It was time someone took the piss out of the MCU. Just as well Marvel decided to do it for themselves. The result is a hoot.
Finding gainful employment for the universe’s dumbest superhero is no joke, but in a welter of visual and verbal gags the studio celebrates his stupidity. I was laughing from the outset and I didn’t stop and from the mad recaps to the giant goats, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) treating his weapons as if they had the power to upset him, his ignorance of the devastation he wreaks, and non-PC references to orgies and the size of his manhood, the inevitable Marvel save-the-world plot takes second place to humor.
Asgard has been turned into a tourist attraction, terrible actors perform sagas in tacky productions to entertain visitors, until Gorr (Christian Bale) the god-killer, having been allocated in normal mysterious fashion and in Excalibur-style the Necrosword, comes calling, kidnapping children, packing them off to the Shadow Realm as a means of luring Thor. Fortunately, lost love Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), unfortunately dying of cancer, reappears in his life, though, on the debit side, she steals his hammer, causing him to turn to his axe. There’s hammer hocus-pocus, the usual lengthy daft exposition, but that’s offset by Thor, sensitive soul that he is, feeling he has to woo the discarded axe.
Also recruited are Asgard king Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and stone-man Korg. First port of call, naturally, is Omnipotence City where all the top gods hang out, including Zeus (Russell Crowe), the top god of all. Unwilling to help them out when there are delectable maidens hanging on his every word and orgies to enjoy, Zeus foolishly picks a fight and loses his lightning bolt.
But that’s enough of the madcap fun. Now it gets serious in the usual annoying way, redemption and its alter-ego sacrifice required at every turn, as you try to keep up with the new ideas suddenly introduced, the Bifrost and Eternity, and have to remind yourself of the rules regarding the axe and sword and the various pitfalls awaiting the characters. But the first half has given the movie sufficient energy to woosh you through the second half.
I’m not sure of The Avengers recruitment policy and how Thor ever fitted in and it’s just as well his cohorts in this adventure, part of the way at least, are the equally demented Guardians of the Galaxy phalanx led by the vain and vainglorious Star Lord (Chris Pratt). I always felt the rest of the MCU mob, albeit they occasionally deliver a good quip or two, were just too serious a bunch, what with all the saving-the-universe-and-beyond malarkey whereas Thor and Star Lord are blood brothers, daft specimens, useless at romance and anything serious, good for nothing except a good scrap.
There are a whole bunch of stand-out comic scenes – Thor looking to Star Lord of all people for advice on matters of the heart, the goats leading the space craft crash-landing into a planet. Admittedly, excepting the serious bits at the end, this is far more light-hearted than anything else in the MCU and thankfully sticking to the one universe rather than the multi-universe departures of late.
Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Ragnarok, 2017) as usual is superb, just the right bombast and imbecility coupled with vulnerability and sweetness, his clipped delivery at odds with his befuddlement, his eve-of-battle speeches would have Churchill turning in his grave. But Russell Crowe (Unhinged, 2020), with his mangled Greek accent, matches him in the dumb stakes. Natalie Portman (Lucy in the Sky, 2019) makes a welcome return and Tessa Thompson (Passing, 2021) proves a good side-kick to both. Christian Bale (Ford vs. Ferrari, 2019) bring his malevolent A-game as a memorable villain. Watch out for cameos from Matt Damon (The Last Duel, 2021), Melissa McCarthy (Superintelligence, 2020), Luke Hemsworth (Death of Me, 2020) and Sam Neill (Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022).
Director Taika Waitiki (Thor: Ragnarok , who also voices Korg, does a quite brilliant job of combining action and comedy. He also takes credit for the screenplay along with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Unpregnant, 2020).
Alfred Hitchcock had a different picture – in fact, several movies – in mind as the follow-up to Psycho (1960), the biggest hit of his career. In pole position was Marnie to star Grace Kelly (“she voluntarily offered to do the picture after reading the story”), the woman he had made a star, in a sensational return to the screen after her marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Her participation would bring her around $1 million. He worked on a script during 1961 but Kelly’s schedule meant the film would have to be postponed to 1963-1964 at the earliest.
