Thor: The Dark World, Part 2: Female characters & representation.

Previously: Part 1, Heroes & Villains.

I was extremely careful not to read any spoilers before I saw this movie, which is just as well because it's VERY spoilery. The one thing I did see beforehand was part of a review that said Jane's role was mostly to "faint on cue", which made me rather apprehensive. There's probably going to be a lot of debate over this among fans, but I personally thought the depiction of women in Thor: TDW was very good. If Jane had been the only female character, I wouldn't have been pleased by the fact that she fainted a lot, but there are four women in this movie (one more than in The Avengers, which had a far larger ensemble cast), and each of them has an important role in their own right. On the simplest level, this is how representation works: the more women you have in your movie, the more leeway you have to let one of them be "weak" -- whatever that means.
Jane's characterisation is very solid thanks to the first movie, and I appreciate the number of publicity interviews Natalie Portman has done where she talks about strength of character vs. the concept of "strong female characters". Sif is a warrior. Frigga is an witch and a diplomat and a mother, who can fight if she has to. Jane is brave and curious and smart, but she's not a fighter. Darcy is independent and fun and "normal". All four of those characters are "emotional", but not in a way that's coded to make them seem hysterical/weepy/stupid, which is often how some people interpret "emotional" female characters. A female character who faints a lot sets off alarm bells because we associate it with swooning damsels in distress, but a female character who has no weaknesses is a more insidious problem. I suppose they probably could've done better than Jane being Maguffinised for half the movie, but I think it worked in the context of her being the mortal girlfriend of a near-indestructable alien, which I can only assume will be the primary conflict in the Thor/Jane romance storyline in any potential sequels.

Regarding Frigga, I am SO GLAD she got a more significant role, a role that really solidifies Asgard as a patriarchal society. A patriarchal society where leadership is determined by genetics, hence Odin's desire for Thor to start looking for a ~suitable~ wife rather than the sub-standard "goat", Jane. (Thank god there wasn't a real Jane/Thor/Sif love triangle, by the way. I LOVE SIF, and a love triangle would've been a complete fiasco.) I could've done with more Frigga/Loki scenes, but overall I thought she was a really satisfying depiction of a classic "woman behind the throne" character: someone who gains power within traditional femininity, whereas Sif is the warrior who fights to be part of the boys' club. Also, Frigga's death was a rare example of a mother/wife character being killed off, but not "fridged".
We were discussing this in the most recent episode of the Fandomspotting radio show/podcast, and everyone agreed that while we don't actually want Frigga to be dead, her death scene (and subsequent funeral) was satisfying, and definitely not an example of the "fridged female character" trope. Her funeral was one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie, and Thor and Loki's reactions to her death were engaging and complex. The difference between your average "MY WIFE IS DEAD!!" action movie and Thor: TDW is that with Thor and Loki, their reactions take into account their own personalities and relationship with Frigga, and her death wasn't immediately sidelined: it was brought into the foreground with this epic, Lord of the Rings-esque funeral. It was similar to Coulson's role in The Avengers, where a character's death is used as a catalyst to bring the heroes together against a common goal, but that dead character is developed beforehand rather than being two-dimensional or exploitative.
It's not a huge shock for a Marvel movie to be overwhelmingly white, even though Thor took a couple of baby-steps forward by casting Idris Elba as Heimdall. Still, I felt that this movie was actually a lot whiter than the first one, which is something that I don't even always pick up on unless it's pretty obvious. The thing that put me on edge in the first place was the absence of Hogun. He's introduced early on, but aside from his scene on Vanaheim he's basically benched for the rest of the movie. I originally assumed this was due to one of two reasons: either the actor was only available to film limited scenes (ie, only on the Vanaheim set), or he filmed more Vaneheim scenes that were cut from the final edit. Unfortunately, the director has recently stated that Hogun was written out for basically no good reason, which I find very disappointing.
The plan was apparently give each of the Warriors Three some "individual" moments, and for one to travel to his home world to thematically mirror Thor's decision to move to Earth at the end of the movie. But I guess they chose the Japanese guy to be an outsider who comes from a world that looks like a Mongolain grassland, because... of reasons...? This just does not come across as a good choice at all. I'm not sure if he actually gets much less screentime than, for example, Fandral. But Hogun's role in this movie functionally removes him from the central action, and characterises him as an outsider while Fandral and Volstagg hang out with Thor and Sif in Asgard. I can sort of understand wanting to bench one of the Warriors Three on another planet because there are too many characters in the story, or because they wanted to introduce one of the other Nine Realms. But since both Volstagg and Fandral are comic relief characters, and Hogun is one of the few non-white people in the movie, it was a bad decision to leave Hogun behind.

