Jack of Harts

I haven’t seen much for movies lately. Going from a 100 dollar a month healthcare plan before Obamacare to a 750 dollars a month plan and another 400 a month to pay down medical costs it doesn’t cover tends to leave a rather massive hole in a budget. So movies have gone the way of the dodo for me in most cases.

But Marvel and DC are an exception to that. Marvel has made one hit after another that I’ve loved, and I keep on hoping DC will make a movie as fun to watch as Green Lantern. Each of them pulled excellent rating off with Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 and Wonder Woman.

But what of Thor: Ragnorak, and Justice League? Thor has been known as a far more serious series, especially the rather dour Thor 2. And we all know how joyful and colorful Batman v Superman was. So how did they fare? Well. I’ll say this, if you’ve seen the previous for either, you have not seen the movie. Both sets of previews successfully avoid spoiling anything.

Thor’s previews manage this by lying to us. Straight up lying. What you see in the trailers is not what you see in the movies. Sometimes the background is different. Sometimes the foreground is different. Sometimes the people are different. They did an awesome job of showing us the FEEL of the movie without spoiling the reality of the movie. Bravo. And Thor Ragnarok stands tall next to the Guardian of the Galaxy movies. It is seriously that good. It’s fun to watch, and every major character gets at least one crowning moment of awesome to show off.

Justice League manages it by…well…changing the director after the previews were done and reshooting a significant part of the movie to be a bit happier. Seriously. A good half of the previews aren’t in the movie. And Superman smiles. Yeah…I know…spoilers. But if anybody DIDN’T know Superman was going to be in the movie, in some way, if only as a dream sequence, they weren’t paying attention, so I don’t feel guilty there. And the rest of the cast steps up and takes notice too. And you know what? After a decade of watching normal people waking up with gifts and choosing to help granny cross the street, and then find a battle to fight where their particular gifts is good, watching gods among men like Wonder Woman and Aquaman going into battle with true alien supersoldiers was amazing. They aren’t normal people who woke up with gifts one day and decided to help granny cross the road. They are warriors, descendents of warrior cultures, trained by warriors to fight, and they SMILE after getting hit, stand back up, and throw it right back at the bad guys. It was FUN to watch the Justice League fight.

And in that way, I have to say that Thor Ragnorak and Justice League are more alike than they are different. Watching Thor, Loki, Hulk, and Valkyrie wade into battle with smiles on their faces was every bit as much fun as watching the Justice League do the same. They are gods, with a small g, rising to meet a challenge to their world that just needs fighting. Good versus evil. Life versus death. A small group of plucky heroes against an endless armada of helmeted bad guys. Ah. Good times.

Thor Ragnorak is standing towards the top of the Marvel movies list for me. Justice League does the same thing for DC movies. Queue the excited “Yeah!” from Aquaman on that little point.