A close second came No Bail for a Judge to star Audrey Hepburn. When those projects failed to get off the ground in the gap between Psycho and The Birds (1963), Hitchcock also considered reuniting with James Stewart (Vertigo, 1958) for Blind Man. The original idea came from a visit by the writer to Disneyland where he had an idea for a blind man given an eye transplant who subsequently remembers things he could not have witnessed. This was then transposed to an ocean liner, with Ernest Lehman signing on for script duties in December 1960. For almost a year he worked on a movie called Frenzy, no relation except for serial killing, to the later picture. But there was also Trap for a Solitary Man, Cold War thriller Village of Stars and The Mind Thing.
When Hitchcock finally settled on The Birds, based on a short story published in Good Housekeeping magazine in 1952 and reprinted in a Hitchcock anthology in 1959, he first turned to Scottish author James Kennaway (Tunes of Glory, 1960). That collaboration lasted until Kennaway decided the only way the movie would work would be if the birds were never seen. He considered Wendell Mayes (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) and Ray Bradbury (The Picasso Summer, 1969) before in August 1961 turning to Evan Hunter (Last Summer, 1969). Wearing his Ed McBain (Fuzz, 1972) hat, Hunter was a crime aficionado so it was no surprise he suggested adding a murder to the mix.
But Hitchcock’s first act was to shift the location from Cornwall to Bodega Bay, sixty miles away from San Francisco. While the screenplay was being worked upon, an extensive proce3ss that would include last-minute changes once filming had begun, Hitchcock considered a potential female star.
He screen-tested Pamela Tiffin (One, Two, Three, 1961) and examined footage featuring Yvette Mimieux (The Time Machine, 1960), Carol Lynley (Return to Peyton Place, 1961) and Sandra Dee (Tammy Tell Me True, 1961). He also considered two actresses he already had under contract Joanna Moore (Walk on the Wild Side, 1962) and Claire Griswold (Experiment in Terror, 1962).
Both the women already under contract had proved disappointing. Of Moore, John Russell Taylor wrote: “no one could have been less cooperative in the required making-over process, she did not like the clothes, she did not like the hair styles and she did not seem to like anyone she came into contact with at the studio.” Griswold, more compliant, “seemed to have little professional ambition and was quite content with what she was, Mrs Sydney Pollack.”
But then he spotted model Tippi Hedren in a television commercial. She was signed up to a seven-year $26,000-a-year ($254,000 at current prices) contract before she even met Hitchcock, one of the director’s modus operandi to ensure fees did not increase when his name was mentioned. Although actors, once successful, tended to complain they were hired at unfair salaries, this was in fact a pretty good amount for an untrained actress who would automatically become a star by the very fact of being in a Hitchcock picture. Of course, Hitchcock hoped to profit by keeping her salary low for any future movie. But it was still a gamble; if her career fizzled out, as did occur, he would lose out.
However, given his reputation for treating actors as cattle and expecting them to know what to do with little direction, he went to extreme pains to ensure Hedren was prepared for the role. He encouraged her to sit in on script conferences, meetings with set designers, and other essential collaborations like the director pf photography and the music supervisor and went into considerable detail about her motivation and how the film would move from periods of intensity to relaxation. Nobody ever received a more complete education in the Hitchcock method.
Hitchcock admitted he would have preferred to cast more experienced stars with guaranteed box office marquee such as Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn but the long shooting schedule and the time required for trick photography would render them too expensive.
For this picture, Hitchcock switched studios from Paramount to Universal. At $3.3 million, very little going to the stars, this was his most expensive movie date especially in comparison to the $800,000 of Psycho. After a tortuous screenplay process, Hitchcock also sought input from others like famed short story writer V.S. Pritchett whose several notable suggestions the director accepted, much to the ire of Evan Hunter. According to Taylor, Hitchcock found himself “nervy and oppressed” possible due to the film’s Day of Judgement elements, and abandoned his normal shooting routine.
