Fantasy Casting : The Warriors Three

Y'know, there's a lot of rumors and speculation swirling about when it comes to the cast of the upcoming Thor movie (update : Natalie Portman is supposedly being considered for Sif, Thor's Asgardian love interest), but so far no news on who might be playing the most important characters in the whole mythos...

The Warriors Three are a trio of Asgardian adventurers, and are awesome.

This is Fandral The Dashing...

And the thing about Fandral The Dashing is that he is so totally Cary Elwes.

This is one of those perfect, obvious casting choices (like Patrick Stewart as Professor X or Corey Haim as Shaft) that most everbody can agree upon. Heck, even Wizard : The Guide To Titties got this one right ten or so years ago.

Except, yeah, that was like ten or so years ago. Don't get me wrong, Elwes still looks pretty darn good for a man his age, but that age may be just a bit too advanced to pull off such a dashing, rogue-ish role today. So, who could fill those thigh-high green boots?


Not sure how good Gerard Butler would look as a blond, so maybe he might not be the spitting image of his comic counterpart, but go watch RocknRolla and tell me he couldn't pull it off.

Next up is Hogun The Grim, the handlebar-mustachioed tough guy of the group.

Hogun needs to exude badassery, the kind of guy who can make you soil yourself whether he's letting loose a savage battle cry as he lunges at you with his big mace, or just staring at you...


Enter Josh Brolin, who pretty much played a modern-day version of the character in No Country for Old Men, and even made George W. Bush seem kind of cool.

Finally, we have Volstagg the Voluminous, The Lion of Asgard!


Volstagg is the burly, hard drinking (maybe just a little past his prime) heart of the team. He's a family man, a legend in his own mind, and just a really big ol' fat dude who's awesome.

Throw a big orange beard on John Goodman and BOOM, Volstagg! Go watch Speed Racer and imagine 'Pops' in a good mood, and we think you'll agree.


Now...who's gonna play Beta Ray Bill?


BTW, Justin's Lost post will probably be postponed till Thursday, cause we work for a living, dammit.

Fantasy Casting the Greatest Comic of All Time, part 1

Ladies and gentlemen, you are in for a treat. Tonight, we're gonna do something that, to the best of our knowledge, has never been done on the internet. Heck, it probably hasn't been done in real life in at least a decade.

Welcome to our fantasy casting of the Youngblood movie.



For the uninitiated, Youngblood is an almost universally reviled comic from the early nineties. It was created, written, and drawn by Rob Liefeld, who, interestingly enough, isn't very good at drawing, writing, or creating things. He's one of those 'Xtreme' artists who were popular at that time; one of (if not the) worst of the lot. The thing about Liefeld is that for a split second when you first see some of his art, it doesn't look that bad...

Then you stop and think : WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT DUDE ON THE RIGHT?! How's his back...why...but...AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Most of the time, however, you just take one look...
...and despair. He got paid real, paper money for those pictures, folks. Anyway, everyone always takes jabs at the guy, but I've heard he's actually pretty nice in real life, so we're gonna take it eas-oh, wait...

The really cool thing about Liefeld though is that he's an inspiration to aspiring artists. If he can get a job in comics...

Anyway, have you heard the good news? Preach, Brett Ratner, Director of X-Men 3 and Rush Hour 3 !

“Most of the great graphic novels are gone, and ‘Youngblood’ is one of the few comicbooks left with tentpole potential,” Ratner told the trade. “It was a real personal passion project for me, and a lot of people wanted (‘Youngblood’), but the amazing thing about the guys at Reliance is the speed with which they’re able to move.”

Wow, that is one impressively huge pile of bullshit.

