Thor also has the distinction of featuring the most ridiculous and arguably the most entertaining Stan Lee cameo yet, as one of the hopefuls trying to extract Thor’s hammer from the desert when it lands on Earth. As mentioned, the sections of the movie that reference The Avengers or wider Marvel mythology range between the enjoyable and the contrived. We get a cool reference to Tony Stark when the Power Rangers-esque giant creature The Destroyer turns up, plus a bizarre Hawkeye cameo which essentially comes down to Jeremy Renner sitting on a rainy platform – it certainly blurs the lines between what is entertainment and what is a large-scale marketing experiment.
Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and SHIELD return from Iron Man 2, wedged right in the middle of the story as an obstacle between Thor and his wayward hammer. The strongest bit of foreboding to The Avengers by far comes after the credits, following a James Bond-esque ‘Thor will return in…’ message. Without wanting to give too much away, this scene suggests how the fallout from Thor will feed into the Joss Whedon-directed blockbuster. Still, conventional moviegoers might not be as appreciative of this cross-brand exercise as comic book fans.
If you can forgive the film’s other issues – the way the protagonist discovers how to be a hero is typical self-sacrificing stuff – there’s a lot to enjoy about Thor, with a background universe rich enough to really get swept up in. Despite the garish art direction of Asgard, all the film’s effects sequences are superb. The power struggle between this family of gods provides a genuinely interesting dynamic, even when the actors overplay it, a nice departure from the sorts of obvious villains we sometimes see in these movies. In terms of attention to detail and scope, this is about as much as you could ask for from a major studio adaptation of the Thor comics.
Branagh’s Thor adaptation is certainly worth seeing, even if it’s just for the way it broadens the remit of superhero movies. Though clumsily weaved into the story, the presence of the Norse mythology lifts Thor beyond the staples of the sub-genre.
Better still, we rooted for Thor so much in this movie that he’s the character we’re most looking forward to seeing again in The Avengers, one year from now; all that could change, of course, with the upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger in July, yet Branagh and Hemsworth do a lot here to win us round to their cause.
Ahead of its unprecedented franchising exercise, however, Marvel has served up a summer movie that pretty much everyone can appreciate on some level. Thor is a really good popcorn flick – just a little too bloated in places to hit the mark as well as it could have.
