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Necron2.0
05-15-2011, 07:43 PM
For those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, but plan to, avert your eyes now.



I saw Thor over the weekend. As I was watching it, certain things struck me as oddly similar between the Asgardians, their enemies, and the 40K universe. Mostly it revolves around technology and the notion of what technology is. In the trailers there are scenes of Thor explaining to Natalie Portman that magic and technology are one and the same thing where he comes from. Well, to some degree that's how the humans in 40K see technology, only in their case it's a matter of faith and ritual - it's spiritual magic instead of arcane magic. In the movie, there are two scenes were items of great power are either stolen or "lost." In both cases, the loss of the item is irreparable. But in both cases, they're just items of technology. Someone in the past had to have built them. The fact that they couldn't simply replace them suggests that maybe both the Asgardians and their enemies have devolved to some degree - that their collective empires are both living in a dark age, just like in the 40K universe.

Comments?

Brass Scorpion
05-15-2011, 09:29 PM
Sorry to disappoint, but those are not new ideas. They were not new ideas when 40K was first published in 1987. And Thor is not a new comic character, he's now much older than most of his fans. Finally, Marvel "borrowed" much of their Thor background from actual Norse mythology, just as GW, D&D before other fantasy games, and every one of them in between "borrows" its ideas from literature from around the world. Asgard, Bifrost, Heimdall, Mjolnir ("crusher" in old Norse), virtually everything Marvel is doing was created long, long ago by ancient Norse peoples. Nearly everything GW uses for Space Wolves comes from the same mythology including Fenris, the name of the wolf that swallows Odin and the moon at Ragnarok (jaws of the world wolf anyone?). My suggestion, read a lot more, especially books on folklore and mythology and retract this topic thread because it's sort of a non-topic.

Read the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda for starters for a really good dose of Norse mythology. You'll also find where Tolkien got a lot of his ideas for LotR and The Hobbit, including the names of virtually every dwarf in the story as well as Gandalf, which roughly means "sorcerer elf" in old Norse.

By the way, the name "Treebeard" comes from the Orkneyinga, the saga of the Norsemen in the Orkney Islands.

As for the quote that "technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic", that was said by famed and prescient SF author Arthur C. Clarke back in 1962.

Comic book movies can be fun, but most definitely "reading is fundamental".

Necron2.0
05-16-2011, 12:13 AM
Hmm. I think you didn't understand me. Of course the concept of a technological dark age is not new, it's actually something like 2000 years old. We call them the dark ages for a reason, and that's exactly why I used the phrase "dark age" in my original post. Also, I'm completely familiar with the concept of magic and technology being indistinguishable at some point, and with Arthur C. Clark's famous quote. As for Thor, the comic book hero, he was first introduced in 1962, which makes him only slightly older than me, but definitely not before my time. Also, lets not muddy the waters with actual mythology, because it has no place here. Thor of the comic book is not at all the Thor of mythology; neither is Asgard or the rest of it.

What I was getting at is this - in 40K, humanity is in an obvious dark age. It is a high technology society populated by barbarians at worst, and Eloi (ala Time Machine) at best. Nobody in the society actually understands the technology that is the basis of the society, not even the Adeptus Mechanicus, not really. This is something obvious in 40K.

However, it is less obvious in the movie Thor, yet none the less the same (in my opinion). In Asgard, we are presented with a gleaming city of shimmering crystal and gold. One would think the Asgardians are at the height of their power, fully in control of their technology and steeped in wisdom, and yet they refer to pieces of their own technology as relics. They lock some away in hidden vaults out of fear of them. They speak to some as though they were sentient beings. Most importantly, it seems they cannot replace what they have lost, instead relying on lesser being (such as man) to fix what has been broken.

That is what I was getting at. From the movie (not necessarily the comic book and certainly not the myths) the Asgardians and their enemies both seem to be the descendants of a once advanced race. Like humans in 40k, it appears they have lost all understand of the technology on which their entire society is based. Yes, they can use it, but then again any child can push an on button.

Drew da Destroya
05-16-2011, 07:46 AM
I actually thought of the Dark Eldar's arcane technology when I heard that line in the movie. Still fits with your theme, in that it's another society in decline, using advanced technology they no longer understand.

It's also another example of an extremely advanced race preferring melee combat by default. They apparently could quite literally use the Bifrost Bridge to crack open their enemy's planet, but they prefer to go in swinging instead. I suppose further showing their declining knowledge of technology, though, they only have one Mjolnir, which is apparently the most OP weapon ever devised.

Seriously, if Mjolnir were in 40k, it'd be a Str D Thunderhammer that strikes at I 10, can be thrown 12" in the shooting phase, and grants the user an additional attack for every enemy model in CC.

bfmusashi
05-16-2011, 09:33 AM
1. How can you put Thor and 40k together and not think of the Deathwatch Vs. Beta Ray Bill?
2. How come google image search does not have a picture of this?
3. More on track, Asgardian tech being both science and magic is a statement of its innate character while in the Ad Mech the magic is used to obfuscate ignorance. When I was younger I thought it was a sarcastic barb at people who used machines without knowing how they work.

Necron2.0
05-16-2011, 10:38 AM
3. More on track, Asgardian tech being both science and magic is a statement of its innate character ....

Is it? Remember it is Thor who explains that where he comes from technology and magic are one and the same. Is that not just him saying he does not know how it works?

DarkLink
05-16-2011, 09:09 PM
More likely it's just corny writing. 'Science' is just a set of theories and observations that explain natural phenomena. If waggling your fingers and chanting a little caused a firebolt to shoot out your mouth, then one could observe that and propose a theory explaining it and then that 'magic' would be 'science'. It would be more accurate for Thor to say 'what you call magic is just science to use'.