But we're not about crying foul on this blog, we're about CRYING HAVOK!!! , which means (clearly) that we're gonna give this flick a fair shake. Heck, we're actually pretty damned psyched about it, so psyched we've painstakingly compiled a list of the actors and actresses we believe could do this 'great graphic novel' justice. To achieve this, we actually gritted our teeth all extreme nineties style and read Youngblood #1, insofar as you can 'read' the unreadable. Now there's been many attempts to restart the series over the years (Liefeld recently released the first series in a collected edition, with the selling point that it had been completely rewritten. Seriously, he hired a writer, Joe Casey, to chop up and rearrange the old issues and change all the dialogue so people can actually read it all the way through without sustaining brain damage), but we read the real deal, the one that started it all, and that's the story we'll be casting.

Youngblood is the story of a government sanctioned strikeforce of superpowered assholes. That's the whole plot, so now you're in the know.

The leader of these assholes is Shaft (yes, really), who's power is that he shoots a bow with no strings and has impossible hair.

Wait, did we say impossible? Silly, all things are possible when you invite The Corey's into your life!


Badrock (Originally called Bedrock, until Hanna-Barbara made Liefeld change it because it's name of the town in The Flintstones) is a big grey rock guy, so a quick repaint is in order.
We haven't seen Michael Chiklis in much recently, maybe they can even get him to wear the suit. The role of Badrock, however, is primarily a voice acting gig, since (judging from the one issue we've read) he seems to be some sort of child in a monstrous body...

Vogue is the token hot chick on the team, and she's no man's slave. When the whole team gets summoned to HQ, she purposefully 'makes 'em wait' for five hours before she shows up. Luckily, everybody else is just standing around when she gets there, at which point they get sent to stop some super villains from breaking their teammates out of a prison transport van. Which means the team was called in just to hang around in costume for no apparent reason. Note that they didn't show up for duty at a set time or anything like a fireman or cop, they were all summoned suddenly and had to drop whatever they were doing to go wait at HQ for five hours until an emergency happened to c0me up.

Anyway, on account of Rob Liefeld's particular artistic sensibilities, the only way to accurately portray Vogue onscreen is to digitally graft young Madonna's head onto Dolly Parton's body.

Actually, that sounds ridiculous, but apparently they're doing something very similar with Shwarzeneggar for Terminator 4. That's the rumor, anyway.

Credit where it's due, Diehard is actually a pretty sweet codename. He's also probably the coolest looking character on the team, for what little that's worth. He speaks in english, but his inner thoughts seem to be translated from another language. We're never told what that language is. The only other thing we learn about Diehard is that he's apparently some kind of cyborg or robot. Thus...

And, then there's Chapel, who is a black man.

And that's the core team of...oops, hold your horses, true believer. You probably think that this group of generic-to-unlikeable characters are going to have some room to grow in their first issue, maybe pique the reader's interest. Hell to tha naw, man. Liefeld likes to hedge his bets by throwing as many characters at you as possible. hoping one or the other of them will remind you enough of Wolverine that you'll buy issue 2. That's why after a thirteen pages of really Bad Dudes gritting their teeth at you, you get to flip the book over and read about more Bad Dudes killing Saddam Hussein. That's right, it's political commentary in the mighty Liefeld manner, with all the subtlety and intelligence you would expect. And we're gonna cast the living shit out of it, next time on CRY HAVOK!!!

Read part 2 here!

There's a lot of excitement in the air over here at the Cry Havok!!! 'offices' as we plan for the future and get excited about art again. This means that we've been lending more time than before to actually telling our own stories...but don't worry, we've still made time to cast our judgmental gazes at plenty of other people's hard work as well. Our biggest challenge with this blog has never been thinking of things to write about, but choosing between all the things we want to write about. Because of this we're going to be cutting back a bit on the longer reviews, except for when we feel like a movie or book really merits discussion, or is being overlooked and needs what little publicity we can give it. So our new motto is : less reviews you can find all over the web, more fun, creative content. I'm psyched. Now, here's a really long, serious rant about a DVD we just watched.


We just watched Bill Maher's Religulous, in which he talks to (and tears into) believers from various religious sects around the world. Let me say straight up, yes, this is a one-sided affair. One quick-witted and well-informed professional comedian blindsiding a bunch of nervous folks on camera. Is this fair? Put it this way : I've been indoctrinated to believe in Jesus and the christian god since birth.

