I went to see Thor yesterday! I really loved it. Among other things, I thought it did a fantastic job of creating established relationships and a sense of history—I really believed Thor and Loki were brothers, that Thor and his friends were lifelong friends, &c. It really felt like people knew each other.
Also, not surprisingly, I fell madly in love with Loki.
I just wanted Thor to give him a big hug and make everything better! And it made me realize something else I love about romance: in a superhero movie, when there’s a person who’s sweet and good, and a person who’s angry and troubled, they’re probably going to end up archnemeses. In a romance, they’ll end up married.
(Speaking of superheroes, you all need to see Kate Beaton’s Lois Lane comics! While I actually really love Clark and Lois as a couple, these made me laugh hysterically.)
Yeah, I’m kinda loving Loki too, and I haven’t even seen the movie. Just judging from the posters, he looks like a heck of a lot more fun than Thor. (Lighten up, Thor! Where’s the funeral?)
And did you follow Beaton’s link to her friend’s proposed Lois Lane YA graphic-novel series? How I wish someone had greenlighted that! I would read it tomorrow. Romance writer I may be, but I always get mushy for heroines whose first passion is their work.
Oh wow, I hadn’t looked at that link! How adorable! And what great art. I LOVED Nancy Drew as a kid–girl sleuths are one of my favorite things ever. And yes, I love a heroine who cares about her work–I’m so tired of the trend in recent romcoms of portraying the heroine’s career as an enemy to her love life.
Don’t judge Thor until you see the movie, though! I would say of the two of them, he’s actually the more uncomplicatedly fun-loving, and it’s pretty adorable. Loki is just exactly my type.
Okay, I was not actually planning to see Thor but maybe now I’ll have to. The 14-y-o has been kind of interested, though she objects to the concept of a superhero who is also a god. (I’m not sure I’m okay with that, either. I’ll have to see how they make it work.)
I don’t think Thor IS a god…I mean, I could be wrong, but my understanding of the movie was that he was a member of a race of superpowerful beings who were worshipped as gods by the Vikings, kind of like the “ancesters of original Battlestar Galactica people were the Egyptian gods because of their technology” thing. Which doesn’t make him all that different from Superman.
Forgot to mention that I love your summary of the difference between superhero movies and romance stories. Synthesis! It’s a good thing!