Thor: Ragnarok
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No even Heimdall can see it now for it is beyond even his prodigious sight.
Speaking of; I'm very happy they used Idris Elba well in this film; I'm praying for a spin off
Hykal94
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In Norse mythos, Heimdall was described as the "whitest of the gods".
Which makes the casting of Idris Elba as *chef kiss* beautiful.
I mean, basically every reviewer has mentioned the colonialism/imperialism theme, and Waitit employed a shit load of Maori/Aboriginal people on the cast and crew, and has Valkyrie (played by a black American woman) strut into battle in front of a crashed spaceship decked out in the flag of aboriginal people while fireworks go off in the background:
I mean, what do you want at this point, a video of Waititi (holding today's newspaper) looking into the camera and saying "Thor: Ragnarok is about the evils of imperialism and colonialism"? Moreover, death of the author is a thing. Even if (and IMO this is a huge if) Waititi didn't intend for the film to be dunking on colonialism/imperialism, plenty of people have read the film that way using fairly reasonable textual evidence. That's how film (or really any art) analysis and criticism works; we're talking about it and you're thinking about it, and that counts as a win.
Lets assume that you are right and the director deliberately inserted his political bias Into The Narrative of this movie. Do you think that that was called for? All the people who just wanted to see a Marvel movie about a space god with a hammer, now have to sit through two and a half hours of anti-western propaganda. at what point does it cross the line from telling the story to conveying a political message?
Eh, it was kind of dumb for the first two films as they had the black guy as the doorman. But the first two films also sucked so it's par for the course
Hykal94
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And what's wrong with political messages?
Like you realise Taika Watiti's dad is Māori and his mom is of Russian Jewish heritage right? The fact that a man of his ethnicity was able to direct such a high budget movie and insert anti-colonialist messages is an amazing thing and frankly more should do it.
There are legitimate complaints about Ragnarok but this is not one of them.
See it's comments like that, it's damn near impossible for Hollywood to make a movie that appeases everyone, no matter what they do someone will find fault with it somehow. The characterization of heimdal as the guardian of the bifrost is set in mythology, they chose to make the character black to appease the social justice Warriors, who apparently aren't happy because dear lord he's The door Man.
Never mind that the actor who portrays him is awesome, and that the character itself is awesome, all those people will see is the fact that heimdal is the doorman
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Yes. Why not?
Who would see criticism of colonialism as "anti-western propaganda" aside from far-right ideologues?
I prefer my comic based science fiction escapism to be science fiction escapism, not Maori propaganda. I have nothing against this director, but I could care less what his politics are. You would be bitching at me if I directed this movie and put a whole bunch of pro-life anti-abortion message into it because that's what I felt like. If you are going to praise this director for inserting his own political beliefs into the movie, then you need to maintain ideological consistency and do the same if I chose to put my beliefs into the movie against your personal views
The character did jack shit in the first two films. He wasn't awesome and was a total waste of Elba.
If he got to be badass it would have be great, same as how everyone loves him in this film.
cB557
voOOP
You'd have as strong a reaction to "Maori are cool" as we'd have to anti-abortion stuff?
Actually, this movie invented a history of conquest just so that they could create this Persona. And they don't blame the current inhabitants of Asgard because they killed everyone involved in any of its past misdeeds and then nuked the whole place.
It's a bit more than just conveying a message when you had to invent the entire back story and paint Odin as a villain.
If you want to argue that a legacy of war is bad, choose a movie that has a legacy of Conquest rather than taking an existing universe and altering its backstory to create a legacy of War to condemn.
In the previous two movies there wasn't even a hint of any of this, none of the inhabitents of the nine Realms believed that Odin had ever gone on a war of conquest and conquered anyone let alone them. In the first two movies the only time we ever see Asgard go to war was defensively to defend the nine Realms from outside attack.
Inventing a backstory where Odin is some evil conqueror who built Asgard on a mountain of blood and spoil ignores all of the characterization up to this point, completely ignores the fact that Odin himself didn't build Asgard but rather it was his father.
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They made a backstory for a kingdom in their film! The horror, the horror. They should have never written anything that was not explicitly stated in the comics, nor ever changed anything to make for an interesting story!
And the point of Hela is that locking her away instead of dealing with your past is what fucked Asgard, not any sins of the populace.
Hykal94
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Maori propaganda? Dude, a single reference to lives of Native Australians/Kiwis is not propaganda.
I don't know if you realise, but Norse mythos has a lot conquest and murdering.
Zap Rowsdower
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As did, y'know, actual vikings from whom the myths originate.
If you want to argue that Odin should have just killed her instead of locking her up, then I guess the real world parallel would be Great Britain should just have nuked New Zealand off the face of the Earth so that they never came back and tried to undermine them politically with stupid movies.
Well obviously, that's stupid. Nobody would draw that parallel.
All I'm really saying is that the director should not have been so hard up for a vehicle to convey his message that he had to hijack a science fiction fantasy movie Then try to convey..... what exactly? He's hard feelings about the history of his own country? His desire to thumb his nose at the British? Why take the asgardians who in Legend and myth are Guardians of humanity and good guys , and turn them into bad guys... just to convey a political message?
Why destroy an entire generation's view of Norse mythology just to convey that you're pissed off at the history of your own country?
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Jace911
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yeah wow it's really weird how "colonialism and nationalism is bad" is a controversial opinion for certain people who are also huge fans of pop culture Norse mythology
I wonder what the connection is???
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Good for you. Unfortunately you saying this puts you at cross purposes with basically the entirety of the science fiction genre for all of it's history.
I'm not attacking this one director specifically, I'm annoyed at the idea of any director trying to force his politics down your throat because he was given control of a movie. If I want politics, I'll watch CNN, I go to the movies to get away from this s*** not to have it force-fed down my throat and watch characters that I like be altered in post-production to create what the director's vision of colonialism is
Hykal94
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By that logic, you would also hate most WW2 games because a lot of WW2 games are pretty anti-Nazi, pro-America, pro-Britain, pro-Russian, etc.
Like you just sound angry that Watiti dared to put anti-colonialist sentiments in his film. If it was literally any other thing you wouldn't be angry.
The take of "should face and deal with the legacy of colonialism" is "nuke New Zealand" is a new one King Leopold.
Again, this was a million times less political than the later Captain America films. Or arguably Iron Man 3. Definitely less than The Dark Knight. Or Iron Man 1. It was also of the "controversial political opinion" level of "the power of friendship."
yeah wow it's really weird how "colonialism and nationalism is bad" is a controversial opinion for certain people who are also huge fans of pop culture Norse mythology
I wonder what the connection is???
It might shock you to discover that most people in the west don't give a s*** about colonialism because it has never personally affected them Negatively. Most people generally don't like it when they are preached to by self-righteous people trying to beat them over the head with an ideology they don't care about.
cB557
voOOP
That's probably something worth changing, though.