Don't get me wrong, my parents were half-assed christians at best, I wasn't wearing hair shirts or setting witches alight or anything. But bible stories were presented as fact, and not eventually revealed as myths like Santa and the tooth fairy were. Using the lord's name in vain would get you sent to the Principal's office, and god got a shout out right there in the pledge of allegiance. I didn't have Jeebus shoved down my throat every second like some kids did, but I was never exposed to any other options, either. God was never presented as anything but real and good, you heard the movie stars and athletes thank him on tv, now stop asking questions and open your presents.

Religulous is undeniably a pro-atheist documentary, religious figures invited to share their views just so Maher can pick their every statement apart. Which is perfectly fine, because at any time, day or night I can turn on my tv and find christians freely expressing their beliefs, and allowing no opposing viewpoints whatsoever. Religulous is a lone piece of atheist propaganda in a sea of religious propaganda so thick I sometimes feel like I'm going to choke on it, and damn, it's nice to hear these points coming out of someone's mouth besides my own.

Ok, that implies that I'm the sole voice of reason in a world of religious zealots, when in fact about half of my friends are non-religious. But only Justin feels as strong about it as I do, and he's a lot more mellow than I am, so it's me who regularly gets in long, loooonnnggg heated debates with the other half. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you, I love to argue. I'll debate you until the cows come home, then I'll start some shit with 'em. But if my partner/opponent refuses to make any real points or keeps playing the 'that's your opinion' card (aka the 'Imma take my ball and go home' card), I can let it go. Problem is, religious people refuse to admit that they're arguing an opinion. They are RIGHT, praise Jeebus, and no amount of logic or reason is gonna sway them, because they have 'faith'. My lack of 'faith', of course, in no way disproves theirs, because for some reason god has seen fit to imbue them with the light of knowledge and leave me out in the cold, but I should pray to him anyway. And every. single. argument. I've had with a christian has eventually ended with them all flustered and defensive, repeating 'because I have faith' over and over. 'I just know'. The entire christian faith seems to devolve into meaningless under any kind of scrutiny, and they simply refuse to think about it.

"I have faith."

"I just know."

"God works in mysterious ways."

"Just 'cause."

If you're christian, devout or half-assed, I challenge you to watch Religulous. I've read your bible, I've attended your sermons, I've heard your stories, as an impressionable child and again as a young man. Atheism is the conclusion I've come to after years of living in an overwhelmingly christian country, in the fucking south. Christians are notorious for knee-jerk condemnations and rejection of anything that questions the divinity of their savior, and if they're so sure of their superiority, why the defensiveness? I propose that it's because their faith is built on willful ignorance and a need to fit in, and will crumble under the slightest pressure if they stop for just one second, open their minds, and THINK.


Damn, I didn't mean to go off on a long rant here. The truth is, I'm pretty tolerant of people's beliefs, I'm willing to keep my mouth shut if it'll help a person get through the day easier. But it infuriates me that I live in a society where I'd almost certainly get my ass chewed out for saying anything anti-christian in a public place, but I have to hear grown men calling each other 'fag' and referring to anything bad or undesirable as 'gay' all the damn time, and I'm overly sensitive if I say something about it. I passed a sign out front of a church near my house a hundred times last year...'homosexuality is a sin'. I heard that after several months somebody finally snuck up and rearranged the letters to read 'homosexuality is in', which is hilarious, but it was instantly taken down and I never got to see it for myself. If I were to put a sign on my own, private lawn that said 'christianity is a sham', it wouldn't last a day, and I'd be lucky if my car and house didn't get vandalized.

One really good point Religulous makes is that non-religious people make up quite a large minority in the US. There are more people in this country willing to admit that they don't believe in god than there are African-Americans. How many more on-the-fencers might be open-minded enough to call themselves atheists if they heard the arguments for and against christianity and gave it some real thought? Where's our support groups and parades? I want a special month each year where kids in school get to learn about how many other religions there are, how they are equally or more valid than christianity, how they have a choice to believe whatever feels right to them. I want an atheist in the white house.

