Thor,

Rating: 3/10 (15 December 2011)

I've always been cautious about watching superhero movies, knowing full well that their loyal fan base laud the movie for being something better than what it is. Having read numerous positive reviews on the newspaper (I'm sorry now that I didn't check IMDb first) I decided that Thor seemed like a good choice to spend a lazy afternoon watching. Oh how wrong I was. Even for a superhero action movie, the character development was utterly pitiful and the actors, well I honestly don't know what they were doing there. Anthony Hopkins was the only noteworthy performance, yet I expected nothing less than him. The film spends an excruciating 45-55 minutes or so explaining the background and lore of this universe yet fails depict Thor's transformation from an arrogant meat-head, into some chivalrous gentleman, in a remotely believable manner I mean, really? 2 to 3 Days? He's a the future King of Asgard for god-sake, not a faithless call girl. As a matter of fact, Loki seems a far more likable and relatable character. He is responsible(mostly), wise, and portrayed as rather a love deprived delinquent, remotely malignant and the very least jealous character, as opposed than the self-righteous, prototypical pretty boy, Thor. While the idea of an ambiguous antagonist may be acceptable in art-house cinema, it should be painfully obvious who the villain is in a superhero movie. Obviously there should be motives to each character in a film yet, it seems Loki is much more believable than the inexplicably shifting character of Thor, who based on such seeming unjustified monumental moral shifts, one really wonders whether Loki was right in taking over as king. Honestly, all the humans, serve little to no purpose plot wise, what so ever, one must wonder why is a big name like Natalie Portman chosen to play such a puny meaningless moronic love interest role (Oh thats right, she a box office grabbing machine), let alone why do these powerful beings want anything to do with our bland Earth at all. The frequent long distance traveling that occurs in this film and the fact that it occurs equally and confoundingly in 3 separate dimensions of the "Yggdrasil" does nothing for the films story telling if not, detracting focus. However they do present wonderful opportunities for spectacular CGI environments and sequences(which by now are something of a standard in such films), which singularly constitute the 2 stars out of 10, the other being Anthony Hopkins who has and always be are "stellar" performance. (please excuse that terrible pun)