EDIT: Never mind.

 

God Damn.

Who that?

 

The chick they brought in for comic relief.

 

Looks like an Olsen Twin after a few square meals; i.e. okay, but nothing earth-shattering. One plus is that her tits arrive several minutes before she does.

 

That is Norah. She was certainly hiding something in that movie. But for those who like non-shitty movies, she played Marla, Steve Carell's love interest's daughter in The 40 Year Old Virgin.

 

Just saw this in 3D today. I don't think it was anywhere near as good as Iron Man, but it was still enjoyable and the "Thor in modern America" thing was pretty funny to watch.

What really surprised me, though, was how well-done and immersive the 3D was -- I almost forgot it was an effect after awhile. And the special glasses didn't give me a headache at all.

 

I wish they'd made it so that Thor spent a longer time on Earth. More time for believable development. Maybe alter it so that Thor ends up somewhere far away from Mjolnir and they have to journey to it or something... *shrugs*

Thor's characterization was great though. He started out as the usual comics "boisterous bruiser" sort, then ended up like the Ultimate version -- that is to say, calmer, but still a badass.

I liked Loki. I was expecting "muahahahah!" evil, but I found myself empathizing with him far more than I expected to. I'm not really a big Thor follower though, so I didn't really know what to expect in the first place.

The Hawkeye cameo was cool. And the little references to Stark and Banner were welcome. I'm loving this shared film-universe they've made.

The special effects were top-notch. I saw it in 3D too... but, as good as it looked in this instance, I still don't like the concept all that much. It's just annoying, and gets in the way.

Not a very substantial review, but I'll just say that, overall, I'd give it an 8/10.

EDIT:

Spoiler

The cameo with the Cosmic Cube... I suddenly realize that almost every single film so far in this film-universe has alluded to it. In one of the Iron Man movies, Stark and Fury talk about how the Arc Reactor technology is a stepping stone towards a larger breakthrough in energy. Fury was probably talking about the Cosmic Cube. And in Iron Man 2 there was a design of a cube in one of those blueprints Tony was looking at. So it might be that the Arc Reactor tech was based on the Cosmic Cube, which was either found or made by HYDRA in the Captain America movie and fell into Tony's dad's hands.

So I guess we know what The Avengers will be about. Loki gets his hands on the Cosmic Cube. Though I think I read something about the Skrulls having something to do with it... hrm. That might not be reliable though.

 

I just saw the movie and liked it a lot. I've never read the Thor comics, but I do have 'some' background knowledge of Norse mythology, and I liked the story even more because of that. To me, it was obvious from the beginning that Loki was the traitor (his nickname is 'the betrayer' after all). I wish the fight between him and Heimdall was more epic, because they kill each other in myth :/ oh well. The fight scenes involving Thor were pretty bad ass, especially when they were in Jotunheim. The destroyer scene bas cool as well (was that supposed to be Surtur?)

I am disappointed that they didn't sneak in a song by Amon Amarth. Fuck! talk about missed opportunities.

 

I saw it yesterday, and I wasn't terribly impressed. Fight scenes were up to par with what I've come to expect from Marvel movies, but the dialogue felt weird, the romance with Jane and Thor extraneous and unnecessary, and the characters buffoonish. Take Thor's companions for example, Sif and the 3 Warriors or some such. There's Sif, the stock "Lady Knight" who had to prove herself worthy of knighthood by being better than everyone else at being knightly. Then there's the Dwarf-stand in. Liked to eat, rouse trouble, use an axe, speaks with a gruff manner, etc. Next is the English/French twit, who has a ridiculous mustache, wields a rapier, and acts like a fool. Finally there's the Asian guy who just likes to fight. Seriously, that's all the characterization there is to them.

etc.

 

Thor looked awesome shirtless.
5/5
In all seriousness, though, awesome movie, great effects, and all in general awesomenss.

 

SREE. I AM AWARE THAT I AM MALE. THIS DOES NOT CHANGE THAT I AM TOTALLY GAY FOR THOR. THANK YOU.
Somehow, I knew someone was going to say something.
Cheddar, just wait till you see it. It's impressive.