He was famous for shooting the picture he already had in his head. Instead, here “he started studying the scenario all over again while shooting it…(and) began to do something he never normally did – improvising on set.” He went deeper into characterizations – making the viewpoint far more subjective than initially conceived, in particular “keeping the audience much closer to the Tippi Hedren character”
At the last minute he dropped several pages of dialogue and the original Hunter ending. He edited out a love scene between Hedren and Taylor and detailed a script for the sound, specifying what kind he wanted for every scene. While Bernard Herrmann was involved, it wasn’t in the usual sense, and instead they worked out musical scenario of “evocative sound and silence” which was created by Remi Gassman and Oskar Sala who specialized in electronic music.
It was by far the most complicated shoot Hitchcock had ever attempted. The birds were a mixture of trained birds, dummies and optical illusions. When the gull attacked Hedren as the boat docks that was a dummy on a wire pulley, the blood a pellet implanted on her clothes. But as filming intensified, the blood seen on the screen was real blood. Anchovies and ground meat were spread on the actors’ hands at attract the gulls.
But when it came time to shoot the scene in the attic Hedren was not warned the birds would be real. Hitchcock believed terror would be better expressed by an untrained actress if it was real. While propmen wore thick leather gloves to protect their skin, the actress was permitted no such luxury. When the birds avoided Hedren, the propmen simply picked them up and threw them at the actress. Filming took a week, by the end of which, after getting her eye clawed, Hedren broke down in tears. It would be impossible for a director to take such liberties today although young, impressionistic actors tend to fall prey to such actions.
The proposed ending was jettisoned in favor of a lengthy shot of Hedren and co-star Rod Taylor driving through a bird-infested landscape that the director called the “single most difficult shot I’ve ever done.”
Hitchcock got into trouble with the authorities over unauthorized use of birds. His permit allowed for the use of 20 dead and 30 live birds but an investigation by the U.S. Wildlife and fisheries found 40 dead gulls and 54 live ones as well as 60 songbirds for which no license had been given. He was fined $400. The movie was of course a boon for exhibitors planning promotional stunts. A thousand pigeons were released in a shopping center in Albany, carrier pigeons carried a message from Los Angeles to Memphis, birds trainers were in full flight, 200 exotic birds were displayed in the lobby of the Stanton in Baltimore, while the director attracted notoriety by making birds singular rather than plural when the tagline became “The Birds Is Here!
Much has been written of Hedren’s reactions to the birds, but it’s worth having a look at Roar (1981), a famous disaster of a picture, which she and husband Noel Marshall financed, where she appeared to be quite happy to be bitten and clawed by lions, a lot less tame than was suggested. The mauling was so bad Hedren required 50 stitches, required plastic surgery and nearly lost an eye. In one unscripted scene that ended up in the picture a lion grabbed her hair and would not let go. Most of the lion attacks resulted in injury to someone, actors and crew, including cinematographer Jan de Bont who required 120 stitches to sew his torn scalp back in place. By such standards, her treatment by Hitchcock was relatively tame.
SOURCES: Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, A Life in Darkness and Light (Regan Books, 2003), p608-629; John Russell Taylor, Hitch, The Authorised Biography (Faber and Faber, 1978) p262-270; Brian Hannan, Darkness Visible, Alfred Hitchcock’s Greatest Film (Baroliant, 2013); “Princess Grace’s Take Per Hitchy Estimate,” Box Office, April 4, 1962, p2; “Fine Hitchcock $400,” Box Office, April 18, 1962, p17; “Pigeons Blaze a Trail,” Box Office, April 8, 1963, pB3; “Pigeons for Birds,” Box Office, May 6, 1963, pB3; “The Birds Is Here,” Box Office, May 13, 1963, pA1; “Bad Girls Bird House,” Box Office, May 27, 1963, pA3.
Truth never stopped producer Joe Levine. Not finding in the film the requisite image to encapsulate the struggle of Nevada Smith he just invented one. The iconic poster of Steve McQueen with rifle over his shoulders did not appear in the movie. Yes, in the early part of the picture Nevada Smith trekked through the wasteland. But that was minus any weapon, unless you count the broken pistol he had found under a wrecked wagon. Naturally enough, if he did have a rifle at that point, presumably Levine surmised, that’s exactly how he would have carried it.
