Axel Braun is perhaps a bigger comic book geek than Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon combined. Sure, the high-rollers have billions of dollars to bandy about on their comic book properties, and they can most certainly afford better special effects, slicker photography, and ostensibly better actors, but it’s Braun – with his now-extensive string of superhero porn parodies – who has more accurately captured the mood and the spirit of comic books. Despite how true-to-the-page something like The Avengers or Thor: The Dark World may claim to be on the surface, Thor XXX actually bothers to cut deep, producing spot-on costume reproductions, gleefully involving obscure characters only the biggest fans know about, and often referring to actual recorded comic book backstory, rather than inventing an ever-so-slightly altered version of it. So Thor XXX is going to be a more faithful adaptation of the Thor comic books. Only there’s more fucking.
In addition, Sif fellates Heimdall (Dick Chibbles), Iron Man makes a cameo appearance, and there are even a few special effects sequences (although they are admittedly low-rent). If lengthy sex scenes aren’t your speed, and you feel they interrupt the flow of your comic book curiosity, the DVD and Blu-ray of Thor XXX comes with a 16-minute sex-free version which condenses all of this story.
The recent wave of comic book inspired feature films have – for better or for worse – taken a rather sacred approach to their source material. They tweak story elements, alter origins, and update costumes, but for the most part, the cinematic superhero boom has excelled in taking their overblown comic book characters – yes even Thor – somewhat seriously. Axel Braun has been taking a much more thrilling approach, in that he is making glorified and enthusiastic fan fiction.
The makers of porn parodies are, in many ways, much freer to work with source material than big studios. Big studios have to ask questions like “How can we make Thor work on the big screen?” They have to establish what a Thor is, how a Thor operates, and what a Thor’s motivations are. The makers of a porn parody, in contrast, can safely assume the viewer will already know the source material being parodied: Axel Braun can take for granted that you’ll know already Thor’s backstory. He can dispense with the formal and staid establishment of character, and go for the jugular. And then he can run with it, establishing a way-fun what-if scenario, involving the Thor story he may have always wanted to see. And, just to make it more fun, has the characters boink on camera.
And, especially with a goofy-ass character like Thor, this is perhaps the more appropriate. I found Kenneth Branagh’s Thor to be merely passable, lending an undue sense of comic book self-importance to proceedings that would have been stronger if they had more openly embraced their own ridiculousness. Axel Braun, however, didn’t need to worry about tying into the corporate monolith. He could let his imagination run free.
His imagination just happens to be delightfully dirty.
Compared to the few other superhero porn parodies I have seen (and yes, this is a genre with its own cottage industry), Thor XXX is one of the stronger. She-Hulk XXX was sloppy and off-putting, and Man of Steel XXX was just downright depressing. Thor XXX is jaunty and strangely solid. It can’t compare to Batman XXX, which is perhaps the jewel in the genre’s crown, but it’s certainly a fun aside for Thor fans. I’d personally rather see more of this than Marvel’s attempts to make a Thor 3.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