 

Okay, time for my review of this movie. Warning, massive tl, dr; ahead:

Now, most people who have seen the films out of Marvel Studios (the two Iron Man films and The Incredible Hulk, all of which I would advise you see if you plan on seeing The Avengers in 2012) and are fans of comic book superheroes in any regard were dreading this movie going in. And I've got to be completely honest, I was one of those people. For those of you who aren't familiar with comics, Thor was easily one of the most difficult properties that Marvel could have chosen to adapt to the big screen. I mean, Iron Man is basically an engineer's wet dream crossed with James Bond crossed with Charlie Sheen (and with Robert Downey Jr. at the helm, there was no damn way that wasn't going to be palatable), and the Hulk... well, the Hulk only had to be better than Ang Lee's disaster of a movie, and that wasn't that hard.

But Thor was different. Not only was Marvel dealing with one of the most powerful superpowered beings ever created (he's a fucking Norse god), they were dealing with a rich, extradimensional backstory steeped in Norse mythology, Flash Gordon-esque styling and the incredibly awesome panorama created by the comic legend Jack Kirby. Making Thor marketable to an audience and critics naturally skeptical of fantasy (and fantastic superheroes in general) would be a Herculean task indeed, particularly marketing it to the demographic that made hits out of garbage like Michael Bay's fucking horrendous Transformers movies, or car porn like Fast Five.

And the scary thing is that seeing it on screen, it worked so fucking well.

In terms of plot, it's basically a riff on Sword in the Stone with a load of Norse mythology and the musings of Arthur C. Clarke (look it up - the man was one of the best damn sci-fi authors of our generation), the second so much that he gets bloody name-dropped in the movie, mixed with a healthy load of government secret agents.

And you know what? It works. The whole mythos of the Norse gods, most of which is explained in an excellently done opening sequence courtesy of Anthony Hopkins, coudl have taken an entire three hour movie to explain in depth, but Thor cleverly sidesteps that particular hurdle by just running with all the ludicrous concepts and telling the audience to just go with it (and really, with dealing with sci-fi fantasy like this, to make it work in any way shape or form, you need to do this - if you don't, you end up with painful disasters like the Dune movie). And better yet, while there are elements of ludicrousness (there's a very quasi-campy Flash Gordon feel to much of Asgard - which I really had no problems with, because that's the right way to handle this sort of mythos), the fact that all of the actors playing gods are playing it straight makes the movie feel less campy and more epic (which was a huge relief, at least for me).

So, let's move onto the actors - and at this point, I think the tables have turned when it comes to comic book superhero movies. Back in the disastrous age of Batman & Robin, it was considered shameful to have those roles on your acting resume (at least in the eyes of the Academy), and I bet everyone (yes, including Schwarzenegger) is ashamed of that movie. But look at how things have turned - now most actors are fighting for these roles. Now we have actors like Natalie Portman and Anthony FUCKING Hopkins starring in one of the most ludicrously awesome comic book superhero movies every made - and you have no idea how much it works. Seriously, to see actors with genuine talent playing these roles brings a smile to my face (albeit considering Natalie Portman was in the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, it probably wasn't that huge a step - but then again, she did win an Academy Award this year).

So yeah, Natalie Portman does a great job as Jane Foster, Stellan Skarsgard does a passable job as her patron scientist while Kat Dennings plays comic relief as her assistant grad student. And Clark Gregg plays everyone's favourite wise-ass SHIELD Agent Coulson. But really, the actors doing the real heavy lifting are the gods of Asgard. Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, and Joshua Dallas play the Warriors Three (Thor's main backup) and Jamie Alexander plays Sif (Thor's female backup warrior who has fantastic screen presence and who really should have been given more to do - and considering what she does do in the movie, that's saying something). Rene Russo (!!!) plays Thor's mother Frigga, and it's a damn shame she's given so little, but when she is on screen, she does a good job. Colm Feore plays the villainous frost giant king Laufey (side comment here - while there was some subtle CGI in terms of body construction, the majority of the makeup were practical effects, and I appreciated that), and for one of the more bland villains in the Marvel universe, Feore really brings some presence to the role. And anybody who said Idris Elba wasn't good enough to play Heimdall (the guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost which the gods use to travel through the realms) or because he was black (in the comics, none of the Norse gods were)... well, trust me when I say you're all wrong in the best way possible.

