How do you say "Meh" in Asgardian?

Rating: 5/10 (9 June 2011)

Great Odins Raven where to begin. I like comics. I like superheroes. While I consider myself more of a DC guy (especially Green Lantern and Superman), I have loved every installment as Marvel builds towards next summer's "The Avengers" (yes, I even loved "The Hulk"). But Thor was just flat. I had doubts from the beginning. How was a mythical Viking God supposed to fit in with the universe that gave us Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark? The answer? Not very well actually. Thor was riddled with Oscar winners, but it could not escape the average narrative. The costume looked much better than I expected, but the rest of Asgard felt like a soulless video game back drop. The CGI was so over the top that it became distracting (and actually made me begin to worry about The Green Lantern). Chris Hemsworth was very solid playing the lead. But the movies biggest flaws were with Anthony Hopkins as Odin and Natalie Portman as Jane Foster. Now you would expect 2 such great actors to knock these type of rolls out of the park. Instead, both struggled to maintain competence. Hopkins gave a mail- it-in performance on par with Jack Nickolson in the Departed. Every time he was on screen I found myself begging for it to end. Portman acquitted herself slightly better. i would say she was on par with Kirstin Dunst and her Mary Jane Watson chops from Spiderman. Obviously thats still pretty terrible. Sometimes a character just doesn't translate to film. I think Thor is that character. Cinema has struggled with the portrayal of these God-Like comic characters (see: Superman, All of them), for some reason no one has perfected a way to ground them to a reality based environment. Thor is not a character that lacks nuance. But his abilities do. This is literally a God who crushes all with his hammer. It just didn't work. I am hopeful that a supporting roll in "The Avengers" will work well, but as a full length feature I will have to pass.