Sound unrealistic? Sure. For the next decade or two. But we've got a black president, and that was unrealistic a decade or two ago. And by the way...

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

- Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).

"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."

-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

-John Adams, U.S. President, Founding Father of the United States


Faith means not wanting to know what is true. - Friedrich Nietzsche

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. - Stephen Roberts

What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you. - Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. - Chapman Cohen

If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth? - Ryan Hanson

All quotes found on these two pages.

Tomorrow: Get ready for more Shaft than you can handle.

We watched Oliver Stone's W. last night, and it was good but a little underwhelming. This being a political biopic (and my political knowledge being rudimentary at best), I really expected to come out of this movie with a greater understanding of what's been going on these last eight years. Strangely, though, there's really not much here that I didn't already know. Still, I find it intimidating to write about these events, not knowing for sure how accurately they were portrayed in the film, so I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet.

The performances are mostly quite good, even though Josh Brolin is significantly more handsome and well, capable looking than Dubya could ever hope to be. As Justin pointed out during a scene where the college-age Bush gets up and starts dancing on the bar with his then-girlfriend..."This looks way cooler when Josh Brolin does it than it would if the real George Bush was doing it". It's actually believable that the man portrayed by Brolin could inspire enough confidence in the public to be elected president, whereas in reality Bush's election, and re-election, simply boggles my mind.

The one annoyingly bad performance is Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. She goes waaay over the top into Scary/Date/Epic/Disaster Movie-like parody with her portrayal, especially the voice. I actually looked up video of the real Condy speaking to make sure I wasn't being too harsh, and no, she definitely doesn't sound like a circus freak on meth. Also, Dick Cheney doesn't really sound a lot like Heath Ledger's Joker persona, but that was actually kind of an appropriate stylistic choice on Richard Dreyfuss' part.

Anyway, W. is an interesting and enjoyable take on George W. Bush's journey from drunken fratboy (and cheerleader, which I'd have liked to see onscreen) to a completely out of his depth president. Just don't expect it to blow your mind or anything.

We're most likely going to go see Push tonight, so look for our thoughts on that soon.

Tokyo Gore Police.

We've been looking forward to this one for quite a while, even though we knew there was no way it could live up to the trailer. We finally got to see Machine Girl, which was made by a lot of the same people (the main makeup effects guy, Yoshihiro Nishimura, directed Gore Police), and awesome as it was, we said to each other 'Tokyo Gore Police will blow this away'.

But we didn't believe it, deep down. That trailer?



Nothing could live up to that trailer. Surely, all the good stuff was spoiled already. How could they top the woman with a crocodile for a vagina? Well, we're not gonna tell you how, but they do. God, do they. You need to see this.

Don't get us wrong...Tokyo Gore Police isn't an especially smart or thought provoking film. If you want a crazy Asian (crazsian) film that'll expand your mind, try Oldboy or Izo. But if you're in the mood to watch a man shoot grenades out of his huge elephant-trunk of a penis, well, here you go. Gore Police is Japan's answer to the entire Troma catalogue, without (most of) the lame gross-out comedy. Take all the scenes of people vomiting green stuff and fighting with dildos out of your average Troma movie, replace them with satiric commercials (Ala Starship Troopers and Robocop) for razors aimed at self-mutilating teens, then raise the bar on special effects, acting, and well, everything else, and you're halfway to the awesomeness of Tokyo Gore Police.

The story is set in a Judge Dredd-like future where the police force has been privatized and genetically enhanced mutants wreck havok. These mutants are called 'engineers', and any injury they sustain becomes a weapon...cut off a hand, a chainsaw grows out of the stump. A mysterious figure called Keyman inserts a key-shaped tumor (which he got from The Devil) into some part of a person's body, and that's how engineers are created. Then they start killing folks and tortured supercop Ruko chops them up into smaller and smaller pieces until she happens to destroy the tumor, and that's how engineers are uncreated. There are, of course, several twists and revelations throughout the course of the story, but the narrative's actually pretty clear, as far as crazsian movies go. Nobody flips out and becomes the embodiment of an emotion or starts backflipping through time or anything, which is a nice change of pace.


