Movie Review: Thor

Thor  |  Director Kenneth Branagh  |  Score: 3.5

Trust me, you’re much better off with a random episode of “He-Man.” Though not even that really captures the essence of just how piteously wasting of talent this movie goes. Slumming down in the mire for this one includes Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Idris Elba and poor Rene Russo, to say nothing of Henry V, himself. Kenneth Branagh’s vision is so depressingly locked into comic book movie CGI assault mode, the film affords you no other emotion other than despair at having wasted your money.

In Asgard, the headstrong Thor (Chris Hemsworth), leads his band of merry warriors to the realm of the Ice Giants to pick a fight, totally against the wishes of his father Odin (Hopkins, who was probably on set for a day and a half). As punishment, he’s deposited down on earth, without his god powers, and forced to spend time amongst the puny mortals of a small New Mexico town, including a fetching astronomist, Jane (Portman), her associate, Dr. Selvig (poor Stellan Skarsgard, because they needed someone who could claim to have heard the Norse tales as a child) and their quippy intern (Kat Dennings). After a very brief stint living like a mortal, Thor learns all the important lessons his father meant for him, including humility, compassion and how to eat properly with a knife and fork. This comes just in time, as it happens, because during his banishment, his twisted half-brother Loki has been busy taking over the realm and getting everyone really pissed at him.

For all the money the film spent on its effects budget — and this is a movie for which nearly every one of its 114 minutes is accounted for by CGI — it seems nary a cent went into its script, attributed to no fewer than eight writers, which feels forced, misdirected and utterly without pace. Changes are made from the comic source material that weaken it substantially (why reduce Loki, the god of freaking mischief, to yet another weak-kneed, jealous sibling?), and scenes whip by without adding anything to the cohesion of the story. Perhaps the most egregious error is the way in which the film glosses over Thor’s conversion into a mensch — his long, dark night of the soul amounts to one pleasant evening under the stars sleeping on a deck chair next to an exceptionally pretty female scientist who has clearly developed a hankering for some thunder god love. Rough seas, buddy.

As for the positives, yea, verily, they are few. Helmsworth is a charismatic enough chap, I suppose — though his line readings can be painful — and the art direction certainly sticks closely to Jack Kirby’s original vision of Asgard and frost giants and such, but in almost every other way the film falls to the very worst of the comic book genre: moronic dialogue, poor pacing, and an overreliance of special effects to create anything remotely interesting. A colossal waste of talent and money, the film sinks faster than Thor’s mystic Uru hammer in a Norwegian fjord.

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Piers Marchant is a Philly-based writer and editor, and the EIC (and film critic) for two.one.five magazine (215mag.com). His reviews can be found on 215mag.com and his tumblr blog, Sweet Smell of Success.  You can also follow him on twitter @kafkaesque83.

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