Thor

Rating: 5/10 (20 April 2020)

Thor is a film directed by Kenneth Branagh that stars Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddelston and tells the story of Thor, an Asgardian prince who is cast out of Asgard and forced to live on Earth and learn humility. I was very excited for the Thor film as a kid, I loved watching him on "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" (a great show that I recommend the kids watch on Disney plus) and when I heard they were making a Thor film, I bought a magazine that went in depth on the making of the film and I was Thor for Halloween that year. Watching it as a kid, I remembered enjoying it pretty well and I was excited to see him team up with the other Avengers, once the epic team up was released. Rewatching Thor very recently, I have to say that it was still a solid watch. I like Chris Hemsworth as Thor in this, he's as believably arrogant as he is badass in a fight and as I'll touch on in later reviews, I like the evolution of Thor as a character throughout the MCU films. Hell, I even enjoyed Thor's evolution as a character in this as he learned humility and attempted to right his wrongs with his family, it was nicely done. I also enjoyed the fish out of water element in that Thor had to adjust to life on Earth like the coffee cup smashing scene or the "Give me on of those large enough to ride" line at the pet store. Natalie Portman did a decent job as Jane Foster and her friends portrayed by Kat Jennings and Stella Skarsgård felt very realistic. This is a bit of a side note but Skarsgård in particular has a scene in an MCU film I'll be reviewing later that is downright hilarious so stay tuned for that. Tom Hiddelston was brilliant as Loki and to this day is arguably the best villain the MCU has to offer. I loved seeing the effect that being Thor's little brother had on Loki and how his upbringing made him feel like an outsider as it really pulled you into his character. His plan in this film was sketchy but I'll get into that a bit later. I've liked Anthony Hopkins in just about every role I've seen him portray but as Odin, he really shines as a wise but powerful aging god. The action sequences in this film were pretty fun as well, be it the opening scene where Thor and his friends take on frost giants or the fight on the Rainbow Bridge at the end. I think the film's highlight action sequence was the fight between Thor and the Destroyer though. I also enjoyed some of the energy brought to the film from director Kenneth Branagh, who is very experienced in filmmaking of the Shakespeare variety. There were a few things in this film that I didn't like as well. I didn't find the Frost Giants or Thor's friends known as the Warriors Three to be particularly memorable. The Frost Giants being cold (pun intended) emotionless beings whose sole motivation is to attack Asgard due to their history and grudge against Odin. The Warriors Three basically each having a character trait and consistently sticking to it throughout the course of the film. I honestly completely forgot about the Frost Giants until I re-watched this and forgot about the Warriors Three until Thor Ragnarok but that's for later. Loki's plan in the film was incredibly convoluted and didn't make much sense to me. The first few things he did made sense don't get me wrong but afterwards it felt like he overcomplicated what should've been an easy task. The film has him strive for the affection of Odin in the end and his birthright as prince of Asgard but in reality I think the film could've been more effective if it went in the opposite direction. I would've loved to see Loki try to concoct a plan like he did in Earth's Mightiest Heroes because it made way more sense than this films version of the character. The effects in this film were okay but they really haven't aged well. All of the metal in the film whether it's Asgard, the Destroyer or weapons and armor seemed overly chromatic at times and it was distracting. Speaking of distractions, I'm not sure how many of you guys have heard that the main critique of this film is the over-use of the Dutch angle, where the camera is tilted fourty-five degrees to start the scene. I'm only mentioning this because I'm pretty sure every scene in the film starts like this and admittedly it gets pretty annoying after awhile. SHIELD makes yet another appearance in a long line of them here and while it is important to the plot this time it also takes a decent amount of time to set up Hawkeye, the Tesseract and Captain America both for the film and for the Avengers. I do like seeing Phil Coulson though as Clarke Gregg is a treat no matter where he appeared be it in agents of Shield or the Avengers. It just felt to me like Thor suffers for being a stepping stone to the Avengers in the same sense that Iron Man 2 did in that it can't fully establish itself as a film because it has to set up future films. If it took more time to build on the lore of the Frost Giants and the Asgardians aside from that opening sequence or maybe even establish other Asgardians aside from Thor, Loki, Odin and Heimdall as complex characters, you might be talking about one of the better Marvel films out there. I definitely feel this film could've benefitted more by establishing Asgard more as a location and by people more so than those Earth in both regards. Still though, even with the same weaknesses as Iron Man 2 though it was a bit more enjoyable and I definitely didn't mind it as a film at all. I think if you go back and rewatch it, you'll actually see that it was decent.