Yeah, we sound like this is the first crazsian movie we've seen, like schoolchildren giddy over seeing a hooker get cut in half for the first time. Trust us, the truly ridiculous amount of arterial spray, the brain-skewering weirdness of the mutants, and most of all the sheer creativity at work here sets this one well apart from it's peers. The music is well done, there's very little cgi (mostly just one character near the end), and each scene is more insane than the last. C'mon, can you say no to this smile?


Return to Oz

We also finally watched Return to Oz the other day. I special ordered this dvd over a year ago, and I've been really excited for it...well, the whole time. I have a tendency to put off watching things I'm really excited about until the 'perfect time' that never actually comes, which is why I haven't seen the movie adaptation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog even though I love the short story, I've owned the movie forever, and all my friends (including Justin) have seen it. Anyway.

This is one of those weird little 'children's' movies that are really quite creepy and awesome...one we happen to have missed as kids, unfortunately. Like night-vision goggles, however, Return to Oz only gets better with age. It's sort of a sequel to the original movie, but adapted more directly from the series of books than The Wizard of Oz was, giving us a much younger Dorothy and a darker Oz. The Scarecrow, Tin Man and co. don't show up until the end (and are virtually unrecognizable from the older movie versions), replaced by a whole new cast of misfits, including freakishly tall nightmare fuel Jack Pumpkinhead (who you could almost swear was being played by Doug Jones of Abe Sapien and Pan's Labyrinth fame if you didn't know better), clockwork knight Mr. Tik Tok, and crime against nature The Gump, who is a pile of furniture and a mounted moose's head brought to unholy life through black magic. The Gump kind of awkwardly flies around for a while, desperately trying to keep his cool as his 'body' literally falls apart...kind of a more passive-aggressive Eeyore, if Eeyore was a zombie headed pile of garbage. Also, Toto shows up in the 'real world', but Dorothy's animal companion this time around is a sassy chicken named Billina.


Dorothy was Fairuza Balk's first role, and she looks 25% less creepy than we're used to seeing her. Alas, she also doesn't have any boobies, so it kind of evens out. Anyway, Dorothy isn't smart enough to shut up about her adventures in Oz, so Auntie Em pawns her off on the nearest loony bin so she can get the proper care (100,000,000 volts right through the brains). With the help of a mysterious little girl, Dorothy manages to escape during the chaos of a lightning storm, but ends up clinging to a piece of debris as a wild river whisks her away. Naturally, she wakes up in Oz, but not the Oz she remembers. The emerald city is in ruins, the yellow brick road destroyed, her friends turned to stone. Not a munchkin in sight. The city is being ruled over by the scariest evil queen ever, Mombi, who has a pretty sweet hall of interchangeable heads, so that's creepy.

Mombi is served by a legion of creatures called the Wheelers, which we couldn't find any good pictures of. When you first see the Wheelers they'll freak you out. They have wheels instead of hands or feet, and their arms are freakishly elongated so they can glide around on all fours while standing almost straight up. They are wearing masks at first, but then they take them off and kind of ruin it by just having over-acting dudes underneath. Then you realize that the dudes are kind of a bizarre mix of Pee-Wee Herman and Ace Ventura, and they get creepy again.

Mombi and her rollerblading rape-squad serve a greater force, however: The Nome King, who's more awesome than creepy, in that he's a crazy old rock man who cross-dresses on the downlow. If you haven't seen this movie, you must check it out if only to see the 'secret weapon' this guy used to bring Oz to it's knees...

