Journey into Mystery, well maybe

Rating: 6/10 (4 May 2011)

As with most comicbook adaptations, this is a mixture of the stunning and banal. The vivid depiction of Asgard, influenced by Jack Kirby's visionary 1960s art, is hugely impressive. The story is a mingling of various classic tropes from the comic: the humbling of Thor, the destroyer, the Odin-sleep. Even elements prominent in the comic, IE Thor's alter-ego Donald Blake, is slyly referenced. There's always a problem, not avoided here, with introducing so much comicbook mythology so quickly, that the ideas can tumble over each other, whereas in the comic the developed over months over even years.
But the main problem does not derive from the comic but in the new material. The humdrum romance between Thor and Jane Foster, who is supposedly a physicist but talks in this generic teen-speak way, and the utter trivia of the loss of her stuff in this context. The appearance of the "men in black", already a tired cliché but out of place here, made my heart sink. Haven't we seen these characters too many times before? But all was not lost, and the film does manage to do a few surprising things and I guessing that the writers' hands were tied to a certain degree by having to bring everything together for the Avengers film (Hawkeye puts in a brief and pointless appearance too).
The cast is ideal. Chris Hemsworth (despite a strange accent) could hardly be bettered in his role of Thor, and is given admirable support from the rest.