Thor Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Nathalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Clark Gregg, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Josh Dallas, Jaimie Alexander, Maximiliano Hernandez Directed by: Kenneth Branagh I decided that before we get to "Loki", I should probably go back and cover the first Thor movie. You know, since the Loki in that series never experienced most of the stuff I actually recapped, having been reset to post-"Avengers". Chrissy: Holy crap, really? You finally decided to recap this one? Diandra: Eh...I'm thinking it will be more like what I did with "Widow", "Falcon" and the second "Spider-Man". The reason I didn't feel it was necessary before is the same reason I skipped the first "Ant-Man" and "Guardians". The whole "Thor is sent to Earth and has to prove himself worthy of Mjolnir again and also have a little romance with Jane Foster" plot isn't really that important and could be reduced to a couple paragraphs. Or that last sentence. Chrissy: So you just invited me because you feel guilty about not inviting me to help with that summary/essay/review thing for those movies. Diandra: Nah, I didn't feel guilty about that. I just wanted to avoid you getting mad about it and never letting me hear the end of it. In Norway in 965 AD, a CGI de-aged Anthony Hopkins leads the Asgardians in a fight against the Frost Giants, who have a weapon that blasts cold at anything it's pointed at and kills the humans who worship the Asgardians as their gods. In voiceover, Odin says they drove the Frost Giants back to their own world in what was known as the last Great War. And we see that he personally took down their king after the battle that took his eye. The Asgardians took the ice weapon back to Asgard and stopped engaging with the humans until they became mythical creatures from history. A still de-aged Odin explains to two young boys that one day they will have to defend the peace that Asgard fought for and drops a little chestnut about a good king not seeking out war but not being unprepared if one comes to him either. The boys establish which is which right away in case we couldn't tell them apart by their hair color when Loki asks curiously about any remaining Frost Giants and Thor vows to destroy whatever is left of the monsters when HE is king. Chrissy: Can always count on you for the diplomatic solution... And then we get to the main source of contention between them. Odin notes that there can be only ONE king, but "both of you were born to be kings" which is kind of a cruel thing to say to the second born, but whatever. Chrissy: Yeah, Odin can basically be blamed for a LOT of what came later. Diandra: And it's debatable how much of that was known this early in the MCU run. I don't think anybody was even sure there would be a second "Thor". Thor's coronation is interrupted when Frost Giants attack in an attempt to take back that "weapon", which is identified as the Casket, triggering a sort of robot sentry that mows them down. When Thor asks why they didn't just take any of the other powerful weapons in the vault, Odin says he made a truce with the Jotun king Laufey. Thor suggests a preemptive attack to discourage them from ever trying to do anything like that again and that's one way to signal that you're not actually ready to be king. Chrissy: I believe we had this discussion before about kings versus good kings with this series. Loki just sort of...hovers on the sidelines of their argument like 'not my circus.' But he privately tells Thor later that he agrees with his assessments, but it's not like he's going to go against their dad, right? Right? So Thor convinces Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun and Sif to go on some sort of reconnaissance mission to Jotunheim. Loki gets dragged along, but he is weirdly meek and not even able to bluster them past Heimdall. Luckily, Heimdall is cool with their mission because he wants to know how the Jotuns managed to sneak past him and we get the best visuals of the workings of the bifrost of anything that came after. The visuals of this movie really are stunning, even more than a decade later. Chrissy: [cough] Yeah. "Visuals." We also get something of exposition of how the bifrost works. That Heimdall guards it to prevent dangers from coming through to Asgard and if he doesn't close it it can destroy the entire planet it is connected to. They find Laufey easily enough, but he just tells Thor that "the house of Odin is full of traitors" and oh, his dad is a warmongering thief. Then he mocks Thor's manhood and it all goes to shit. Somewhere in the battle, we quickly establish that the Frost Giants are able to burn the heroes skin just by touching them when one does this to...NotGimli. Chrissy: Yeah, I thought it was weird that you were using their actual names before. Diandra: Because Thor was actually using them then. I've already forgotten them again. This is mainly so we will realize the significance when the one Loki is fighting grabs his arm and instead of burning his arm just turns blue. The fight ends with Thor summoning lightning to blast a giant crater in the planet and his team barely escapes the destruction. He also flies right through the open mouth of a giant hellbeast, killing it. They still almost lose because they are outnumbered by the pissed off Frost Giants. But as the Jotun are descending