Thor

Thor is another superhero movie based off of Marvel comics, but instead of spidey webs and the green hulk, we get...well, Thor, a spirited and powerful to-be god of thunder of his heavenly universe. What we get here is nothing new; a typical hero's journey. With an star-studded cast and renown British actor/director, Kenneth Branagh, one might expect an awesome movie, right? Well, not exactly.

The movie begins with Jane (Natalie Portman), an astrophysicist, and her research crew (Kat Denings, Stellen Skarsgaard), who is traveling the desolate landscapes of New Mexico, hoping to find something extraordinary in the skies. Within minutes we see something light up in the sky and then suddenly a tornado strikes earth, but, of course, this isn't just some random tornado. What we get is Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who has been banished from a place called Asgard for his act of stupidity and recklessness (as with his hammer). From here, the movie actually goes back in time to show us, the audience, what happened prior to the opening scene. Thor is meant to believe that his banishment from Asgard is permanent, but little does he know that his brother, Loki, purposefully set this entire scheme from jealousy. So, what we have here is a morality tale. The rest of the movie is...well, you can pretty much guess it all.

My problem with Thor is not the storytelling, which Branagh does an absolute fine job of doing. His Shakespearean talent and abilities combined with the modern world of Thor works well; we got all the essential characters and their motives established. Instead, the movie gets too carried away and consistently digresses, which dragged out the film. The humor is heavily used right from the start, which worked but got a little old after a while. This does die down progressively as the movie reaches the climax.

Character development was not an issue...at least with Thor it wasn't. Each and every character in this, apart from Thor, was not given enough screen time to develop. We get the funny people, the bad guys, and friends, etc. But in the end, I was left feeling hollow instead of wholesome. Rather than focusing on the characters, Branagh got carrid away showing off his visionary style of Asgard and the universe.

There isn't very much to say about Thor. It wasn't a bad movie by all means, but it wasn't very good. Special effects were undoubtedly the highlight of this film and even Natalie Portman couldn't save this movie from becoming a snooze-fest within the hour mark of the film. If you want to watch a cheesy, undeveloped, but fun action movie, then here you go.

Grade: C+