Thor

Review by Jason Donner

By the mighty beard of Odin, how can this be?  How can a movie with a premise that seems impossible to translate for a wide audience actually work?  How can all of those garish gold costumes and sets actually be taken seriously?  How can Thor be the best Marvel movie since the first Iron Man?

I'm not sure how movies like Thor work.  If I did, I would bottle it and sell it to Hollywood at a hundred bucks an ounce.  Despite everything that this movie has going against it even before it got out of the gate, Thor is a completely enjoyable superhero romp into the fantastic and absurd with everything from evil Frost Giants to the most garish horned helmets I've seen North of an extremely stereotypical fat lady in an opera.

Thor, in case you don't know, is the God of Thunder or at least we puny mortals with our teeny tiny brains perceive him as the God of Thunder.  The truth is, he's simply from another realm which is a fancy way of saying either another planet or another dimension -- I'm a little fuzzy on that.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth), being a prince and all, is spoiled and selfish and cares only for his own glory.  He's also hot-headed and a little stupid much to the chagrin of his father, Odin, played by Anthony Hopkins, who wants to name Thor the new king.

Thor, however, would much rather mess everything up for himself and his entire dimension by pigheadedly starting a war with those Frost Giants I mentioned earlier.  Odin, enraged by his son's arrogance, cast him out of Asgard and sends him to Earth to live as a mortal because we all know that when you want to teach an all powerful being how to behave, you make him a mortal.  It worked for Q, didn't it?

On Earth, Thor meets Jane (Natalie Portman) who sees him as the evidence that she needs to prove her theories on wormholes.  I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that he's also ripped and good looking.  So good looking, in fact, that the guy behind me in the theater came out when he had his shirt off.  I thought it was cute until I realized he was behind me and everything.

From there, Thor runs afoul of our old friends from S.H.E.I.L.D., must learn to live and love as a mortal, and must somehow stop a sinister plan hatched by his emotionally unstable brother to plunge Asgard into a war.

Oh my goodness, this movie is fun.  Fun is indeed the glue that holds this strange amalgamation of a motion picture together. 

The only other time that I can remember seeing Chris Hemsworth in anything was watching him get blown up on Star Trek, but I can see him moving on to huge things after this movie.  As Thor, Hemsworth is a charismatic brat -- a prince with no followers.  He is charmingly arrogant and his character never becomes annoying or insufferable.  You can see that Thor has a good heart, even if his social skills and manners leave much to be desired.  Chris did a terrific job bringing Thor to life.

Natalie Portman is definitely at her cutest in Thor.  She is lovely to look at and her character manages to be vulnerable and lovestruck without becoming a damsel in distress or a brainless bimbo.  In fact, at the end of the movie, Thor is more of the damsel in distress than she is and, when you watch the ending, you'll know what I mean.

One of the more fascinating aspects of this movie is Loki, Thor's brother who desires more than just the kingdom for himself.  I have to admit, I never was able to nail down exactly what his motivations for his manipulations were until he spelled it out for me and, at that point, he becomes such a tragic and misunderstood creature -- a man brought down by his own paranoia and insecurities.  Loki is anything but a stereotypical comic book villain in Thor; You might actually find yourself empathizing with him.

Plus, who else could have pulled off that helmet? It was amazing!

I so very much enjoyed this movie.  The dialogue is snappy, but not distracting or forced.  Humor seems to flow naturally to the point that you feel like you are allowed not to take the Vegas-style garishness of the film too seriously, and the direction by Kenneth Brannah gives the movie a dignified and yet relaxed feel.  I would go as far as to say that the costuming and sets in this movie deserve to be recognized by any and all awards that will be given out this year.  They are outstanding.

From a visual standpoint, Thor exceeds anything that has come before and, from a standpoint of pure enjoyability, Thor is very much worth the price of the ticket -- just don't fall for the scam of 3D on this one.  It's a conversion and completely not worth it.