Thor – (Jon’s Take) Review

They say in movies anything is possible, especially with our current technology to bring anything to life. But adapting Marvel Comics’ Thor? Why that would seem as silly as a big budget remake of Hercules in New York, and yet doubters, Kenneth Branagh has delivered an easy-going, richly simplistic tale of the God of Thunder. As Thor tells Jane about the nature of his world, our world, “I come from a world where magic and science are one-in-the-same“, so true is Thor.

Premiering in Journey in Mystery #83 back in 1963, Thor has always been the odd-man out in the Avengers canon, due to his role as a God, where as the other superheroes are science-based. To make this film work, the screenplay had to be a delicate example of honoring the history of Thor from the comics, as well as acknowledging our modern reactions towards a guy who uses the words thee and thou a lot. Luckily, the film primarily focuses on Asgard, where such things can be accepted easier. Here, it’s like a sci-fi version of HBO’s Rome. The Frost Giants sequence is probably the coolest action scenes yet to grace a Marvel movie, but that could be the horror movie lover in me.

Once the action flips down to Earth, it’s the strength of the actors (Natalie Portman and Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd) that make what could be pure camp, into just good fun. Also, here on the Earth sequences, the battle with Destroyer should be worthy of some repeated visits to the theater. But with everything going on between the Earth issues, what’s happening on Asgard, S.H.I.E.L.D. and a strange cameo, the film never loses its focus on its title hero. An arrogant, brash individual, but not in the Tony Stark mode, Thor (played air-tight by Chris Hemsworth) is a born hero that has to learn the values of being that hero. It might be a birth right, but it’s truly only earned.

Kudos to Tom Hiddleston as Loki, a slimy, deft performance, even if the film tales a strict origin of the character that might rub some non-comic fans the wrong way. The film clocks in around two hours, yet Branagh who claims there’s plenty of deleted scenes, kept the film moving as fast as when Thor throws his Mjolnir. In fact, the adaption of a character we didn’t think would work, turns out in making us want more. More is what we’ll get in The Avengers, but its Thor as a solo film that in a world of deep, dark characters, heroes connected into our increasing technological and violent world, that is a breathe of fresh air in its fun simplicity, something comic fans really haven’t seen so innocently since Superman (1978).

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