THOR
Asked to think of a character that would be impossible to work into the growing Hollywood repertoire of impressive CGI realizations of longtime comic book superfavorites, Thor springs directly to mind – There is no way, one would think, that a days-of-yore-speaking magical Thunder God is going to be taken seriously enough to feel at home with the other super-science Avengers origin stories, or that a studio would be willing to spend the time hanging around in the otherworldly realm of Asgard to portray his. Even recent comic book reimaginings of the Marvel Universe (the extremely popular Ultimates) have dealt with this incongruity by implying that the character is merely a regular old superhuman earthling deluded to believe he is a god.
But the long history of the Marvel Comics Universe is filled with celestial, heavenly and intergalactic conflicts with grand stakes -- Guardians of the Galaxy, The Infinity Gauntlet and The Secret Wars to name a few. While ignoring these expansive corners of the Marvel Universe might seem the obvious route for a film franchise out to keep itself manageable, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the Magic and the Gods worked their way in. And we're already talking about iron men and planet-eating alien entities and guys who turn into invincible green monsters; why not? In any case, the studio has thankfully eschewed the easy route in favor of giving us a real Asgardian origin story. The results are a beautiful, exciting depiction of a world that exists somewhere in the deep recesses of space, a believable deity to root for and a whole new set of rules by which to play.
Thor is a prince of Asgard, a heavenly realm that has been at war with a race of Frost Giants from the very fun to pronounce land of Jotunheim. Following a Frost Giant intrusion into Asgard on the day that Thor was to be named king, Thor leads a team of his friends to pick a fight that ultimately results in his getting stripped of his power and banished to Earth. Cue Natalie Portman, an astrophysicist whose work has centered on a series of weather anomalies that lead to her hitting Thor with an expensive-looking science truck in the middle of a New Mexican desert. Back in Asgard, a shrewd and silver-tongued Loki, Odin's second son, uses his brother’s banishment to make a play for the throne. With the help of his friends, human and Asgardian, Thor must figure out how to get home and stop his brother from screwing up the kingdom.
Once again underscoring the benefits of physical training for an actor in favor of the other way around, Chris Hemsworth’s chiseled Thor is charming and interesting, portraying a depth to a character that seems at times too weighty for a script filled with furtive gags (a script which, thankfully, opts to drop Thor’s characteristic “thees and thous”). At the same time, the character exudes a paternal respect for ordinary people appropriately aligned with the god and man relationship established by the story, leading to fish-out-of-water moments that are genuinely funny. Kenneth Branagh coaxed decent performances from his supporting cast as well, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki shining particularly bright as a tormented, jealous brother, giving us a real character to add to the mythology. It is, in fact, as much an origin story for Loki as Thor.
Thor is full of impressive, original visuals: Clouds giving way to nebulae and the speckled blackness of space. Lighting frozen in ice. An actual Asgardian rainbow bridge. The pacing of the film is brisk and exciting, contrasting the drama in Asgard against ours evenly, effectively keeping the beauty of this fantastic world consistently impressive. The action is crafty and cool; Thor pulls off some devastating signature moves heretofore only seen in the realm of the Video Game.
Some of the more expository and pandering aspects of the film are apparently given less attention, however, as if Branagh were less interested in capturing them. The story would get along just fine without Thor’s ragtag, multicultural band of warrior buddies -- they appear to exist solely for merchandising possibilities and widening appeal. After the initial action setpiece, the film struggles at times to give them something to do (fortunately, however, this allows for a scene in which Ray Stevenson makes himself an enormous sandwich).
Natalie Portman’s role as the romantic interest is forced, given not nearly enough time to pay off as the plot device for which it is later supposed to function. Also, other than a half-hearted pop-science debate and fretting about her confiscated research, Portman’s character does little to make believable her role as an attractive young astrophysicist. And in a bizarre bit of metafilming, Stellan Skarsgard seems to have been cast in this film specifically because he is a Nordic actor, affording the opportunity to give him lines like, "These are stories I read as a child," seemingly under the assumption that the audience can identify his slight Swedish accent or will see him in the credits with that circle thing over the last ‘a’ in his name. It’s hard not to suspect this same thought was present in the casting of Portman, a well-publicized Harvard graduate.
The dialog from these moments seems often taken straight from pre-production conceptual notes and delivered as wryly as possible by the characters: "Primitive people would probably have worshipped them as Gods." “My ex -- good at being a doctor, bad at relationships!” While a certain amount of this kind of thing is unavoidable with a science fiction story, in this case the work was already done well enough, and lines like this serve only to
hammer information into your head. In general, the conflict in Asgard is far more fun and interesting than anything that is happening with the people on the ground, whose struggle to figure out all the cool stuff we already know comes off as little more than a vehicle to drive the movie to a dramatic goodbye kiss.