on them, the bifrost touches down with Odin riding Slepenir in full battle armor. Chrissy: That's my boy! Diandra: Is it? I'm not really clear on whether the Loki who fathered the monsters and mothered Slepenir is just...like...an ancestor of this Loki or from another universe entirely. Chrissy: Yeah, there's probably no relation, which is why Hela was referring to her mythological brother like he was a lover or something. Also, it's possible the myths were just wild stories told on Midgard that never actually happened or were heavily exaggerated. And probably, as you said, in a parallel universe where Loki is Odin's adopted BROTHER and not his son. Odin tries to negotiate a truce with Laufey because his son is a hotheaded idiot and they don't need to start a war because of him. It doesn't work and they end up hastily retreating to Asgard instead where Odin chews Thor out for forgetting everything he ever taught him and actually snarls at Loki when he tries to cut in. Odin's punishment for him starting a war through arrogance and stupidity is to strip him of whatever rank and standing he has and banish him to Midgard. Then he enchants Mjolnir to grant the power of Thor to whoever it deems worthy and sends it through after him just to make it interesting. In New Mexico, Jane, Selvig and Darcy are chasing some sort of anomaly in the desert that looks kind of like an aurora, but turns out to be the bifrost. They accidentally hit Thor with their car when he stumbles out of it. Darcy volunteers to perform CPR because...like...woof. But he just starts raving and trying to call the hammer, the bifrost and Heimdall until Darcy has to taser him out and they leave before Mjolnir touches down. Which Coulson finds in a post- credit scene of "Iron Man 2", I think. Jane and Selvig realize that the "anomaly" they were chasing is an Einstein Rosen bridge and I forgot that this is where they defined what that actually is. It's a connection between two points in spacetime. AKA a wormhole. Thor escapes the hospital they try to send him to and Jane ends up hitting him with the car again. Meanwhile, back on Asgard, Loki reveals that he is the reason Odin came to retrieve them on the mission in Jotunheim because he told a guard what Thor was planning before they left. Because it was a stupid plan that was going to get them killed and he hoped they would be stopped before they even reached Jotunheim in the first place. This starts a debate among Thor's merry band about whether Loki is the traitor Laufey was talking about who brought the attackers to Asgard in the first place. Odin finds Loki with the casket and stops him before he does anything more than just pick it up. Loki confronts him about his growing suspicions and Odin recounts finding a baby in the temple after that battle in 965. It was abnormally small for a Frost Giant so he figured it had been abandoned, but also somehow knew it was Laufey's. Loki forces Odin to admit that he didn't take him home for altruistic reasons. That he was a sort of bargaining chip that could be used to form an alliance between the Asgardians and the Jotuns eventually. Not that it matters anymore. Loki sobs that Odin should have TOLD him what he was long ago. Odin says he was trying to protect him from the truth. "Why? Because I'm the monster parents tell their children about at night?" Loki starts screaming about how this all explains why Odin favored Thor until Odin just collapses and goes into a coma. Or "Odinsleep", apparently, which Frigga says he put off for so long that they weren't expecting it. Frigga also backs up Odin's claim that they lied to protect him because something something adopted child we didn't want you to feel less important. Loki goes kind of...power mad, claiming the throne and informing Thor's merry band that the Allfather may never wake up like 'oh, well. What a tragedy. Anyway.' Sif tries to get him to end Thor's banishment to that hellhole...er..."Earth", but Loki bullshits something about continuity and safety and he can't just go against Odin like that when they're about to go to battle with Jotunheim. Chrissy: You can't change horses midstream! Speaking of horses, did I ever tell you about the time I got knocked up by one? Diandra: I seem to remember you complaining about me continually bringing that up in the "Avengers" recap. Chrissy: Yeah, well. I'm hoping it will prompt you to finish that story you were starting then. Then he appears in the cell SHIELD puts Thor in at one point to tell him that Odin is dead and he can't reverse the banishment because it's a condition of their truce with Jotunheim and Frigga has "forbidden" him from returning, so obviously he's getting better at the lying. Thor just accepts this and thanks him, so he obviously needed to learn to be less trusting too. And I'm mostly ignoring the Thor origin story here for the reasons I stated earlier and just focusing on the part that led to Loki trying to declare himself king of Earth, but...I forgot that Hawkeye was introduced here as a sniper Coulson could call to take out Thor when he crashes the facility SHIELD built around Mjolnir. It is also the first appearance of the guy from the later Captain America movies who works for HYDRASHIELD, Agent Sitwell. Loki goes to Jotunheim and tells Laufey that he did, in fact, get them in to Asgard just to ruin Thor's coronation and keep him from ascending to king