Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who many remember from his role on Lost, has been cast to play one of the lead villains in the upcoming Thor 2: Dark World Boogaloo.
In Thor: The Dark World, Akinnuoye-Agbaje will play the dual role of Algrim the Strong and Kurse.
Kurse (Algrim) is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appears as the Dark Elf Algrim the Strong in Thor #347 (Sep. 1984), is transformed into Kurse in Secret Wars II #4 (Oct. 1985) and was created by Walter Simonson.
Kurse was originally the most powerful of a race of Dark Elves, and was known as Algrim the Strong. He is coerced by the Dark Elf ruler Malekith the Accursed to fight the Asgardian God of Thunder and superhero, Thor. Malekith, however, betrays Algrim while he is fighting Thor, and in a bid to destroy the Thunder God orders that a pitfall beneath the two be opened. Thor saves himself courtesy of his mystical hammer Mjolnir, while Algrim falls into lava. Algrim’s enchanted armor saves his life, but he is still critically injured and develops amnesia from the shock.
And the origin story goes on…
It will be interesting to see if this plot plays out as originally portrayed in the comics, or if Marvel Studios and Disney rework the character into being something more tragic with a hint of redemption.
Thor: The Dark World is scheduled for a November 08, 2013 release.
3 Comments
I’ve been reading through the Simonson omnibus. I just finished the Kurse section a few days ago! The villian is single minded revenge motivated to the extreme. He walks through Beta Ray Bill and Thor barely slows him down as well. It was bit of the same feeling as Spiderman VS the Juggernaut. They can’t stop Kurse, just redirect him. In the end the fail even to stop him at all until Kurse achieves its goal of revenge. After that Kurse just stands there. The Asgardians don’t know what to do with him as he isn’t hostile anymore. Its a melancholy moment with Kurse effectivley purposless and its victory fells hollow.
I’m not familiar with the Algrim origin but as Kurse the character always wears a mask and doesn’t speak so it will be interesting to see how they use it as the villian for the movie.
The last movie villian, Devastator, was also a powerful silent creature thats actually pretty similar, so that might be an odd way to go. Malekith may have to make an appearance too to be the magic/brains villian(as well as the Kurse connection). I’d rather Loki not be the baddy in every Thor outing.
It was recently announced that Christopher Eccleston would be playing Malekith, so there you go. I’m assuming he’ll be the Big Bad, and Kurse will be his megapowered henchman (which, as you say, sounds a lot like the Loki/Destroyer dynamic from the original). I would hope they’d follow the comics story, with Kurse being (again, as you say) unstoppable and Thor’s only option being to redirect his rage. I’m just praying to Odin that Power Pack doesn’t show up at the end to befriend the uber-badass Kurse. Ugggggh.
If they’re following the Casket of Ancient Winters story (Thor #350 IIRC from, what, 25 years ago? Holy crap, I’m getting old), I’d love to see the Ragnarok climax with the Asgardian army fighting Malekith’s demons in snow-bound NYC, but that’s obviously way too close to the end of Avengers. Whatever they do, Malekith & Kurse being in this installment has me more interested than I was a few weeks ago.
As far as the casket of winters goes, I don’t know if they are going to use it. The weapon of the frost giants in THOR was identified on screen as the casket. I gues they could use the same weapon 2 movies in a row…
Its interesting. With Avengers, it doesn’t seem like this is a direct sequal. Its like a third movie. Odd dynamic.
Of course all they have to do to fix that is have Malekith saw, “fools using this to freeze 1 person at a time, I’ll freeze all of midgard”.