Thor--A Brief Review

Here there be spoilers, so if you haven't seen Thor yet, go see it and come back later.

Review with spoilers commences after pretty pictures...5...

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It is apparently de rigueur for reviewers to mention director Kenneth Branagh's extensive experience with Shakespeare while reviewing Thor.

Well, yes, that it true, Branagh is quite knowledgeable about costume English dramas often set in royal courts.

However, the observation fails to take into account one very important fact: JMS & Mark Protosevich (story) and Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz & Don Payne (script) are no Shakespeare.

Perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be Charles Dickens, as the movie Thor may best be described as a Tale Of Two Realms (subtitle, it was the best of times, it was the meh of times...).

Let me be clear--I liked Thor...a lot. But it was kind of frustrating, because it was this close to being brilliant. But the film was dragged down by a lackluster Midgard side of things that never attempts to be any more that a placekeeper to break up the really, really excellent Asgardian portions.

And oh, how great the Asgard half of our movie is. Brilliantly designed, wonderfully cast, well acted, well paced, eye and brain candy. If the whole movie had been this good, I would cheerfully nominate it as the best superhero movie ever.

And a special shout-out to Tom Hiddleston's performance and the writing of Loki's role. Deep and textured, watching Loki Iago his way to power, while at the same time believing his own shtick and honestly thinking he's doing the best for Asgard and daddy. Marvelous stuff.

So, what the hell happened to Earth part of the movie?

Aside from the battle with the Destroyer, everything in Broxton Puente Antiguo is slapdash, perfunctory, and unimaginative.

Let's look at our characters. Kat Dennings Darcy is, well, a complete waste of screen-time. She's just there to make "wisecracks", 90% of which we've already seen in the trailer. She essentially vanishes midway through the film. She adds absolutely nothing to the plot or the development of any other character, and has pretty much no character herself. Terribly written, space-filling character who had no business being in this movie.

Then there's Stellan Skarsgard's Erik Selvig. His role consists almost entirely of disagreeing with every single thing that Jane Foster says. Watch the movie again: every word out of her mouth, he tells her no or she's crazy or she can't. Some mentor (granted, if you infer from the post-credits scene that he was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. the whole time, maybe that makes sense. BUT it still essentially makes him a waste of a character in the movie proper). And one 30-second drinking scene with Thor and two ridiculously twee aphorisms don't make him an actual character.

And then there's Jane Foster. Now, I'm not picking on Natalie Portman here...the script gives her exactly nothing to do.

Let me ask you...if you weren't a comic book fan who already knew that Jane Foster and Thor were supposed to be an item, and you saw this movie, would their "romance" make any sense to you? The screenwriters have relied on that "pre-knowledge" of the fans as an excuse to completely neglect writing an actual role for Jane Foster. There is literally nothing there, aside from her being a bad driver and being pissed that S.H.I.E.L.D. took her research. She's a blank, a cipher--there's nothing there.

Well, there are all the other inhabitants of Puente Antiguo that Thor interacts with...oh, wait, there aren't any.

Seriously, those are literally the only three humans Thor interacts with (aside from Agent Coulson. It's been three movies now--can he get a first name, please?). And every conversation that our few characters have feels truncated, the bare minimum to keep things moving.

Which makes Thor's "learning humility" in such a short time from these people quite unconvincing.

Look, I understand dumping Don Blake. They didn't want to do an over-complicated origin story, and, with Captain America following in two months, they didn't want both movies to feature weak and puny guys suddenly transforming into muscle-bound heroes. I get that.

But Thor spends less than 48 hours in "exile." He shows up one night during the "stormchasing" scene...spends that night in the hospital...spends the next day eating and wandering...the next night he tries to take the hammer, and is in custody, and goes drinking...the next day the Warriors Three show up, and he gets his hammer back.

During that time, he doesn't interact with normal folks, doesn't see how they live, doesn't get a job or endure any real hardship or see other people enduring hardship...how, exactly, does this "reform" him? Does he learn humility from Darcy's inability to pronounce Mjolnir?

When Loki starts whining that "that woman" softened Thor, I had to wonder which movie he had been watching. There were two things that humbled Thor--when he saw the runes for the spell Odin had placed on the Mjolnir, and realized that he wasn't worthy; and when Loki showed up and told him that Odin had died as a result of his actions. Neither of which had ANYTHING to do with Midgard...Thor could have been exiled to Alfheim with the exact same results.

You see, if they really wanted the "Shakespearen" bit to ring true, they would have spent more than 3 seconds writing the Earth scenes and dialogue and memorable characters. They would have in some way made the action on Earth a mirror/counterpoint to that in Asgard. They would have made some effort to convince us that it took just 40+ hours on Midgard and one drunken barroom philosophy discussion to reform Thor. The writers could have created more characters, so we actually care when Puente Antiguo is threatened by the Destroyer, instead of faceless folks running away while none of the main Earthlings are ever so much as scratched. They should have found some way to make the Earth portion of the film matter. How could the same writers who crafted the Asgard sections have failed so badly on the Midgard portion (of course, with 5 names on the credits, maybe different people did write each section)?

I know I've gone on way too long. I do that, because it's easier to harp on the film's flaws than praise its good bits. But in Thor's case, the gulf between the two is so vast, I think it hurts the movie. The Asgard sections are so good, and the Midgard sections are so...indifferent and lackluster and pointless in comparison, it takes the movie down from "great" to "pretty good." That's pretty disappointing.

But still, it is a pretty good movie. So go see it. Just be prepared for half a loaf instead of a full one.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

**So, the Odinsleep...he's under for less time than Thor is in exile, so, what, 36 hours? Not such a danger to the realm, after all. And this was the worst one ever, according to Frigga...

**So, during the stormchasing scene, we're told that "the last 17" of these events were at completely predictable intervals. Who, exactly, was making regular trips to Midgard? Why?Asgardian tour group? Frost giants wanting Destroyer Slurpee cups?

**So, the Bifrost---it was a cool idea, well executed. But leaving it on destroys the realm it is aimed at? So, Asgard has a weapon of mass destruction capable of completely destroying another realm? So why, exactly, would anyone be stupid enough to attack Asgard, Casket Of Ancient Winters or no?

**Yeah, yeah, so there was no Balder. I, for one, am glad them didn't try to shoehorn every single thing into the first movie, because that's just death for a franchise. Like the Daredevil flick, for example. Whatever that movie's other sins were, the death blow was trying to jam Daredevil's origin AND Elektra AND Kingpin AND Bullseye. Why try to jam all of Daredevil's greatest hits, some 20 plus issues, into one movie? Why not leave something on the table for next time? So thank you, Thor movie, for not feeling obligated to squeeze in Balder and Crusher Creel and Hercules and Ulik and Surtur and Mangog and Hela and the Enchantress & Executioner and the Wrecker and Firelord and...