Thor Reviews

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the arrogant son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is banished from Asgard after disobeying his father's orders. On Earth he bumps into (literally) a scientist, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and must find a way to return to his home to prevent it from being destroyed.

To say I had doubts about Thor is an understatement. Kenneth Branagh directing a comic book action movie? Plus all the clips I had seen of Chris Hemsworth as Thor were incredibly cheesy. There's no way this is going to work!

Thankfully I was wrong.

Branagh is actually an inspired choice as a director because he has a great sense for the emotional pulse of a scene - for the action sequences and the more grave parts. Together with the actors there is a gravitas to scenes that seemed cheesy in the clips.

But what surprised me was how funny this movie is. As with Iron Man there's a lot of humor, particularly Thor with his fish-out-of-water bit when he's on Earth.

Chris Hemsworth together with Tom Hiddleston as Loki are the breakout stars in Thor. They really made the movie for me.

The movie moves along rather quickly with the action almost evenly divided between Asgard and Earth. Sometimes a bit too quickly - the romance between Thor and Jane comes into play very quickly. I can believe that the sparks are flying between them but for them to fall in love that fast - it's veering into Mills and Boon territory.

Thor kicks off the summer movie season with a bang. If you liked Iron Man you won't go wrong with Thor.

I really, really, enjoyed this. Out of the four Marvel productions thus far I'd say it's definitely neck and neck with the first Iron Man. It's genuinely entertaining and moves along at a fair old pace.



I've got a few quibbles, namely that the biggest and best action sequence happens within the first thirty minutes and nothing ever really matches it. I think Branagh has a better natural eye for action than Favreau and all of the action sequences are a lot of fun, but the Thor, Warriors 3, Loki, Sif vs. an army of Frost Giants battle is just great. The clips released online thus far really undersell the film, particularly the scene of Thor fighting at the hammer site. That's a bad moment in an otherwise great sequence and the pains the online clip went to edit around Hawkeye is ridiculous. The cast is uniformly great, but they're given very little to do. Even Portman as the main love interest only gets about twenty minutes of screentime, meanwhile Kat Dennings is on screen for five minutes...if that.



Chris Hemsworth is fantastic though and in terms of presence and charm he's almost up there with Downey Jr. Just a fantastic presence in the centre of the film and he's the reason the film works as well as it does. He's ably matched by Tom Hiddleston as Loki who is just brilliant as Loki, he's a loathsome, pitiable, genuine threat to Thor and Hiddleston makes every character beat work. He's a character who is deceitful by nature and it plays perfectly against the more physical heroes. In fact I kind of love that his deceitful nature means that we're not even really sure of what he's really trying to do until right at the end.



The set design, of Asgard, is amazing. There's an initial shot which travels through the solar system and up through Asgard which is kind of phenomenal. It's a real thing of beauty, and the film is just full of great looking shots. Branagh really makes the Asgard stuff work, finding an emotional core to scenes that could come across as Flash Gordonish. It's also funny, really funny. Not quite as laugh out loud as Iron Man, but it's got an amiable charm and some great jokes.