Valhalla: Legend of Thor (2019)

I'm off to see the brand new Thor movie on Friday night, Love & Thunder, the latest entry into the MCU and I've said it before now, but I am pretty into the whole superhero movie stuff, the Marvel stuff really more than the DC stuff, cos it's the Marvel characters I remember more fondly from my childhood reading the comics. So it seems only fitting that to coincide with that, we should cover one of the myriad of other Norse Gods / Thor movies that float around in the ether and all seem to feature suspiciously low budget aesthetics and suspiciously thinly detailed plot synopsis's... I've had the unfortunancy to have already subjected myself to Almighty Thor, a aggressively pungent turd shat out of the arse of The Asylum that is categorically one of the worst movies I've ever covered on the blog, period, and a movie I believe I described as: "a mostly uncomfortable experience for anybody unfortunate enough to be watching." I don't think it can get much worse than that to be honest. And it just so happens that this weeks pick; Valhalla: Legend of Thor is also a foreign language movie, being Danish with English subs, which is not something that crops up very often here on the blog, but I genuinely have some hope that if the Danish are involved here they'll at least do a pretty decent job with this one...

Arriving unannounced at the house of children Tjalfe (Saxo Molthke-Leth) and Roskva (Cecilia Loffredo), Thor (Rolland Moller) and Loki (Dulfi Al-Jabouri) proceed to murder a goat and offer it as food before telling the family the story of how Fenrir the wolf was brought into Valhalla and that should the Giants ever find the wolf, Ragnarok will ensue. As he tells this story Loki convinces Tjalfe to eat the bone marrow from the bone of the goat, despite Thor's explicit instructions not to damage the bones of the meal... and the following morning, when Thor reanimates the goat and discovers it's leg is broken, Tjalfe steps forward as the culprit, with Loki convincing Thor that Tjalfe could serve as their servant in punishment. Ripping a child away from his parents doesn't seem like a very noble thing to do, but fair enough... and with that Thor and Loki travel to Valhalla with Tjalfe in tow, however unbeknownst to the group, Roskva has also snuck on board and is only discovered when they arrive in Asgard and it's too late. Making their way to Valhalla and the Hall of the Gods, Thor is informed that Fenrir has escaped, it's escape aided by a giant and as he argues with Tyr (Jacob Ulrik Lohmann), Frigg (Stine Fischer Christensen) speaks telepathically with Roskva and warns her that her journey has only just begun and that she must be brave. Instructed by Odin (Asbjorn Krogh Nissen) to re-capture Fenrir, Thor and Loki begin their preparations, mostly by getting horrendously drunk, and the children; deciding that perhaps being servants of the Gods is not so great after all, escape during the night, with the assistance of Quark (Reza Forghani), one of Loki's slaves. However they soon discover they aren't able to make it home and instead, wander off into the woods where they stumble upon the giant paw prints of Fenrir the wolf. Deciding that he would rather go back to Thor than settle in the woods for the night, Tjalfe leaves his sister and Quark behind, but whilst he wanders around trying to make his way back, he is ambushed by the Utgaroa-Loki (Uffe Lorentzen), King of the Giants and his pack, who promise to make Tjalfe as strong as the Gods if he joins them travelling back to Utgard, which Tjalfe reluctantly agrees to. Meanwhile as Roskva and Quark's relationship begins to grow, Roskva has a dream that she glows with a white light, but is awoken when a troll tries to get into their cave, only for the pair to be rescued by an irate Thor and Loki. After Roskva explains that Tjalfe left for Valhalla, the trio set off to find him only to run into Tyr and his army searching for Fenrir in the woods. As they talk, Fenrir suddenly appears and attacks the group, however when it approaches Roskva it suddenly becomes subdued before escaping as Thor watches on inquisitively. Taking her to Valhalla, Thor believes Roskva is the Child of Light - the Queen of Yggdrasil reborn as a child god, but is unable to convince Odin of his beliefs. Meanwhile back in Utgard, Utgaroa-Loki uses a potion to subdue Tjalfe where they claim they will wait for his sister to rescue him, them too believing she is the Child of Light... As Roskva sleeps, Frigg visits her in her sleep, adorning her with a cloak and revealing to her the Valhalla is divided and needs the Child of Light to save it before showing her a vision of Tjalfe with the Giant King, and when a raven delivers to Roskva Tjalfe's pendent, her, Thor and Loki, with Quark in tow, set off to Utgard to rescue him. Arriving and immediately commanding an audience with Utgaroa-Loki, they demand that he release Tjalfe, but Utgaroa-Loki reveals he will only release Tjalfie if Thor challenges him to... a drinking content... of all things, however owing to some suspicious witchcraft at play, Thor summarily loses, and then proceeds to lose an arm wrestle to the Queen of the Giants, again owing to some suspicious magic. Demanding that instead somebody fight him one on one, Thor is challenged by Elli (Sanne Salomonsen) who proceeds to use her powers to magically age Thor and as Thor loses his strength and collapses to the ground, Loki shouts for Roskva to run as the rest of the Giants begin to attack. Roskva returns to Valhalla to report that the others have been taken prisoner, but instead finds the rest of the Gods drunken or hungover, and gets no help from Odin who instead casts her out, but not before Frigg uses her power to prevent the others from manhandling her. Deciding instead to pursue other options, Roskva heads out into the woods where she seeks out Fenrir and commandeering it back to Valhalla, the display of her taming Fenrir is enough to convince Odin and the others that she is indeed the Child of Light, and together they join her to save Thor and prevent Ragnarok. Arriving at Utgard, the Gods begin to storm the fortress, attacking the waiting army, but it is only with Fenrir's help that they are able to overcome the forces and gain entry. Storming the main chamber, Odin and Utgaroa-Loki face off as Roskva awakens Thor, literally by believing him in, and as Thor awakes, he is able to overcome the rest of the Giants but Utgora-Loki gets the better of Odin and as Roskva tries her best to awaken Tjalfe, Thor and Utgora-Loki face off with Thor finally able to defeat him and break the spell he holds over Tjalfe. For her actions Roskva is offered a seat at the table of the Gods but declines it, instead wishing to return home with Tjalfe and Quark, with Odin granting her wish, the pair return to Midgard and introduce Quark to their parents as the newest member of the family!

