7 Changes:
#1 - First Appearance of Thor
#2 - Backstory for Malekith
#3 - Development of Frigga
#4 - Love Triangle Plot
#5 - Mjolnir Overdependency
#6 - Subway Scene
#7 - Final Battle and Death of Malekith
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1) First Appearance of Thor:
Why the Change:
Thor’s first scene in the film did not have any build up at all. There was no big "WOW" or badass moment for the audience to go “Yes! Finally! Thor is here!” Would have extended that whole battle scene a little bit more, and used that opportunity to showcase each of the Warriors 3 and Lady Sif separately in their full glory during battle so audiences who missed out on Thor (1) wouldn’t be lost as to who they are, and at least know they are not just mere Asgardian soldiers in battle.
Scene:
After each of the Warriors 3 and Lady Sif are showcased valiantly defeating multiple rebel soldiers to seemingly start turning the tide of the battle, the scene shifts to the horizon (possibly mountain or cliff) where a shot of hundreds or thousands of more rebel soldiers arriving.
Camera pans to Lady Sif / Warriors 3 as they give a facial expression of exasperation or aggravation as they have to do battle with much more rebels they anticipated.
As the new rebel reinforcements starts charging towards the battle field, the Warriors 3 and Lady Sif start to brace themselves, when suddenly the sky turns grey.
On the horizon, a bolt of lightning strikes down the heart of the rebel stampede, temporary halting them in confusion.
The Rainbow Bridge appears and the bright light startles the rebel forces.
After a brief second, the image of Thor emerges from the light, clad in his full battle gear (including his famous battle helmet) head faced down, knelt down on one knee, with Mjolnir faced top down on the ground, as if to give his final respect and honor to the foes he will soon vanquish.
(In Marvel's The Avengers, Joss Whedon made sure the comic book fans got easter eggs to see all different versions of Thor, the Original during the Iron Man battle, the Ultimate during the Hulk battle, and the Copiel during the Attack of New York. But, we never got the helmet. Even the Thor Dark World action figure toys all have the helmet in them, but never the film. This would’ve been a great, repeat, great opportunity for the helmet if it’s just for this 1 and only scene.)
One of the Warriors 3, possibly Volstagg would utter to Thor something like “What took you so long,” to break up the intensity a tad bit. Close up to Thor's face as his head slowly rises up to see the stunned rebels. He cracks a small grin then flies towards the crowd, proceeding to hammer down his foes as seen in the film.
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2) Emotional Backstory for the Villain – Malekith
Why the Change:
Malekith and the Dark Elves were just portrayed as non-caring, non-emotional beings just like their face masks, fighting just for the sake of fighting. Problem is, the movie audiences didn’t care about them either. There was a huge disconnect between Thor and Malekith in this film - Malekith in the end felt like a throw-away villain.
Scene:
Backstory of Malekith could’ve been just a brief scene where his lover was killed during the war with Asgardians. Scene would sometime during the battle, Malekith gets shot (possibly an arrow), and collapses on the battle field. His lover, a soldier as well, runs to his aid and fearlessly defends him, shielding his body with hers, while he is still down on the ground. After a brief fight, she too is hit by an arrow, and yet she still defends him bravely. The Asgardians then fire a barrage of arrows into the air, into Malekith’s direction. She stays beside him and shields his body with hers, taking all the impact.
(A little scene like that would’ve given the audience something to understand about the villain of the film and evoke some kind of sympathy towards him and why he is hell bent on Revenge against the Asgard. This also produces a significant more emotional toll to the death of Frigga, where Malekith actually has regrets over Kurse killing her. This will intern impact Thor with a better emotional ending - see Change #7.)
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3) Development of Frigga:
Why the Change:
Frigga had very little emotional build up before her death. She didn’t even have a single heart felt scene with Jane Foster, the girl she sacrificed her life for, throughout the whole movie. Her only semi-emotional scene was with Loki, but even that was brief. She had no heart felt scenes with Thor, nor with Jane for the audience to really care about her.
Scene:
A simple scene where Frigga and Jane have a motherly talk about what Thor felt and his longing for Jane while they were apart, which culminates into Frigga basically giving Jane her blessing.
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4) Love Triangle Ended before it even Started:
Why the Change: Why start a love triangle relationship in the movie, only to have it basically end before it even started? Lady Sif’s relationship with Thor was only developed in 1 short scene. Not only that, but Thor had Jane real early in the film. The scene where Thor and Jane were about to kiss only to be interrupted by Darcy was perfect, because it got the audience all wishing for it more. But about 10 mins later, they kissed, leaving the same audiences that gasped just not caring as much. Instead, reward the audience with the kiss they had in the post-credits (that scene would have been 100 x’s more rewarding to see).
Scene:
When Thor and Jane are about to kiss in Asgard, Frigga arrives sprouting praises for Thor not knowing she had intervened on a kiss between the two.
A brief scene showing the awkwardness tension between Lady Sif and Jane Foster would have been great too. Like maybe Lady Sif asking Jane some personal questions, naively not thinking about her question (since she thinks like a hardened warrior), making Jane a little uncomfortable to answer, giving the audience something to smile / laugh about.