for a while "to protect the realm from his idiotic rule". He offers to help Laufey and his men kill Odin while he's in his coma and won't even put up a fight. He would do it himself, but...you know...that would probably put a crimp in his ability to be king if anyone ever found out. Shakespearean as this all is. In exchange, he will give the casket back. Thor's merry band conspire to find Thor and bring him back. Heimdall summons them to the bifrost and makes noise about them committing treason against Loki, their king, and he cannot help them, but he's just going to leave them to the bifrost so they can get on with it and wish them luck. They find Thor having accepted this new life and the knowledge that he can't return home and forming an attachment to Jane. Loki discovers what Heimdall did and tells him that as there are other ways to get between worlds than the bifrost (setting up the second movie there), they are no longer in need of his services. Heimdall is like 'good, so now that you aren't my boss anymore, I can do this' and swings his big ass sword at Loki's head. Loki goes full Jotun and uses the casket on him, freezing him in place just before the sword hits him. He sends that Destroyer sentry down to deal with Thor and his merry band and Thor tries to plead with him through it before offering himself as a sacrificial lamb if it will spare the rest of them (both his Asgardian and human friends). He seems to die and Jane cries over him, as does Odin from his coma bed. And then Mjolnir flies to him, his armor appears magically and he takes out the sentry while somehow NOT leveling the entire town. It takes Thor and his band a while to get back to Asgard because Heimdall has to free himself from the ice to activate the bifrost, which Loki already used to usher in some Jotun assassins. Laufey pries open Odin's good eye and soliloquies that he can still see and hear what is happening despite the coma so he will know "your death came at the hand of Laufey." He is blasted across the room before he can actually deal the blow though, by Loki, who says "and your death came by the son of Odin." Thor shows up and yells at him about the whole sending the Destroyer to kill him thing. Loki tries to put the command to do that on Odin, but Thor isn't so susceptible to his bullshit anymore. Loki just shrugs and blasts him out of the room before riding off for the bifrost to "destroy Jotunheim" in the way Heimdall said the bifrost could. Thor follows him, but Loki insists he won't be able to stop the destruction in time. Also, he says this whole plot was a way of proving to daddy dearest that HE is the more worthy son because he will have destroyed their enemies AND saved him from that murderous lunatic back there. Thor wails that he can't just kill an entire race. Chrissy: Look who had a sudden change of heart. Hey, remember when we were kids and our roles were EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE? He says something else that kind of complicates future assumptions about his intentions: that he never actually wanted the throne he's trying to prove to daddy he is more worthy to inherit. He just wanted to be seen as Thor's equal. Chrissy: It's possible you can just ignore half of what he says at any given time as some sort of manipulation. Diandra: Yeah, isn't he the god of lies? They fight somewhat awkwardly as it is obvious Tom can barely move his head. I forget if I mentioned it, but this was a thing with The Avengers too. It slows him down. They grapple right out of the control station onto the rainbow bridge where Loki tricks him briefly into thinking he's gone over the edge and is begging to be rescued. Really establishing why Thor will never trust him again here. Eventually, Thor decides the only thing he can do is destroy the bridge and sever the connection to Jotunheim...and everywhere else. They both fall off the broken end, hanging on to each other and are barely caught by a newly awakened Odin. Loki panic yelps that he could have done it "for you. For all of us." Odin just says no and they share a little unspoken understanding and Loki lets go of Thor and falls into the void in his first assumed death. But then in the post credit scene, Fury summons Selvig to see the Tesseract - a source of possibly "unlimited power" - and Loki is there in spirit or something whispering in Selvig's ear. Chrissy: What do you mean you're already done? It usually takes you days to type a recap. Diandra: Yeah, well, I said this wouldn't be a full recap, didn't I? I whittled it down to a basic outline, especially focusing on the parts that are relevant going into the "Loki" series. Chrissy: Am I even in it? Diandra: Yeah, but I cut that whole thing where you went on a tangent about giant snakes and linked it to the trivia about the costume designers having difficulty concealing the bulge in Tom's costume. Though I probably would have cut that anyway, honestly. Chrissy: Eh. I'm sure the subject will come up again when that "Essex Serpent" thing comes out. Diandra: Oh, god, you're not going to expect me to recap that now, are you? Chrissy: Hey, you're the one who shared that article about how mythical serpents like Nessie are most likely just whale penises in response to news about that movie. Diandra: Sigh. Okay, anyway. Are you ready to do Lok-oh shit why do I keep phrasing it like that? Chrissy: Yes. The answer is always yes.