Levine was an unusual character even by Hollywood standards. He was pretty much the first to invent the metaverse, the extended world within which a main character revolved, having sourced Nevada Smith from the Harold Robbins bestseller The Carpetbaggers which he had turned into a blockbusting film in 1964, and by dint of picking up the story of Nevada Smith at an earlier age than in the movie created a “prologue,” better known these days as a prequel or an origin story. Better still, it was two pictures for the price of one book.
Of course, it wasn’t Levine’s idea to make a prequel, or at least that’s how the publicists spun it. “It doesn’t happen very often,” begins the Pressbook, “but it happens, a character in a motion picture intrigues the fancy of fans to such an extent that they write the producer and beg more of him. Instead of wanting to know more about this fascinating character, the public wrote in asking how this intriguing character got that way.”
Levine took quite a different approach to marketing a movie than other producers. He tended to concentrate on one central image, creating a single core advertisement rather than, as other studios did, churning out a host of different adverts to meet the various perceived needs of exhibitors. And he also liked to fix subsidiary characters in the audience’s mind by providing nuggets of information about their personalities in the poster.
Assuming McQueen was such a big star, exhibitors didn’t need any more juicy nuggets, so the first two editorial pages of the Pressbook concentrate on everything but McQueen. And given that the star’s production company, Solar, was involved in the making, it seems McQueen was exactly of the same opinion. The biggest plug went to Henry Hathaway (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965), “one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors,” credited with inventing the action picture three decades before with Lives of the Bengal Lancers. But “action was never permitted to get in the way of the story which, Hathaway always insisted, was of prime interest.”
Five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy, rather than the second-billed Oscar-winner Karl Malden, came next in the promotion stakes. Kennedy epitomized the importance of a stage training for actors, borne out by the fact that, except for McQueen, all the main players received their training in the theatre. Brian Keith, however, addressed the downside of being in a long-running play. “It means you’re tied down,” he complained, “nothing to do every afternoon, can’t go anywhere or do anything, you have to keep yourself fresh for the evening.”
The Pressbook was surprisingly short on the kind of journalistic snippets that an exhibitor might feed to a local newspaper. That Suzanne Pleshette had a pathological terror of snakes, that Pat Hingle had nearly died after falling down an elevator shaft, and that Hathaway had given Karl Malden his big break were the closest the Pressbook came to anything that might interest a newspaperman.
The iconic image of McQueen shouldering the rifle was mostly used on its own in teaser adverts. For the main advert, that was placed centrally above a montage of scenes from the picture and at the foot came the one-liners about the other characters. Tom Fitch (Karl Malden) was described as “he treated Nevada like a kid – then spent a lifetime regretting it” (not true as it happens). Jonas Cord (Brian Keith) – “he taught Nevada how to kill – then got out of the way.” Bowdre (Arthur Kennedy) – “the bravest man in the world with a gun – and a coward when he faces one” (not true either). Pilar (Suzanne Pleshette) – “she found Nevada in jail and he loved his way out.”
While the main advert, outside of the teasers, was the only advert, there were more taglines. And quite wordy at that. “Some call him savage – and some called him saint…some felt his hate – and one found his love…some had to run – and three had to die…and there never was another like Nevada Smith.” (Incidentally, he had two lovers, not one.) A second tagline ran: “From the California gold fields to the Louisiana bayous, he drank and killed and loved and never forgot, how to hate!” There was a third, briefer, tagline – “Now a name…soon a legend” and that sometimes prefixed the other taglines.
In terms of tie-ins, there was little. Possibly The Carpetbaggers had already done the work for Levine. The novel had been the biggest-selling fiction since the turn of the decade, around six million copies printed, so it was the ultimate “pre-sell” with a movie tie-in edition, front and back covers bearing testament to Nevada Smith. Pocket Books was one of the biggest publishers in the country and there were over 20,000 outlets for paperbacks including book stores, drug stores, and newsstands. Window banners, rack cards, counter displays and dump displays meant pedestrians would be passing an artillery of promotion every day.
There’s a saying where I come from – “a big boy did it and ran away” – and that seems to be the approach here, Col Parker (Tom Hanks) to blame for all the ills of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler).
