So yeah, it came out months ago. My instincts were that I was never going to pay money to see this Kenneth Branagh-helmed festival of the overblown and ridiculous. Having now viewed it by other (entirely legal, I swear) means, I can say I was right. Warning: contains spoilers.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film. Well, it is, but it's so stupid as to be really quite entertaining. It's big, dumb, spectacular-looking and really pretty funny. In fact, it's the comedic moments that probably work best, which is not a regular feature of comic book films (let none of us forget that whole lift scene fiasco in Spiderman 2). Branagh has a history of directing films that are so grandiose you forget that they're bad, bad movies. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a prime example: Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth dies at the monster's hand (so far, so good) and then gets her head reattached to the body of her former maid, decides she doesn't like it and then sets herself on fire. Utterly ridiculous, completely overblown but so audacious you just sit there and go "Oh. Ok, then."
Thor is kind of like that. I mean, the whole concept is silly in the first place; I don't know who had the idea of making the Norse god of thunder into a comic hero but they sure as hell didn't help by slapping a red cape and a stupid helmet on him (though speaking of stupid helmets, nothing quite beats Loki's goat horns, or whatever the hell that is). This is one scenario in which Branagh's ridiculousness actually sort of works - we want to be distracted from the sheer insanity of what's going on in front of us by kabooms and silly hats and rainbow bridges. If you can swallow that, you can swallow anything this movie throws at you, even the idea of Natalie Portman as a respected academic. Oh, hush, she's a crazy bitch.
A basic run-down of the plot: the backstory goes that King of the Gods Antony Hopkins/Odin has a shiny kingdom called Asgard somewhere...in space? I'm not too sure. He fights the villains (ish) of the piece, the Frost Giants. No, I'm not kidding. He wins, he creates lasting peace, he ensures that his two sons, Thor (golden-haired trigger-happy thug-in-training played by Chris Hemsworth's abs) and Loki (small, pale, dark-haired, soulful - gee, wonder which turns out to be evil in a Hollywood film? - played by Tom Hiddleston) are in constant competition with each other by telling them only one can be king and it'll pretty much be Thor. Cut to some years later (Twenty? A thousand? They're not too clear on this either.) and Thor is being crowned king while Loki raises the first of many raised eyebrows. Unfortunately the ceremony is rudely interrupted by a few rogue Frost Giants breaking into Asgard to steal back the mystical source of their power, defeating the guards and then promptly dying. In retaliation, Thor (who, we must remember, is the good guy) decides to go and do a little avengin', rounding up a pack of...Norse gods? Higher beings? Other superheroes? (Again, not clear, but hey.) to help him. To cut a long story short, shit goes down and Odin decides Thor needs to take a little time out and banishes him to earth, where he's promptly run over by Natalie Portman in an SUV. Cue what is basically a fish-out-of-water comedy for the next hour, which is actually quite fun. Thor goes into a pet shop and demands a horse. That's funny, right? Come on, that's funny. From there, it ping-pongs back and forth between earth where Thor is learning humility and falling in love with Natalie Portman and Asgard where Loki is scheming away, lurking in more shadows, raising more eyebrows and managing to become king. There's also this whole scene where Hopkins/Odin makes a spectacularly unadvised move and tells Loki he's not really his son and he's actually a Frost Giant baby that he rescued or something. Anyway, apparently this is all that's needed to tip him over the edge from 'Misunderstood Anti-Hero' into 'Full-blown Psychopath' and he gets this worrying manic gleam in his eye. To be honest, after the first half hour, the plot isn't terribly memorable, but Loki sends a big metal robot thing to kill humanThor, humanThor dies and has his little Jesus moment by being resurrected as godThor, complete with giant hammer (two things: a) this hammer may be called Molly, I'm not quite sure, and b) giant hammer. lol.) GodThor snogs Natalie Portman goodbye, flies off to Asgard and much angsty 'I-don't-want-to-kill-you-but-I-will' battling with his brother ensues. At this point Loki decides the only thing that'll make Daddy love him now is genocide and he tries to kill all the Frost Giants (yes, despite being one), and Thor is all "absolutely not" (which is odd, considering it's the exact same thing he was advocating earlier but I guess that's character development, folks) and Thor stops him. Basically. It's kind of an underwhelming climax. Also, the bridge by which Thor gets to earth is broken, meaning he can't see Natalie Portman again, except he totally will because he's in The Avengers film, and Loki throws himself off the bridge in shame meaning he's dead, except he's totally not because he's also in the The Avengers film and the post-credits teaser sequence. And that's it, really. There's a ton of stuff I left out but none of it adds up anyway so let's not mourn too hard, eh?
Structurally, the beginning is better than the middle and the middle is better than the end, which isn't great storytelling. Nothing really happens at the climax and you don't even have the "woah" factor of seeing Asgard in all its camp, glittery glory for the first time. The middle section is, as I said, a fairly decent fish-out-of-water comedy but in terms of dramatic conflict, the stakes are surprisingly low. There's nothing threatening the earth, no nemesis that must be stopped (the Frost Giants are barely in it and they're more a threat to Asgard than earth): our main source of tension is whether this guy will get home or not. I'm pretty certain only one thing's ever managed to pull that off, and that was called The Odyssey. Actually, therein lies my personal problem with the film: Thor is no Odysseus. He's just so not my kind of superhero: he's brawny, he's dumb-but-charming, his aesthetic is poorly thought through...he's Superman, basically. He even has the whole Jesus allegory thing going on for him. And we all know how I feel about Superman. After being spoiled recently with a spate of classy, intelligent superhero flicks (and classy, intelligent superheroes), I can't really love Thor. At the end of the day, it's too dumb. I enjoyed the ride, but won't be buying the DVD.
To sum up: Thor is (mercifully) never going to win any awards. But it's fun. And some aspects are very well done: it looks great (even if Branagh does have a penchant for tilted camera angles), it's funny and the foreshadowing, like Loki's ability to create multiple versions of himself and make me think unladylike thoughts was relatively subtle (well, I didn't notice it anyway). At the end of the day, it's not clever enough for my liking - not the hero, not the story, not the dialogue, and I apologise for my superhero-snobbery. I'll tell you one thing though - I am so looking forward to The Avengers.
P.S. I think another reason I was so tickled by Tom Hiddleston's performance is that it means I can tick him off a list of actors who I spotted doing minor or obscure things and mentally noted down for future greatness. I saw him as Cassio in a production of Othello at the Donmar Warehouse a few years ago and, as I recall, despite starring Ewan McGregor as Iago, the conversation on the way home was all about that charming young man who played Cassio. Cassio? More like CassiYO.
I'll get my coat. Bye.
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