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And now I've just gotten home and I'm still going "What the fuck did I just watch?!"
I mean, to be positive - visually, it definitely has its moments, and there were some fine castings - Røskva really looks like a Røskva, Roland Møller is an okay Thor, Dulfi Al-Jabouri would have worked better as Loke for me if they hadn't had him in an Aragorn getup and made him even more of an asshole than in the comics and animated movie combined, but that's hardly the actor's fault. Quark - maybe should not have been played by an adult. Some of the effects worked fairly well - the goatly resurrection was nice and creepy and understated - others... not so much. (The Jotuns looked like a bunch of LARP'ers who really needed a bath or ten.)
As for the rest...
The story opens the way both comics and animated movie did - with Thor and Loke visiting the farm and Tjalfe and Røskva ending up going home with them as Thor's new slaves. And mostly, this movie follows the same plot that the animated movie also chose, except with some seriously remix bits.
For reasons best known to himself, Fenar Ahmad looked at Valhalla - a canon that did something remarkable, by taking something as dark and frankly horrible as Norse myth and succeeded in turning it light and fluffy while keeping the dark bits. Fenar Ahmad looked at Valhalla and went "Needs to be made dark and gritty".
You don't need to make a Valhalla movie darker and grittier!!! If you want dark and gritty, don't make a movie out of the one canon that turned Norse myth light.
Instead, everybody's more of an asshole than in the original Valhalla. Everything's literally darker and filthier. Oh, and the funnier characters, like tiny, fat Heimdall, is remarkably absent here. (They also replaced the cat with a mystical arm-wrestling Jotun queen, which I'm not sure I can quite forgive).
But that's not the worst. Oh no. Somewhere along the plot, you start to realize that they've showed in a whole extra plot involving Røskva being the chosen one, the mystical Child of Light, long-lost Queen of Yggdrasil, destined to return to save Valhalla from Ragnarok. And don't get me wrong, I adore Røskva from Valhalla, Hell, I've written fanfic about Røskva from Valhalla - but this?
The last 1/2 hour of the movie - basically after Thor has his dance - the entire plot veers off into - how to put it.
I don't use the word lightly, but they turned Røskva into a Mary Sue.
I don't know how else to describe watching her leading a fucking commando raid of gods astride her magically tamed Fenrir to save Thor, Loki, Quark and Tjalfe from the super-evil Udgårdsloke. I just...
What the fuck did I just watch???!!!
I mean, to be positive - visually, it definitely has its moments, and there were some fine castings - Røskva really looks like a Røskva, Roland Møller is an okay Thor, Dulfi Al-Jabouri would have worked better as Loke for me if they hadn't had him in an Aragorn getup and made him even more of an asshole than in the comics and animated movie combined, but that's hardly the actor's fault. Quark - maybe should not have been played by an adult. Some of the effects worked fairly well - the goatly resurrection was nice and creepy and understated - others... not so much. (The Jotuns looked like a bunch of LARP'ers who really needed a bath or ten.)
As for the rest...
The story opens the way both comics and animated movie did - with Thor and Loke visiting the farm and Tjalfe and Røskva ending up going home with them as Thor's new slaves. And mostly, this movie follows the same plot that the animated movie also chose, except with some seriously remix bits.
For reasons best known to himself, Fenar Ahmad looked at Valhalla - a canon that did something remarkable, by taking something as dark and frankly horrible as Norse myth and succeeded in turning it light and fluffy while keeping the dark bits. Fenar Ahmad looked at Valhalla and went "Needs to be made dark and gritty".
You don't need to make a Valhalla movie darker and grittier!!! If you want dark and gritty, don't make a movie out of the one canon that turned Norse myth light.
Instead, everybody's more of an asshole than in the original Valhalla. Everything's literally darker and filthier. Oh, and the funnier characters, like tiny, fat Heimdall, is remarkably absent here. (They also replaced the cat with a mystical arm-wrestling Jotun queen, which I'm not sure I can quite forgive).
But that's not the worst. Oh no. Somewhere along the plot, you start to realize that they've showed in a whole extra plot involving Røskva being the chosen one, the mystical Child of Light, long-lost Queen of Yggdrasil, destined to return to save Valhalla from Ragnarok. And don't get me wrong, I adore Røskva from Valhalla, Hell, I've written fanfic about Røskva from Valhalla - but this?
The last 1/2 hour of the movie - basically after Thor has his dance - the entire plot veers off into - how to put it.
I don't use the word lightly, but they turned Røskva into a Mary Sue.
I don't know how else to describe watching her leading a fucking commando raid of gods astride her magically tamed Fenrir to save Thor, Loki, Quark and Tjalfe from the super-evil Udgårdsloke. I just...
What the fuck did I just watch???!!!