Burning Questions: Thor, Priest, and Hobo with a Shotgun

The “vampires” in Priest are inhuman alien-like creatures. Their bite appears to turn humans into lobotomized slaves known as “familiars.” So how come Karl Urban’s villainous Black Hat turns into an classically humanlike vampire?

As established in a flashback, Black Hat didn’t just get bitten by a vampire; he had to drink the blood of a vampire Queen, a biological irregularity that apparently turned him into a “vampire-human hybrid.” (It might also help that Black Hat wasn’t just a normal guy; he was a Priest, a member of an elite group of soldiers who occasionally appear super-human.) As for why Black Hat is able to walk around in the broad daylight…well, maybe he was wearing sunblock?

If Loki was actually a Frost Giant child, why wasn’t he big and blue?

When Odin finds a baby Loki in the wreckage of Jotunheim, the child is actually blue…but when Odin holds him, the blue fades away until he looks like a typical Caucasian child. What gives? It could be that Odin trotted out some subtle Asgardian magic. It could also be that the beings who inhabit magical realms like Asgard and Jotunheim have a somewhat chameleonic biology, reacting to their environment in unpredictable ways. (Might sound bonkers, but that was actually a key plot point in the limited series Earth X.) Don’t look to the comic books for any helpful hints as to Loki’s biology — it’s never been adequately explained why he isn’t big and burly like his Frost Giant brethren.

Thor says there are Nine Worlds. We only see three of them. What are the rest?

Besides golden Asgard, frosty Jotunheim, and plain ol’ Earth, Norse cosmology also includes fiery Muspelheim, the dwarf-ruled Nidavellir, Alfheim (populated by Light Elves), Svartalfheim (populated by Dark Elves), Vanaheim (basically Asgard without the good PR), and the underworld known as Hel. Pray for an elf showdown in Thor 2.

Exactly who or what are the Plague, the armor-clad assassins in Hobo With a Shotgun?

RIP and Grinder don’t appear until late in Hobo With a Shotgun, but they certainly make an entrance, massacring the staff of a hospital. It’s implied that they might be robots, and at one point we see them struggling with some sort of tentacled creature that might be their pet. Later, when (SPOILER ALERT) Molly Dunsworth’s Abby slays Grinder, Rip insists that she has to “take his place in the Plague.” Also, to judge by their victims wall, they appear to have killed Jesus, Joan of Arc, and the Easter Bunny. So who are these guys? Jason Eisener told The Film Stage that he considered the Plague to be “basically like demons; for me, there’s nothing beneath their costumes… they’ve been around since the beginning of time.” Get excited, Plague fans: Eisener’s working on a Plague-centric spin-off film.

Have more Burning Questions from this summer’s movies? Hit the comments! Your friends at PopWatch will do our best to answer them.