Thor

Thor:

No Matter How Hard You Try You Will Never

Pronounce "Mjolnir" Correctly.

I've always had a sort of love/hate thing with the marvel comics version of Thor, sure he's the best version of the character, and sure he's got that awesome old worldly way of talking, and he's got the magical uru hammer Mjolnir, and thats all fine and good, but you can't really do all that much with the character, he's a god or Norse mythology and he controls thunder, other then him being the powerhouse of The Avengers, there really isn't alot you can do with him, his only real villains are other gods or cosmically powered beings, simply because you can't really have an ordinary human beating a god, they wouldn't really be a god if that were the case. So you're basically stuck. Oh sure you can use Thor in other settings as a main or secondary character, but if you're going to tell a Thor story, you really have no real choice but to have him fight another god or a god powered creature. Its kind of like how with Iron Man, in the sense that you have to always write him to be a drunken douchebag because the only villains of his they seem not hold overs from the somewhat racist villains of the 1960s or a giant mystical dragon, aren't really good enough to stand on their own as the main threat of a film.

With all of that said, Thor does a rather good job of not only bringing you into the world of Thor, sure its all high end overly theatrical gods talking in norsespeak to other gods, but this is a Kenneth Branagh film, you expect the highest end of the overly theatrical end of the acting spectrum, the lavish costumes, the sets that look like we've traveled back in time, the attention to every detail no matter how small, just to make us feel we're really looking at a window into this world, but you know, not in that whole Fringe way cuz there are no Zeppelins.

Thor plays out like a norse mythological tale, the film starts with a battle between the gods of Asgard and their eternal enemies the Frost Giants, this is where you meet Odin The AllFather, as he and his Asgardians battle gloriously, and eventually triumph, bringing home to Asgard the spoils of righteous victory, you then fast forward to today, Odin has become the ruler of Asgard and his oldest son Thor, the god of thunder is ready to take the thrown, when an unexpected attack by The Frost Giants sends Asgard into an uproar, Thor, his young and jealous brother Loki, and their childhood friends Sif and The Warriors Three decide to confront the leader of The Frost Giants for the attack, against the orders of Odin The AllFather, this leads to a furious battle that Odin must step in personally and end for the better of all involved. In retaliation for going against his orders, Odin blames Thor and decides to humble the Thunder God by stripping him of his powers and banishing him to midgard, or "Earth" to us from here, he, long with his uru hammer Mjolnir, fall to earth, but Mjolnir has a spell on it now, meaning only those worthy of its power may pick it up and control its powers, The film from there follows the story of Thor learning humility and becoming worthy of the power he so easily tossed about before, the whole time thwarting his evil and jealous brother Loki's attempts to kill him so he can take the thrown of Asgard.

The film is pretty good over all, it was a smart choice to include The Destroyer, and they make Asgard really look like its a real place, and they those who live there truly look and act as you'd expect a pantheon of gods who live for battle to act, my only real issue with the film is they toned down the way the Asgardians speak, they did include it, but they felt it best to "tone it down for those that aren't use to Thor's speak", and though I understand why thats done, it still makes me a tad on the sad side, I never like when something key to a character's personally gets shucked to the wayside for the sake of bringing in a "broader audience" then just the fans of the character or general comic book fans, you shouldn't have to compromise just for the sake of sales, thats not really respectful to the source material. But overall the good outweighs the bad on this film and makes it does its job of forwarding the whole shared Marvel Comics Movie Universe toward both the Captain America and The Avengers upcoming films, as happens with every marvel film these days, which is always good, but still makes me sad how many characters are still in the hands of Sony and Fox, but as all, I hold out hope.

So the big question, is this film worth watching? I'd say if you're a fan of comic books, then ofcourse its worth going to see, as well as if you're a fan of majestic period like pieces, for the pageantry of them, then sure you'd love that as well. But if you're just looking for an action film with just stuff exploding and dudes punching other dudes and and swinging hammers, then you might be abit let down. As I said at the start of this, Thor is always a pretty idea, but is never really easy to write, and though they success in making the film enjoyable and worth watching, you can tell there were stumbling block moments where you could tell they were struggling really hard to make stuff work. But again, I stress, overall, it was an a great film and I did enjoy it, would would like to see it again. So take that as you will.

Here is the trailer...



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BC