Movie Review: Thor

05/3/11

Thor

 

When I first heard they were making a Thor movie, my first reaction was “meh”. I’ve never really been a fan of Marvel’s Mighty God of Thunder. He was Stan Lee’s answer to Superman, sharing the same invulnerability, and to me that just felt boring. I was always more into science fiction than I was into sword and sorcery, so Iron Man with his industrial roots or the X-men and their evolutionary apocalypse of the week always seemed so much more compelling to me.

Then I heard that the movie was getting great reviews. Now, I don’t put too much stock in reviews since I tend to disagree with them when it comes to genre films (as I did with Watchmen and Sucker Punch), but Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 95% (as of this writing)! That meant that out of 56 reviews available on the Net, 53 of them were positive.

You can’t argue with that kind of word of mouth.

 

After seeing the film, I’ve got to say that it lives up to the hype, but not for the reasons I’ve been hearing, which are mostly raves about the fight scenes and the special effects. The reason it works so well is that at its core, this film is as much a drama as any Shakespeare play.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since Kenneth Branagh, who has directed quite a few Shakespearean films, is at the helm of this one as well. Apparently, Branagh is as much a fan of the Thor comics as he is of the Bard and it shows in his treatment of the material. It’s less about a god with fantastic powers frolicking with mortals than it is about relationships between fathers and sons and between brothers.

The best moments of the movie aren’t the huge fight scenes, but rather the human moments between Anthony Hopkins (Odin, Thor’s father) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor), or between Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and his onscreen sibling. Branagh is able to bring out an amazing sincerity out of his actors because he understands Thor’s arrogance and Loki’s envy and Odin’s struggle between love for his sons and duty to his country. Branagh is able to bring out that ordinary, relatable story from the strange tale of a fallen god.

[SPOILER!!!]

Hemsworth and Hiddleston carry the movie exceptionally well. There is a scene between them where Loki tells Thor that Odin is dead and that he cannot undo Thor’s banishment to Earth. It’s a great scene, with no fighting, no braggadocio; just two actors with some dialogue. Yet it works. The next scene has Loki trying to lift Thor’s hammer, which Odin has enchanted so that only someone worthy of Thor’s former power can pick it up. He fails, but the scene doesn’t because Hiddleston is able to convey the jealousy that fuels Loki’s hate. My favorite scene is where Thor tells his father off, calling him an old fool. The conviction in Hemsworth face and the pain in Anthony Hopkins’ as he banishes him are extraordinary.

[END SPOILER]

And it’s that conviction that really sells the film to me. Like I believed Jackie Earle Haley was Rorschach or that Gerard Butler was Leonidas, I can believe that Chris Hemsworth IS the god of thunder and Hiddleston the god of lies. That belief carries you through the movie like no amount of computer generated imagery could.

Not to put down the CGI work here. It’s pretty damned good. The fight scenes are a little blah, but the work done on Asgard was really great. There are a lot of comparisons to Krypton’s crystalline architecture online, and there’s no denying that it must have had an influence, but it’s still very much its own thing. I still can’t help but think about the 80’s when I Bifrost, though; synthesizer music, laser shows, and Robot Unicorn Attack.

The weakest parts I thought were the fight scenes. The battles didn’t seem to be cut together properly, so characters would jump from one place on screen to another. Also, the choreography didn’t seem to flow from one move to the next and I found myself losing track of the action (EDIT: upon a second viewing at a cinema with a better print, the scenes looked much better). What made it worse was that the print we saw was extra dark (we watched a 2D version of the film) so the fight in Jotunheim was especially hard to follow. Hopefully, Branagh will be able to study with a few of the better action directors before part 2 arrives.

All things considered, I’d rate Thor a little behind my other favorite comic book movies, Hellboy and Iron Man. The uninspired fight scenes and the slow moving New Mexico parts do bring the entertainment value down a bit. However, it’s definitely worth the price of a ticket to watch it on the big screen and probably one or two more times after that.