The eventual result is that of the three significant people of colour in Thor: TDW, Idris Elba gets an awesome role while Hogun vanishes offscreen and Christopher Ecclestone's elf husband puts on a mask on and turns into a giant beast-monster for the last two thirds of the movie. Collectively, this doesn't look great -- particularly when coupled with the addition of two extra white dude characters in the form of Richard (Jane's date, who I really enjoyed), and Ian the Intern. I don't have anything against Ian as a character, but his main purpose was to provide Darcy with someone to talk to, making him a perfect example of when casting just defaults to a generic-looking white man for no good reason. This kind of thing is particularly frustrating because in an ensemble movie like this, it shouldn't be hard to cast a more diverse range of side-characters, even when you're carrying over a predominantly white cast from the first movie. It came across as lazy writing and casting, and soured my opinion of a movie that I otherwise loved and found very entertaining.
Out of all the Marvel movies, Thor and Thor: TWD are the best at illustrating complex emotional themes and depicting interesting, human characters outside of the central superhero/love-interest duo. So it's all the more noticeable when they fail at racial diversity. Right now, my goal for Thor 3 is for it to be an Asgard/Nine Realms buddy movie, where Jane and Darcy get to come to Asgard. Thor, Hogun, Sif and Fandral go on adventures, while Volstagg stays home to cook and take care of the kids. Loki is partially redeemed, culminating in a Thor/Loki hug where at least one of them cries, and there's a subtle undercurrent of Sif/Loki romantic subtext throughout the movie. Also, someone makes an STD joke about Fandral, preferably Hogun. Ian disappears without trace. Perfect.

To be continued in Part 3...

Thor: The Dark World, Part 1: Heroes and Villains.

SPOILER WARNING: There are spoilers for Thor: The Dark World throughout this post!

I recommend watching this movie back-to-back with Thor, as it really emphasises the way the two stories shift from personal character journey to sweeping epic. I watch A LOT of superhero movies, but this was probably the best graduation from origin story to sequel that I've seen so far. Thor is purposefully the reverse of your typical superhero character arc because instead of struggling with superpowers and learning how to become a hero, he's learning how to be a fallible human and not have superpowers. Even the obligatory daddy issues are far more interesting than usual, because Odin is an actual character rather than a long-dead ghost or an avatar of lofty paternal expectations.
Thor's unusually well-drawn characterisation means that there's a solid base on which to make The Dark World a sci-fi/fantasy epic with an ensemble cast, instead of just another superhero movie where the central character hits Bad Guys until they give up. I was also pleasantly surprised by how complex it was -- not that I'm suggesting it's a particularly deep and meaningful cinematic work, but more that it was one of the most unpredictable (and rewatchable) superhero movies I've seen so far. If you look at the Thor-Loki arc over the course of their three movies together, Thor is about Loki running rings around everyone because they're all straight-shooting warrior types. The Avengers is about Loki finally meeting his match, in the form of Black Widow (intellectually) and the Avengers themselves (because Friendship and Teamwork triumph over Evil, obviously). Finally we reach Thor: TDW, in which Thor has learned from his mistakes and manages to fool Loki himself.
I don't need to tell you what a gift Loki is as a character, but he's also a solid argument against the concept of disposable villains. The only comparable relationship is Charles Xavier and Magneto, but you don't really see them change to accommodate one another (partly thanks to the current chronology of the X-Men series), whereas you really see Thor getting smarter and more canny over the course of his three appearances so far. Not that he's smart enough, of course. Loki's triple bluff is a thing of beauty. But I loved the way the movie briefly turned into a heist story halfway through, with Thor and the Warriors Three orchestrating their elaborate escape plan.