I was initially worried this was going to be a bit boring, or a little bit difficult to follow being a foreign language film, but it was honestly neither of those things and I actually really enjoyed this. I am by no means an expert of Norse mythology, anything but, but I did like the more mature take on Thor and Loki, as older Gods compared to their depiction in other movies, and grizzled veterans rather than younger, naïve versions of themselves. I also really liked that the main focus of this movie was Roskva and it was really refreshing to have a female child lead as the main character for a change. There was a couple of things that I struggled with here, but generally speaking this was a really enjoyable watch.

So let's get the negatives out of the way first: the whole movie, more or less, was shot with a very shallow depth of field lens, that was extremely blurry from outside the centre point onwards. It had to have been intentional, and I assume it was to give the movie a more supernatural, dream like feel but I honestly felt like it subtracted more from the movie than it added and I would have preferred a more sharper, clearer approach. I guess it's down to taste? And secondly, there was occasion's where I struggled to determine who was who, again owing to my almost complete lack of understanding of Norse mythology, and I suppose this is more down to it being a Danish language film and therefore potentially with more familiar characters to it's Danish audience than to this English boy sitting at home... but thankfully, with a bit of help from Wikipedia I'm pretty sure I got everybody's names and roles right in my plot rundown!

Aside from those negatives, there is very little else I can really pick on this movie for. Some of the more negative points may have been lost in translation with regards the script reading, the dialogue e.t.c as I was relying on subtitles, but there wasn't an immediate, obvious lack of talent in that area so far as I could comprehend! I thought the acting was pretty decent all round really with Cecilia Loffredo as Roskva being outstanding. Portraying Roskva as vulnerable, but headstrong and stubborn and striking a perfect balance between the fragility of her character and the powerful entity she would go on to become.

Production-wise as well, everything was spot on. The soundtrack in particular really helped to enhance the visuals of the sprawling forestry regions and further helped to develop the supernatural, heavenly setting of Valhalla. I was getting strong Lord of the Rings vibes from it, and the soundtrack here did as much for this film as it did for Lord of the Rings. Despite the issue I had with the shallow focal depth, cinematography-wise everything was also spot on, with a great use of establishing shots to drive home the sheer size of Fenrir, and paint the scene as the movie jumped from location to location.

One area that I felt was a little bit lacking though, was in the story. The movie starts out as mostly centring around Thor and Loki needing to capture Fenrir and then quickly switches to it being a rescue mission. The pacing is a little bit off and it does feel just a little bit underdeveloped. The situation at Valhalla with the Gods being in disarray isn't quite as fleshed out as I like and instead of focusing on that as you might have been lead to believe going in, it is very much more about following Roskva and her coming-of-age so to speak as her fate develops. I don't think it necessarily damages the film though, or I'd have mentioned it earlier, but I feel you could have tagged on another 10-20 minutes to this movie, and fleshed out some more key areas and it would have only improved it if nothing else.

That is a weak criticism though if I'm being honest, and in actuality I enjoyed this movie and would happily watch it again. It was just shy of 1 hour 40 before the credits hit and it flew by. I feel like there is always a bit of an air of mystique with foreign language movies, and I think you maybe have to be able to appreciate watching a whole movie with subtitles before you can really get into it? But thankfully I can, and so long as you can account for that I think you can enjoy this too. It wasn't completely perfect, and it is essentially a children's movie, but what it set out to do it did really well and there are very little faults to be found here. 4 out of 5.