Come all ye Asgardians!

In order for this to be a proper review, I have to admit that Thor is my favorite Marvel character. So, if you feel like I’m being too nice to it, then just know that I might be a little bit subjective. With that out of the way, I want to touch on one other thing which some might bring up. While the character Thor is obviously the based on the character of Nordic mythology, the movie is based on the comic books and not the actual mythology (still remembers people criticizing 300 for not being historically accurate). With that out of the way, here’s my review…

Thor deals with the title character’s war with himself and his “brother” Loki for the throne of Asgard. Odin, the all father (Anthony Hopkins), exiles Thor from Asgard and sends him into Midgard (Earth) in order to teach him a lesson. At first, we see that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is arrogant and foolish as he betrays his father’s trust and disobeys his orders, causing a war where peace had reigned for a long time. After Thor is banished, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) uses this chance as a way to capture the throne of Asgard from an old Odin.

Thor (now without his powers) is sent to Earth where he meets astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings). On Earth, he has to deal with not having any powers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and eventually a big fire-breathing robot. I thought the romance part was pretty weak but that’s not really what matters in the movie.

Now, I always thought that making a movie based on Thor would be too hard an undertaking to tackle. Thor is not your typical super hero. He talks in a Shakespearian way and it doesn’t seem like he is interesting enough to be able to handle a whole movie by himself. Thankfully, Marvel understood this and gave him a plethora of characters for him to be able work. Not only many characters, but these characters are played by pretty good actors. Portman, Skarsgard, and Hopkins are proven top quality actors that can hold their own and be able to work with someone like Chris Hemsworth who is pretty much a newcomer to Hollywood. Thor’s friends are not much interesting except for Siff (who actually is the wife of Thor in Nordic mythology). Also, I would watch a movie based solely on Heimdall but only if its played by Idris Elba.


But the thing that made me think that this actually had the chance of being a good movie was the director that Marvel chose. Kenneth Branagh might not be the most known director to the casual crowd of movie goers, but for anyone that knows, he is the Shakespearean director bar none (his 4 hour version of Hamlet is pretty damn awesome). And it works.

The biggest flaw in the film is the villains. When people think of awesome superhero movies, they think of villains like the Joker. Although he has some cool powers, Loki is just too weak to actually go against Thor believably. Loki’s powers and skills just don’t show well on the screen. He is too subtle. The Destroyer was mostly a joke as well. So while the villains in the movie aren’t very strong, its all about Thor’s journey as he battles himself in order to eventually become the king of Asgard.

Even though I may be talking about all the bad things that this movie has, I enjoyed the film. I thought the movie as a complete package works well. Not only that, but it does a good job in working as a trampoline for the Avengers movie that will rock the world very soon.

6.5 out of 10