{"id":14018,"date":"2011-04-20T20:42:32","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T19:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=14018"},"modified":"2012-04-26T09:09:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T08:09:14","slug":"review-thor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/review-thor\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Thor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Released: 27 April<\/strong><\/p>\n

Certificate: 12A<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director: Kenneth Branagh<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenwriter: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Running Time: 114 mins<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point in the road to The Avengers, Marvel\u2019s clutch of superhero flicks aren\u2019t so much hinting at the cinematic team-up as laying the foundations of the storyline. Thor does retrieve some of the enthusiasm we lost for this mega-franchise with last year\u2019s unfortunately rubbish, overstuffed Iron Man 2. Still, while the film stands on its own as an amusing superhero outing enhanced by colourfully adapted Norse mythology, those extra story threads are more prevalent than ever, an occasionally exciting yet often contrived setup to the cinematic event of 2012.<\/p>\n

The mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is cast out of Asgard after defying his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and bringing the realm to the brink of war with the Frost Giants of Jotunheim. Thor is sent to Earth, where he encounters pretty scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her amusing entourage. Here, the god of thunder is forced to go on a quest to discover what being a hero really encompasses. Meanwhile, power-hungry sibling Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has his own plans for Asgard, consumed by jealousy of his father\u2019s favouritism towards Thor throughout their lifetimes. This is awkwardly jammed into the story with one of the most expositional lines of dialogue ever to feature in mainstream cinema.<\/p>\n

Thor is a confused film \u2013 the necessity of including all the Norse mythology on top of the exiled adventures of the protagonist mean that it isn\u2019t paced like a normal superhero movie. There are two very different stories being told at once, here, which is fundamental to the appeal of the comic but difficult to cram into a conventional summer blockbuster. Thor starts off with maximum amounts of action and effects, which ends up being counter-intuitive because the characterisation isn\u2019t layered on top until later in the film; the first act of Thor ends up feeling a little empty as a result. It immediately picks up when Thor is wandering about on Earth with the lovestruck Foster, though, eating entire boxes of pop tarts and drinking copious amounts of alcohol.<\/p>\n

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As you well know, Chris Hemsworth played Kirk\u2019s dad in the powerful opening of Star Trek 2009 (how many times have you read that?), but this is his first true opportunity to stand out as a leading man. Luckily, he attacks the role of Thor with gusto \u2013 there\u2019s a lot to love about Hemsworth\u2019s performance. The fish-out-of-water comedy on Earth is fun, plus the character\u2019s complicated relationships with Odin and Loki develop into fairly involving plot threads later on.<\/p>\n

While too many of the Asgard scenes see the actors resorting to all-purpose, Brian Blessed-esque bellowing to underline the drama<\/em> (Hopkins and Hiddleston are both frequently guilty of this), Hemsworth gets the perfect balance for the voice of Thor. This performance is exactly how it should be in relation to the character\u2019s comic book origins. You can\u2019t ask for a lot more than that (although, in an unrelated note, his physique puts the rest of mankind to shame).<\/p>\n

Hiddleston (who resembles a young Nicholas Lyndhurst via Slytherin house) does a decent enough job as a suitably snotty Loki, yet he is a one-dimensionally irritating antagonist. We\u2019d be able to take Hopkins a little more seriously, too, if he wasn\u2019t wearing what appears to be a woman\u2019s formal dressing gown for the duration of the film. This is representative of the stylistically OTT depiction of Asgard. It\u2019s maybe a bit too Masters Of The Universe for our liking, despite the stunning visual impact that certain elements within that world have.<\/p>\n

Other cast members end up being a little wasted. Natalie Portman, now in possession of a Best Actress Oscar for Black Swan, really should be doing a little more in a movie than pining over Thor, just because he has a far superior body to the rest of us brainless slobs. She\u2019s a love interest and little more \u2013 the romance between Jane and Thor is unconvincing and brief. This isn\u2019t the fault of Portman, who offers a solid performance, there\u2019s just no nuance to her character. Idris Elba is underused as Heimdall, the gatekeeper of Asgard, given his growing reputation as a leading man in Hollywood. Likewise, Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd absorbs a lot of time just being<\/em> Scandinavian and doubting Thor\u2019s background. That\u2019s basically all he does. These are the types of actors that deserve better roles.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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 \u2013 it certainly blurs the lines between what is entertainment and what is a large-scale marketing experiment.<\/p>\n

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 \u2018Thor will return in\u2026\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

If you can forgive the film\u2019s other issues \u2013 the way the protagonist discovers how to be a hero is typical self-sacrificing stuff \u2013 there\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Branagh\u2019s Thor adaptation is certainly worth seeing, even if it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Better still, we rooted for Thor so much in this movie that he\u2019s the character we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 just a little too bloated in places to hit the mark as well as it could have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Hemsworth stars in the first big blockbuster of the summer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":14019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[628,672,1858],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MAN-00793Rv3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}