A Wagnerian Action Comedy Masterpiece of the genre.

Rating: 10/10 (28 April 2011)

There is a poignant scene in cult 1980s BBC sitcom 'Red Dwarf' where the super-organised hologram Rimmer talks about why he actually likes his polar opposite Rastafarian, slob, scouse room-mate Lister. He compares him to a hangover-cure "fried egg and chilli sauce ciabatta sandwich" Lister has offered. "All your ingredients are wrong - but somehow it works, somehow you're right!"
The same has to be said for 'Thor'. A giant WWE escapee taking down scientists and CIA men in New Mexico just after having been banished from his monster-infested, operatically armoured home-universe sounds like the worst straight to video Triple-H starrer ever made - but it all somehow, not only comes together, succeeds in throwing more at the screen than many superhero movies could lay claim to.
Marvel's vision and slight tinkering of the Norse Edda, the mythological testament of the vikings, remains. Loki is Thor, not Odin's, half-brother, while Heimdall, usually the janitor of the Gods in mythology books, becomes a noble and stoic guardian of the godly kingdom of Asgard.
Kenneth Branagh resurrects the one thing that was good about his 'Frankenstein' - sweeping camera shots, heated melodrama that evokes the excitement of a children's story as well as the drama of Shakespeare. In fact, Branagh's grounding in the bard means that the plot's interweaving of 'King Lear' in Odin, 'Macbeth' and 'Iago' in Loki's character, of 'Hamlet'-llite in some of Thor's darker ruminations and not a little of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' s immortal/mortal interpersonal dynamics is deft.
Thrilling and refreshing too is the involvement of monsters, giants and archaic robot menaces as well as real-world threat and suspense in a superhero movie for almost the first time in the cycle of superhero movies since 'X-Men's' rekindling of the genre. Bryan Singer might want to take notes if he ever revisited 'the Man of Steel', while Zach Snyder might do well to notice that human drama need not be sacrificed in the face of a slew of special effects.
There are only a few negatives. Once Thor lands in the desolate New Mexican town and finds friends he just kind of hangs with them there. Moving from place to place may have heightened the thrills in the earthbound sequences. The prosthetics of the Frost giants look off-the-peg creations compared to their giant CGI hell-hound-troll and this may come from two different effects houses handling these respectively.
These are minor quibbles in a movie that blends humour, whimsy and outrageous action with genuine urgency, real world dilemmas and not a little goose-pimpling Shakespearean cinema. Oh, and the brief glimpse of Odin's steed Sleipnir shall have comic-book and mythology fans in a state of complete awe.
This will satisfy everyone who attends it and all that remains to be said is this to the developers of the new 'He-Man' movie: Look at 'Thor' - it can be done.