I was never much on Thor. I didn’t read his main title much. I didn’t read The Avengers much (though I really got into The Ultimates). I came across Thor mostly when he crossed the paths of other Marvel characters like Bruce Banner or Daredevil. I didn’t hate the character or anything, but I thought the writers (or maybe just Marvel) were kind of pussy-assed with it. It’s Thor the god of thunder! (shhh… he’s not really a god, he’s from another dimension where people are magic…shhh) God is ill defined within Marvel. Which is really an issue for as many story lines they have with people going to hell. (shhh…its not really hell but another dimension with many attributes of the Christian notion of hell and people’s spirits go there when they die…shhh). And then there’s all the crap with Donald Blake. Is he actually Thor, or does the hammer cause Thor to posses whosoever wields it. It seems to change with each writer. Maybe I’m wrong but to me Thor was one of those characters whose retcons I could never keep up with. But then I have a job…
There was a really cool cameo in a Frank Miller Daredevil run by Thor and the Avengers that was actually pretty cool. Miller was able to make the Avengers seem larger than life and a bit scary. It was as if Daredevil was an infantryman who called in an airstrike and had to witness what happened and wonder if it wasn’t a bit much.
But, for all the convoluted mythology with the character, I’ve found him ill defined. (Though I have heard that he’s become more interesting in his current run with Asgard floating over Oklahoma or some such nonsense.)
But color me glad that Sony has the movie rights to Spiderman and the X-men are elsewhere, because I really like what Marvel is doing with their Avengers properties. (Although Iron Man 2 was mostly a waste of my time) Because we’re getting a period WW2 movie out of it (this year has 2 period comic films and at least 2 period sci-fi movies, weird) and we got a very good take on Thor.
The film took a flat out stance on what Thor is. He’s an alien. He hales from a cosmic entity (not quite a planet) where all lines of force converge. If this were Stephen King, he’d be from the world where the Dark Tower is actually a tower and not a rose. Being a super human race, his people thwarted an invasion of frost giants on earth in northern Europe in the dark ages and gave birth to the Norse pantheon of ‘gods’. As tends to happen, the political intrigue of this alien world spills over into ours when Thor starts a war with his arrogance and is banished to Earth, striped of his strength.
Chris Helmsworth plays Thor; and a good part of the movie only works because he’s so natural in the part. Sir Hopkins plays his father, Odin; and Natalie Portman plays Thor’s reason to get out of bed in the morning. There’s also a really cool small role for Stringer Bell. All of the acting (especially Hopkins who I wish was in the film more) is way better than one would expect in a movie of this type(guys in viking armor walking around in New Mexico). But then I noticed Kenneth Branaugh was directing. I respect Kenny, he knows what he’s doing. The film does a very credible job of adding some science to the mix to keep things in the realm of quasi-realityish possibilities. If you want to know what they got right and what they got wrong science-wise, there’s a good column by Copernicus on Ain’t it Cool.
This movie could have been a disaster. It could have been Superman 3. It could have been X-men Origins: Wolverine. It’s waaaay easier to tell a bad Thor story than a bad Wolverine story. Ken took things in a brave direction and made a movie that is actually beautiful in moments. I don’t use that word lightly.
5.5 of 10 because its still a comic book movie, but some of the space stuff should be seen in the theater, it’s gorgeous.
But don’t bother with 3-D. This will end up being a running theme, but 3-D is stupid. It was stupid in 1950 and it’s stupid now.