The new characters are pretty obviously replacements for the earlier ones (albeit with the Wizard/Nome King switching sides), which is a little odd but also cool, kind of an 'Ultimate Oz' thing. One thing that we noticed is the characters are mostly pretty happy with themselves, as opposed to the originals who were defined by the virtues and um, body parts they were missing (heart, courage, and brain). Tik Tok expresses his satisfaction at being 'lifeless' several times, and Jack is looking for a mother figure, but never seems to blame himself for not having one handy. The Gump seems like he'd just as soon go back to being dead, but he never really laments the abject horror of his situation out loud. He does claim to be a lot happier as just a head after his body falls to pieces. Actually, all of Dorothy's friends are dead or inanimate when she finds them this time around. Man, we gotta read those books. Anyway, Return to Oz wasn't quite as dark and grim as we'd imagined from the hype, but it's certainly pretty effed up for a kid's movie, and thoroughly entertaining.

We also watched Chocolate, the new Thai martial arts film from the director of Ong-Bak and The Protector. It's about a young autistic girl who learns how to fight by watching...Ong-Bak and The Protector. It's pretty good, though it lacks a lot of the energy Tony Jaa brings to the action. Worth a look if you're hurting for some spin-kicks in your life.

Been out socializing in the real world yesterday and today, and we're tired, so this is just a quick update to keep things fresh round these parts. Most of the blogs on our links list have been passing this meme around...not sure who to credit with starting it, but just check out the links to see more. Apparently at the end of Final Crisis Superman has to supersing a supersong into some sort of machine to defeat Darkseid. To reiterate, Superman has to defeat this guy...


with just the power of his groove. And what song he actually sings is left up to the reader's imagination. That's kind of pointless, though, since we all know only one song could bear the pure sassy power to bring down the ultimate playa :

Yeah. So, we went to see Taken tonight, which was quite good. There's not really a whole lot to say about it, since you're getting exactly what you see on the commercial. It gets right to the action, which is brutal and efficient...Liam Neeson's character in this could give Daniel Craig/Bond a run for his money when it comes to wince-inducing acts of sudden violence. There's no surprises here, except maybe the lengths that our 'hero' will go to for his daughter...the kid gloves are off, filled with broken glass, and nailed to a baseball bat in this movie. But, yeah, no real twists, no sobering 'downer' ending, just a smart and satisfying action flick, the best we've seen since Shooter. In moderation, this is not a bad thing.

Ok, more tomorrow, including the review I teased in my last post. Drive safely.

Hulk vs Wolverine and Thor

We finally watched this and it does not disappoint. Both of the segments are between 35 and 45 minutes, but they feel longer. We were expecting a couple of simple brawl-fests, but there's actually a lot more to them than that, including more fan pampering cameos than you could hope for. Both stories were written by Christopher Yost and Craig Kyle, the former writing team for the New X-Men comics, so we knew they were in good hands. And like their run on that book, Hulk Vs gets violent, sometimes shockingly so, especially in the Wolverine segment.

Logan is called in to hunt down The Hulk after the destruction of a small town in Canada. We think Wolverine is still working for Department H at this point, like he was in the comics, though it's possible he's just on loan from the X-Men. After a short slugfest, both Hulk and Logan are hit with tranquilizer darts by a squad of Weapon X soldiers. This cartoon plays loose and fast with the comic book mythology (Alcohol actually gets Logan drunk), so they pretty much put Logan's main villains all together as the Weapon X team whether they ever really were part of it or not. This works fine for us, since it allows Sabretooth, Omega Red, Lady Deathstrike, and DEADPOOL!!! to all guest star together. The 'Pool is less of the fourth-wall breaking manic nutcase he is in comics these days, and more of the smartass mercenary he was in his early appearances, but he does get a couple of good lines. ( Professor Thornton : "We've put a lot of time and effort into you, Logan." Deadpool : "And pointy things!")

