I am Thor!
Tho am I, after latht night!
Thor is something of an oddity in the Marvel universe - a second string superhero who happens to be a bona fide deity with the whole pantheon of Norse mythology lurking in the background. An interesting challenge for a writer to come up with stories that co-exist with oppressed mutants, defrosted war heroes, space pirates and gamma radiated green monsters. Anyhoo, as is inevitably the case, the character has been brought to the silver screen by no less a director than Kenneth Branagh, so how could it possibly fail?
The answer is quite easily, actually.
The pacing is dreadfully, horribly wrong for starters. The first half hour of the movie is set in a shiny, plasticky, CGI Asgard with a welter of characters introduced in rapid succession which must be thoroughly confusing for anyone without a good working knowledge of the ins and outs of the aforementioned Norse mythology. Thor and his buddies go haring off to start a war with the frost giants (who don't actually seem all that giant, to be honest) in a noisy and confusing sequence that looks like an extended trailer for the video game, although without the score and life meter on the top of the screen. Eventually, Thor gets banished to Earth until he learns some humility, which forms the one section of the movie that works - Chris Hemsworth in the title role makes for an engaging and amusing fish out of water as he adapts to life on Earth.
However, the movie nose dives again as it suffers from the same basic fault as the Supergirl movie. If you cast your mind back, Superman had to protect the whole of Metropolis from Lex Luthor whereas Supergirl just got to fight it out in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Thor gets barely a single street to smash up when fighting a sort of walking furnace cum suit of armour monster in the set piece fight scene.
The final third returns to Asgard for more shiny CGI and scenery chewing from Tom Huddlestone as Loki, in a finale that doesn't really make sense.
Ah well, at least the trailer for the Avengers looks a bit more promising.
1 comment:
We saw it in a cinema, in 3D and we seem to remember it being good fun. True, we haven't bothered to watch it again, but that is because we've discovered with most Marvel films, they are only digestible the once. Second time round they are awful. I'm looking at you Iron Man!
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