Minute Forty-Six: From Thor’s Valediction to Coulson’s Appropriation

Joining us to discuss the royal and polite way Thor says goodbye and Coulson’s own polite way of appropriating all of the Scientist Three’s gear is Matt Carroll, one of the two co-hosts of the award-winning MCUCast and founder of the Stranded Panda Podcast Network.

In the forty-sixth minute of Kenneth Branagh’s 2011 film Thor...

• Jane has no idea what to do after Thor kisses her hand. Her flustered behavior is adorable.
• Matt struggles with the fact that Thor falls in love with Jane by the end of the film but it does feel like they pull a lot of the romantic comedy tropes here to make this work. So to that end, if you can’t buy into the rom-com nature and their meet-cute, you may struggle with this relationship.
• But is Thor interested in Jane at this point or just kissing the cute girl’s hand?
• Regardless, Darcy and Erik curtsey and bow, respectively, and it’s adorable. Especially Darcy. Which certainly holds true with her reactions so far in the film.
• Erik’s bow is a bit more awkward and uncomfortable, but it’s as if he feels compelled. It’s great.
• In the background, you can see the paved road turns to dirt, giving away a bit of the old west town in which this was filmed.
• And have you ever noticed the Christmas Every Day shop on Main Street? Wow, does this feel like real small-town America.
• Let’s not forget the Liquor Locker!

The Scientists Three find SHIELD agents raiding her lab.

• Agent Coulson and SHIELD seem a bit more like a threat in this film. That feels new in the MCU.
• Well, there was a bit of that in Iron Man 2.
• But did you know that this was originally scripted to be Nick Fury? They couldn’t get Samuel L. Jackson, though, so it was rewritten as Agent Coulson, which may be why he feels a bit different here.
• Erik clearly has heard of SHIELD though. Where? Will we find out in the future? The rest of the Scientists Three don’t seem to have heard of them.
• This film really sets up this idea of a shadow government organization. Does that work for SHIELD?
• To that end, how hard is it to come up with acronyms for business names?
• Erik may say to Jane to let it go but Jane says no – this is her life’s work up to this point. She’s not ready to let it go.
• Was there a point in Erik’s life when he was less professorial?
• Why does Agent Coulson say they’re investigating a security threat? Is that a lie to create their cover-up? Or do they feel there is a security risk at this point? Why doesn’t he call it out as an 084?
• But what was SHIELD looking for?
• We see some SHIELD agents. There are a lot. A lot more than the Scientists Three. But we can’t really see any faces here. Perhaps it’s an intentional feel where they all blend together as ‘agents.’
• The script says the back of the truck is loaded with Jane’s Dark Matter analysis machine. Was that meant to tie into Malekith’s dark matter dagger in Thor: The Dark World?
• What’s funny about that, though, is that it looks like it’s just loaded with camera gear from the crew. It doesn’t look like scientific equipment from the Scientists Three.

The Scientists Three go from saying goodbye to arguing with SHIELD agents, and we’re here to talk about it all. Tune in!

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