So, Amber and I went to go see Clash of the Titans yesterday. Unlike Megan McArdle, I don't think I expected the movie to be any good, and so I was able to enjoy it in all its preposterous, disastrous glory: deities outfitted in armor that looked like it was made out of grocery-store one-use pie tins, wooden genies, Io decked out in what looked like designer cruise-wear made of dead Fraggles. I don't know that I've ever seen so many actors slumming so hard and to such dopey effect.
But the thing that made me happiest was the realization shortly into the movie that Le Chiffre, the Bond villain from Casino Royale, was teaching Sam Worthington how to sword-fight. And by Le Chiffre, I mean Mads Mikkelsen, the rather stoic, controlled Danish actor who played him. In Casino Royale, the focus was so intensely on how well Daniel Craig would perform as Bond (the answer, a very English, articulated, quite) that it took a couple of watchings for me to realize how much I liked Mikkelsen in it. And even when folks were paying attention to Mikkelsen's character, they were talking about Le Chiffre, a financier who uses contract terrorism to manipulate the markets, as an appropriate updating of the classic Bond evildoer, something the franchise failed to do effectively when it targeted Rupert Murdoch in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies.
But Mikkelsen was really very good. The extremely restrained man is not a common trope in American movies today. But as a cold-fish stock trader who eventually loses it (but really only to the point of breaking a sweat, there isn't a lot of raging) and as a controlled, talented Greek warrior mourning the death of his daughter, both roles coming in loud, violent movies, Mikkelsen makes the case that we could use more of them. Particularly in an era of testosterone monsters and man-children, there's a lot that's intriguing about a guy with veiled motivations and emotions. It's fascinating to me that Mikkelsen is a huge heartthrob in his home country (apparently his reaction to the fact that he often tops sexist-man polls is "I'd rather be voted 'the sexiest man in Denmark' than 'the ugliest man in Denmark.") That he's getting cast in sinister-dude parts over here says a lot about what American audiences want in a sexy guy--or perhaps a lot about what we can actually deal with.