Exhilarating when it goes jukebox, capturing Elvis’s electrifying stage presence, anything but when we are subjected to Tom Hanks’ worst accent this side of The Ladykillers (2004). Essentially a tale of two spendthrifts, or “lost boys” as Col Parker persuasively puts it, who each wasted a vast fortune on gambling, drugs, women, cars, airplanes and hangers-on. Baz Luhrman’s flash-bang-wallop style only serves to hide the lack at the heart of the story, none of the self-awareness that lifted Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). The idea of telling the tale from the point-of-view of Col Parker is a movie suicide note.
The early section is best, recounting a troubled upbringing, alcoholic mother and jailbird father, and the birth of the star’s style, absorbing blues and soul and church music in his home town, his unheard-of (discounting Frank Sinatra and the bobby soxers and Bill Haley and the Comets, natch) impact on audiences. But except for political references the 1960s is skipped by so that we can come more quickly to the late decade stylistic reinvention of television and Vegas. Too much – Pricilla (Olivia De Jonge), the pill-popping, the women – exists on the periphery as if that was the cost of doing a deal with the devil, dig too deep into the murk and you will be denied access to the music.
Quite how a creepy soft-spoken manager straight out of Stephen King ever managed to talk the Presley family into anything is a mystery. Col Parker must surely have had more charm than Tom Hanks can ever muster. I get that Parker was increasingly out of kilter with the changing music scene, but his deal-making (which is all an act ever requires from a manager) was phenomenal, he played studios off against each other to keep Elvis on top in Hollywood, he set the tone salary-wise for Vegas gigs, and he invented the satellite concert.
I’m going a little off-piste here but I remember being shocked to discover, as I’m sure rock gods were too, that record labels charged the artists for everything. Those plush limousines that met you at the airport, the suites in fancy hotels, the cost of recording the album, every indulgence, every entitlement came off the top before a group received a red cent in royalties. There are umpteen cases of stars being stiffed by management, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Mike Oldfield who signed contracts that handed over the largest part of their earnings, or closer to home Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, George Michael who all raged at the machine.
By comparison, Elvis had a pretty good deal. Even at 50 per cent of everything he earned, he racked up a colossal amount, half a million a year at least from just two months of performing in Vegas, $1.5 million a year from his decade of making movies, not to mention singles and albums that sold by the gazillion. All told he took in the lifetime equivalent these days of at least half a billion and if he died with only a few million in the bank you can’t blame Parker for Elvis squandering it. If he had taken a bigger share, all that would have happened is he would spent more. It would hardly have saved him from twin dependence on two drugs – the need to play before a live audience and the pills he popped to make up for the times he spent not getting a high from his fans.
Although I’m a big fan of box office, I’m not usually one for box office prediction but I’d be surprised if this even reaches $100 million Stateside, and not just because it needs to pull in the resistant older audience but because I don’t think word-of-mouth, as opposed to CinemaScore ratings, will be as strong as it needs to be. Any recommendation will come with the kind of reservation that I have, wrong director, wrong perspective, too much wrong.
I kept on expecting more dramatic meat but it never came. Sure Elvis was shocked at the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King but who wasn’t. It would be interesting to find out who chose the songs Elvis recorded because, for me, “In the Ghetto” marked the reversal of his fortunes, a piece that touched on a nation’s hidden agony, and not “Suspicious Minds,” great tune that it is. Outside of the opening section, the most absorbing parts were those that concentrated on creativity, how the famed television special was put together, Elvis himself conjuring up arrangements for his Vegas show.
On the plus side, I never noticed the time. The movie just about raced by and every time it looked like flagging there was another live performance to keep us hooked. I’d never heard of Austin Butler though he had a small part in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) but this is definitely a calling card. Tom Hanks, under a slab of prosthetics, may want to forget this performance and it’s shame because I’ve not seen him act since A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (2019) due to streamer-snapping. Olivia De Jonge (Josie and Jack, 2019) isn’t in it enough but has a wonderful scene when they first meet, her intonation marvelous.
As well as directing, Baz Luhrman (The Great Gatsby, 2013) had a hand in the screenplay along with Sam Bromell, making his movie debut, and Luhrman regular Craig Pearce.
