independent

I must say that I sometimes feel like I live on another planet when I watch these films.

I have never seen a political documentary by Mo Rocca before so I was not quite sure what to think going into it. I usually stay away from political documentaries like the plague because honestly they are never clear about the actual facts and few sources are mentioned.

I used to debate in high school and I am now highly trained to be skeptical when I hear outrageous numbers without any sort of source. I also need to know the origin of that source and what type of work they are known for in order to validate that information being real. Some sources are about as credible as a guy saying it on Facebook so it’s hard to take a lot of people seriously.   

One thing I dislike about documentaries is it usually shows extreme cases of every problem and it usually talks to a lot of people involved that have a great deal of political involvement. I dislike this because it is hard to expect many of our elected officials to be non-biased especially when it comes to the information they have. Whenever I watch a news network I see a lot of people talking about a lot of different topics and saying some pretty untrue things after I later research the topics. In a world where you cannot take things at face value, it behooves one to do the majority of the research on their own.

The movie focuses on the several nuances of laws in the state of Indiana for voting. They are all very confusing and there is no real consensus from anyone about what we should do as a country when it comes to voting laws by state and the Electoral College. Some want the government to only use the popular vote as a way to elect the president and to streamline the voting process nationally. Others want to keep the Electoral College and force people to pass a civics test in order to vote.

I really wish we were all educated correctly so that a civics test would not be needed in order to vote. Most people I have talked to are unaware that the reason we have public schools is to inform the general public about history and politics so that they can be educated in their voting behaviors. Sadly, school is not taken very seriously in many places and very few grasp the concepts when it comes to the laws of the state.

One of the things the documentary does not do well is give a consensus about what could be done to better improve the system. Instead of getting more people to talk about specific voting laws in one state, I thought it would be more interesting to see what scholars thought on the matter of the Electoral College. I guess that may not be as entertaining, but it would be fruitful.

One system I am in favor of when it comes to the Electoral College is to use what is known as a “Pro Rata” system. This would allow the states to keep their voting laws while allowing for a system that incorporates everyone non-dependent on what state they lived in. It would matter if you voted democratic in a republican state and it would matter if you voted republican in a democratic state. The election process would involve more people because it would divide the electoral votes of the state’s population based on the voting in the state. So if Colorado (with 9 electoral votes) had 55% of the general populous vote democratic and 45% vote republican, it would give 5 electoral votes to the democratic nominee and 4 electoral votes to the republican nominee. It seems like a fair system based on the fact that every vote counts, unlike how it is represented in the current system. 

Iron Man 3 (2013) Made No Sense

Iron Man 3 (2013) Paramount

An old popular plotline in superhero comics is the ‘demons from the past’ plot which never seems to get old because it allows writers to bring new villains to the forefront that have been lingering around for years. I think it is important to note that the theme of these movies often orbits around things that the protagonist could’ve done better to stop these people from rising to their evil plots. It’s somewhat a joke when you think about it because there were plenty of things that troubled these people before they became evil. It’s not the superheroes fault, but they take the blame for it like in Iron Man 3 where Stark blames himself for starting this mess. 

Aldrich Killian was supposedly thankful for Stark treating him the way he did because it allowed him to become desperate enough to become evil. His whole goal during the film is to create another war on terror where he owned the villain and somehow had the war supplies. Although it is only mentioned briefly, Killian had lots of military contracts but mostly focused on the extremis project. He didn’t really have any weapons other than the people he manipulated. In fact he was so understaffed that some of his security teams literally gave up on the spot and he had to do all the video production of the Mandarin himself as shown in a scene where he was getting different camera angles to publicly kill the President and suggests they do a technical run through first. So you basically want me to believe that not only does Killian basically work alone, but he more resources than S.H.I.E.L.D. and he is able to infiltrate government officials all by himself? He can override all television programming and get to the presidents cell phone and I guess this means I should just assume he has people on the job even though they are never to be seen on camera.

Perhaps Aldrich Killian and AIM are part of something bigger?

I am trying to suspend my disbelief, but wouldn't it be logical for the next guy in command take over after Killian is dead? Since this is such a vast organization should I also assume that other people are still in charge? Wouldn't it be pointless for Iron Man to blow up his specialized suits if there is just another imminent attack or will some other superhero actually show up when there is a terrorist threat?

(Oh btw, Killian is as bad of a name as General Grievous... so dumb) 

Besides all of the tech talk and flimsy side character story lines, the movie in it of itself seems very self-serving to mostly Stark. Sure he was trying to recover from the difficulties of ‘New York’ but I feel like he is a little stronger than that as a character. I feel like this was a character piece made for the sole purpose of making Tony Stark seem like a person, but he already was one. He made mistakes in every film and seemed somewhat believable as a person putting their life back together during the Avengers. He eventually makes the sacrifice to put his life on the line and it now it becomes something that gives him panic attacks. From a guy that once dodged a tank shell, was shot at with missiles, killed his lifelong mentor, killed dozens of other ironman drones on top of an evil villain bent on showing the world Iron Man could be injured, fought off an alien invasion, and has been almost killed by his own blood, it seems like a stretch to say that he is now worried about this one other brush with death.

I don’t mean to marginalize his achievements as a character, but Iron Man 3 was not my favorite movie. It was better than the second film, but it still lacked a decent villain (let’s be honest, it was basically just Guy Pierce we hated as we always do), it lacked believability, and it focused on a guy rebuilding his life for the fourth movie in a row.