Unless you've got Lex Luthor in your movie, villains are always the weak spot of the superhero genre. Villains, and the inevitable final battle sequence. (I'm looking at you, Iron Man, Captain America, every Spider-Man movie, and the final 14 hours of Man of Steel.) Luckily, this series has Loki, one of the most satisfying antagonists in recent blockbuster history. Any additional villains are basically window dressing by comparison, which is just as well because the clunkiest aspect of TDW was definitely Malekith, the Aether, and their attendant exposition scenes. Poor Christopher Eccleston. I don't have any particular problem with MacGuffins in general (after all, the entirety of Lord of the Rings is founded on a MacGuffin), but I suspect this movie may have suffered from cutting out some excess Malekith scenes along the way. He just wasn't very engaging. But even though Malekith was little more than a force for mindless destruction, that whole problem was obliterated by the presence of Loki and Odin.
In Thor, Odin was a pretty terrible father, but in a way that wasn't explicitly pointed out to the audience. Fans on Tumblr are definitely aware that Odin is a dick ("One day... one of you will be King, my sons." The Hunger Games of parenting!) but I'm reasonably sure that most average viewers just wrote him off as Anthony-Hopkins-as-Zeus. So I'm very happy that this time round, it was obvious that he's not a good guy at all, and not necessarily even a good king. Thor has matured beyond him, and thus Odin has become a kind of benevolent antagonist. In this context, having Malekith as a kind of ticking time-bomb in the background actually simplified the film and brought the interesting stuff (ie, Loki) into the foreground.

I'm quite surprised by this film's mixed reviews, because I felt that Malekith and the Aether was really its only major weakness. Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of the negative reviews seem to be thanks to superhero fatigue, which is fair enough because your average professional film critic is not as excited about Marvel movies as I am. However, not only did this movie mostly abandon the typical superhero formula, but it included something that's usually deemed far too complicated for the genre: multiple characters with conflicting yet believable motivations. Usually the most you can hope for is an ~ambiguous villain~ like Magneto, or Batman struggling with the moral dilemmas of vigilante justice. I find it baffling that last year's mediocre Spider-Man reboot received more positive reviews, when it followed the superhero formula to the letter, and was riddled with plot holes.
Another reason why rewatching Thor beforehand was so rewarding is that you get to see Loki's transformation in full. Thor's character development is, obviously, excellent, helped along by Chris Hemsworth being unfeasibly likeable in the role. But with Loki, the changes are beautifully drastic. In Thor, Tom Hiddleston is playful, childish, and overly emotional. He's an angry emo teenager who tries to burn down the school because nobody understands him. But since The Avengers, Loki has transformed into an exhausted, crazy-eyed murderer with papery skin. He's gone from being a doe-eyed sylph to a frazzle-haired angstbucket with a penchant for stabbing. It's beautiful. And, of course, he's an absolute scene-stealer. Ambiguous villainhood is all well and good, but Loki is endlessly entertaining because he's so goddamn hard to predict. You really do get the feeling that he's living from moment to moment, rather than following a carefully itemised Evil Overlord plan like most supervillains. I just wanna high-five Tom Hiddleston and the writers all the way through, both for creating such a fun character, and for developing such an interesting interpretation of Norse mythology.
By the end of the movie, it's equally easy to believe that as king, Loki could lead Asgard to ruin or restore it to its greatest triumphs. If they go the mythological route then the only way this can end is with Loki's destruction. But from a personal perspective, I think most of us want to see him if not actually redeemed, then at least appearing in Marvel movies ad infinitum.

Continued in Part 2:  Female characters and representation.