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5) Thor’s overdependence on Mjolnir:
Why the Change:
Thor basically felt like just an ordinary Asgardian who only has powers because of Mjolnir The entire film saw that Thor always kept using and calling forth Mjolnir, not one time, except possibly the final battle (but it was so hard to tell from the camera being 100 yards away) did Thor even raise a fist and punched the villain. Made Thor look weak without Mjolnir being way too dependent on it.
Scene:
Possibly in the battle to reclaim the stone from Jane, a longer battle scene when after Thor loses Mjolnir, rather than try calling for it again just to end up trying to defend himself from boulders being thrown and getting pounded by Kurse, he should put up some fight too. What’s wrong with punching? Why doesn’t Thor just start punching the guy? Better than trying to defend himself while he’s always call for his hammer.
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6) The Subway Scene
Why the Change:
Ruins the emotional / dramatic flow of the final battle for London.
Scene:
Remove entirely. Insert to Deleted Scene menu on Blu-ray.
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7) Final Battle and Malekith’s Death:
Why the Change:
Final battle with Malekith was very short and anti-climactic. Over dependency for Thor not only in Mjolnir but also humans, especially humans felt cheap. Thor defeated his biggest foe because of a cheap plot device.
Scene:
Give Malekith the power to teleport, travel space (using the Space stone), instead of the whole teleportation plot device be an anamoly that crazy Dr. Selvig just learned how to harness.
Longer fight scene where audiences are up close and see the exchange between Thor and Malekith, instead of both being teleported from place to place with the viewing camera 100 yards away in the distance.
Malekith uses his “space gem” powers to easily dodge Thor’s blows (opening portals through his body that Thor’s blow ends up being teleported elsewhere). As the fight wages on and Thor looks like he’s losing, Thor later starts outsmarting his foe and uses Malekith teleportation powers to actually place hits (throwing Mjolnir out of the way, using his punches as a decoy to get Malekith to open a portal only to summon Mjolnir to strike him somewhere else).
The rest of the scene plays like the movie, but the final act comes after Thor defeats Malekith sending him back to his realm.
Thor collapses after victoriously defeating Malekith, but Malekith’s ship starts to crumble and is headed straight toward Thor. Jane rushes and tries to pull Thor out of the way to no avail. With no time left, Jane realizes there was nothing else she could do, but stay with the man she loves so she shields Thor from the impact.
The ship is shown crashing down to the floor, with audiences led to believe both Thor and Jane had been crushed under while Dr. Selvig, Darcy all start cyring out for both Thor and Jane.
Screen fade to black.
Blackness on screen starts to “blink”, like eyelids as if someone had their eyes closed and is just opening to see the world.
Thor awakens to see Jane lying on top of his frame. He wakes her up, confused yet happy to see she’s okay.
They look around and notice they are back in Malkeith’s realm.
Malekith is there with them.
Thor asks why Malekith teleported them here out of the way of the falling spacecraft.
Malekith simply responds that he recalls how his lover did the same thing Jane did to Thor trying to protect him.
Malekith dies, but dies with honor and the respect of Thor like a true warrior deserves (But most importantly the character got the respect and sympathy of the movie going audience; plus it's a much, much better ending than that of Dr. Selvig saving Thor and Jane by teleporting the ship back to Malekith).
(Simiple formula is that a Villain is just as important as it's Hero. Malekith's development should help movie audiences see him among a higher tier of greater comic book villains, like Loki, most of the Spider-Man movie villains, and the Dark Knight villains even if the character itself is not generally as well known to begin with, rather than just have him as your generic, cheaply wasted, throw away, villain "just to have a villain" like a missed opportunity with what happened to the cintematic universe of Red Skull or Whiplash.)
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Other Misc:
Less Darcy please; audiences prefer some comedy and especially clever/witty humor, but having a specific character whose purpose is to just serve as the movie's constant running gag is a bit much. Also, the comedy was stacked near the ending took away from said final battle even "Loki's death". This is Thor DARK World after all (Marvel, please don't make Captain America Winter Soldier a comedy as well).
The mid credit scene felt out of place as well, and could've used a smaller build up. Rather than cutting straight to Lady Sif and Volstagg being walked over by a Harley Quinn balerina, maybe start off by showing off shots of the Collector's surroundings first in order to get the audience's visual perception warmed up first that they are in a whole different place, before the queing actual arrival scene (rather than hitting the audience visually with a bus).
What other changes would you have rather seen as well?
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THOR: THE DARK WORLD Reshoots Underway
Running Time: 1 hr 52 minutes
Release Date: 8 November 2013 (USA)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Jaimie Alexander, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Clive Russell, Zachary Levi
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Written by: Don Payne (story), Christopher Yost (screenplay), Christopher Markus (screenplay), Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Stan Lee (comic book), Jack Kirby (comic book), Larry Lieber (comic book)
| "Marvel’s "Thor: The Dark World," in theaters November 8, 2013, continues the big screen adventures of Thor, the Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself. In the aftermath of Marvel’s "Thor" and "Marvel’s The Avengers," Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos...but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all." |