So, this is what Marvel movies are going to be like from now on?

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2011)

Well, there's nothing in Thor that's as bad or off-putting as when Macy Grey showed up in the first Spider-Man movie. There's also nothing in Thor that's as good aswell, anything in the first Iron Man movie. It's thin on plot, stuffed with too many characters and has an imbalance with the best action, special effects and jokes all crammed into the first half. It's also got a few more interesting ideas than usual for a super-hero blockbuster, a lot of appealing performers and is as professionally done as you get for this sort of thing. If you can imagine the lowest bar a comic book adventure flick has to clear in order to be considered good, this film just barely clears it.
If you've never read the comic, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is the Norse god of thunder. After impetuously invading the homeworld of the Frost Giants and sparking a potential war, Thor is expelled from Asgard by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and stripped of his power. Thor and his magical hammer Mjolnir are both cast down to Earth, with the hammer imbedding itself in the ground under the enchantment of Odin that "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor". While his venomous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) schemes in Asgard, Thor falls in with astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and is forced to accept being a mere mortal. Then Loki's evil machinations make their way to Earth and Thor and a quartet of his Asgardian buddies must fight to preserve both Earth and the Realm Eternal.
If you want excitement, some laughs, well done special effects and to look at very pretty people on screen, you'll find all that here. Those are the minimal requirements for a blockbuster of this nature and they're not always met, so you have to give Thor credit for being Perfectly Acceptable Entertainment. If this movie isn't good enough for you, you probably shouldn't be watching this kind of movie. The only real problem for this motion picture is that we've seen super-hero flicks in just the last few years that do an awful lot better than just meeting the minimal requirements. From the comic book verisimilitude of Spider-Man 2 to the sparkling storytelling of Iron to the thematic depth of The Dark Knight, Thor doesn't measure up to those films in any way.
The plot is very basic and dumbed down, with Loki's slightly more complex motivations only making the simplistic nature of the other characters more obvious. And besides Thor, Loki, Odin and Jane, there's a total of 6 sidekicks for the god of thunder, two human and four Asgardian, who could have been completely eliminated from the script without losing much at all. There's also two more major supporting characters in Asgard, another major supporting character on Earth and one more minor Asgardian role. That's too freakin' many people gumming up the story. Imagine if Iron Man had tried to squeeze in 4 or 5 more major supporting characters besides Pepper Potts and James Rhodes? Imagine if Spider-Man 2 had given Peter Parker 4 more friends besides Mary Jane and Harry Osborn? Imagine if The Dark Knight had given 2 or 3 more characters as much screen time as Rachel or Alfred? There are also too many scenes where Kenneth Branagh indulges the worst quirk of modern action movies and has fight scenes that are so frenetic that you can hardly tell what's going in them.
Here's another example of how Thor is couple of notches down from the best of its genre. Like Iron Man, this story is about a arrogant winner learning to be responsible for himself and others. In Iron Man, that's a journey that takes Tony Stark almost the entire movie to make. In Thor, it's a transformation that happens in a single scene. Thor behaves one way before that scene and acts differently after it, causing it to feel less like personal growth and more like an afternoon spa make-over.
Looking good and not running aground in any narrative lulls makes Thor worth seeing. It'll be a shame if such meager accomplishments become all we can expect out of super-hero films.