The professor wants to brainwash The Hulk and Wolverine into weapons of war, cause that's kind of his whole 'thing', y'know. It's weird, actually, Thornton appears to the only non-combatant in the entire facility. Besides the X-Mercs and about a dozen guards for Logan to slice through, the whole place seems deserted. Maybe Logan killed all the other scientists the first time they brainwashed him into a war machine? We actually see him get a pretty good start on that in a flashback. The flashback also uses the iconic image of Logan getting pumped full of adamantium and sprouting random metal spikes all over his body, which is cool looking even if it doesn't make any sense. Hey, that should've happened to Deathstrike at the end of X2. That would've been sweet.The Hulk is more of a plot point in this segment than a full-fledged co-star. Logan of course gets free, and the next several minutes are him fighting the Weapon X guys and freeing a drugged up Bruce Banner. More clawing, then Bruce finally shakes off the groggies enough to hulk out and wrecks everybody's shit. The End.

Hulk Vs Wolverine loses points for not being named Wolverine Vs Sabretooth, Omega Red, Lady Deathstrike and DEADPOOL!!! (guest-starring The Incredible Hulk!), but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. The animation's a mixed bag...it's energetic and smooth, but some of the faces are really weird looking, and Logan's physique is just wonky. The voice work and sound were fine but nothing to write blog about (phrase: coined). It definitely earns it's PG-13 rating with some blood(which promptly disappears along with the wounds when the healing factors kick in) and a surprising amount of dismemberments, including a graphic but strangely bloodless one for the 'Pool. So watch it, but maybe not with small children. Or do watch it with them. Or let them watch it while you're out selling drugs all day and they have to fend for themselves. Shit's on your head, not ours.

Hulk vs Thor is more appropriate for the kiddies, unless you're some sort of religious zealot that rails against the existance of any belief systems besides yours (even the pretty much defunct ones), in which case you really need to chill your ass out. We cool? All right.

We're not quite as familiar with Thor lore as we are with Wolverine storytell-ine, so we're not sure if the set up for this one is comic-accurate or not. Odin, king of the gods, keeps it real all year long, but he has to stop for a nap each winter. During this time Asgard is vulnerable, so all the frost giants and trolls hurry right over to get their asses handed to them by Thor and company, year after year. This year, though, Thor's eeeevilllll step-brother Loki has a new trick up his sleeve. He magically extracts Bruce Banner from The Hulk and takes control of Ol' Jade Jaws himself, which leads to some really disturbing scenes of the Hulk smilling eeevilllyyyy and talking like a Bond villain. Holki makes unfortunately short work of this segment's awesome guest stars, The Warriors Three, who are in character but get shafted on screen time. Also, Volstagg's voice felt off.

The Hulk faceoff is more of the focus here (even if he is being remote controlled by Loki a lot of the time), and it's well done. Thor's hammer makes a metallic 'CLANG' when it hits Hulk's flesh, which sounds really painful while also demonstrating that the Hulk's tough as hell. The only letdown here was the music, which is typical cartoon fight music. I had to supply Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song with my own mouth, which I think Justin really appreciated, even if he did think it was supposed to be the Rocky theme.
This next paragraph is pretty spoilery, so skip it if you care.

In a fairly awesome plot twist, Loki gets frustrated and kills the crap out of Bruce Banner. But then his hold on The Hulk gets broken and the 'embodiment of rage' beats Thor almost to death and turns his attention to Asgard and Odin himself, which is apparently further than Loki intended to go. This leads to the two step-brothers teaming up (in the loosest sense of the term) to retrieve Banner's soul from Hel, where we guess Asgardians go after death if they're not badass enough to make it into Valhalla. In a Buffy Season 6-like twist, Banner's actually finally at peace in the afterlife, and doesn't want to come back to his Hulk-haunted life again. We won't ruin the ending for you, but considering that either A. Bruce makes the sacrifice and gets the Hulk under control, or B. Mindless Hulk kills everyone and destroys Asgard, you can probably figure it out.

Hulk vs Thor was a fun romp that could have been better with more of The Warriors Three and an epic guitar riff that busts out everytime Thor summons lightening with his hammer and the power of heavy metal.

We do love Thor, but for certified X-Manchildren like us the Wolverine segment was more exciting. Your favorite of the two films will likely be decided the same way, since both are quite entertaining and well worth a watch.

Now here's some more pics of Thor being Totally Metal!!!