Two performances I'd like to talk about are those of Anthony Hopkins as Odin and Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Thor's brother (those familiar with Norse mythology... just see the movie, you'll understand). Let me say right off the bat that Hopkins owns every damn scene he's in - the man's an incredible actor, and he's probably one of the few actors alive today who I think could deliver Odin's lines with the power and gravitas required of the character. But that's Anthony Hopkins - he's awesome in nearly everything he's in (with some *coughWolfmancough* exceptions, obviously). The real surprise came from Hiddleston as Loki. This guy brings multi-dimensionality to a pretty interesting character, and is a far better actor that I would have expected. He brings a very interesting dimension to Loki's character that I certainly wasn't expecting - namely that by the end of the movie, I had no bloody clue what his motivations were, and his performance was so damned good I couldn't tell if it was a fault of the script or whether or not this guy really is that good. My only issue is that I find it a bit hard to buy him as a completely credible threat at the moment - he's very unassuming, and he never really has the same gravitas to his performance as most of the cast. But he's still very good, and I was quite happy with his performance.

But, of course, the scene stealer with Chris Hemsworth. This guy's been in practically nothing, other than a brief scene in the last, incredibly mediocre Star Trek reboot from 2009, and yet he comes into the movie with as much presence as Hopkins and nearly as much gusto. This is fantastic casting for Thor - he not only looks the part to a scary degree, but acts it flawlessly as well. What really impressed me, though, was the man's range and acting chops - holy shit, this guy is a find. He's incredibly watchable, even when behaving like the douchebag that Thor is in the beginning of the movie. Let me make this quite clear - Chris Hemsworth carries this movie more than any other actor or special effects, and I certainly want to see more of him.

Of course, part of the reason why Hemsworth was so damn good was the direction, courtesy of Kenneth Branagh. Branagh, at first glance, seems to be an insane choice for a director - he's most well-known for Shakespearean adaptions to the screen, hardly the choice for a big-budget comic superhero movie like this - but it's clear that the people at Marvel have some people with brains behind them. Let me make one thing very clear: to save this movie from becoming spectacularly campy, you needed a director who could get the actors deliver the almost stage-like dialogue in Asgard in a way that sounds epic. And for that, you choose someone like Branagh - and it saved this movie. You can actually buy the grandoise statements, the dialogue seemingly lifted straight from the comic page, simply because Branagh directed the hell out of this movie.

Now as an action director... eh, well, he's not Zack Snyder or Jon Favreau or Spielburg, but Branagh does a decent job with the action scenes, both in Jotunheim, Asgard, and on earth. To be honest, he likes dutch angles (where they tilt the camera) in his cinematography a bit too much, and while he's not a hack who abuses shaky-cam like Michael Bay, he does cut the action scenes a little too quickly to see everything, which I found a bit frustrating (particularly in Jotunheim).

From there, we move to CGI - and I've got to be brutally honest here, but while most of it works really well... eh, it's not perfect, and it's not the best CGI I've ever seen either. Asgard is freaking beautiful (almost scarily faithful to Jack Kirby's original image), and I really liked the effects that were done on Earth (even some of those I thought I would HATE), but once again, some of the pricier effects in Jotunheim don't really work quite all the way for me. Don't get me wrong, to render and sell those action scenes must have been obscenely difficult, and Thor throwing Mjolnir looks pretty damned awesome, but it just didn't feel as epic as I was hoping for, particularly compared to the later acts of the film. Eh, you can't get everything (and on another side note, can I just comment on how the costumes and set design were fucking amazing? I'm serious, this is some of the best translation from comic-to-film since the first Iron Man, and I loved every second of it).

From there, we move to the score - and I've got to say, echoing some critics, this score is excellent. Unlike the previous Marvel films, there are some definitive epic hooks to this music, and I seriously dug it. I sincerely hope we see more of this music in later Marvel films, because music this good helped sell this movie.

And finally, the script... and here, I'm really conflicted. Not only because I really liked this movie and because so much of this script just worked on so many levels, but because the moments that didn't work really didn't work, and that's mostly because the script just wasn't as strong as that of, say, Iron Man, or The Dark Knight. Despite the fact the dialogue is surprisingly witty and well-written (for the most part) and that Marvel's getting a lot better in placing their little shoutouts in this movie (seriously, most people who aren't really paying attention are going to miss some HUGE things), some elements of the script just don't really work all the way. Take Kat Dennings' character, for instance. Don't get me wrong, she's got a few funny lines, but most of the time, they lacked any sort of snap or lasting appeal, nothing that's really memorable or good. To tell you the truth, Chirs Hemsworth in the second act of this film is far funnier than Kat Dennings was (hell, Hemsworth was funnier throughout the entire damn film - and I've got to say one thing, this movie has some really, really funny moments).

Or take the romance between Jane Foster and Thor - yes, minor spoiler, but even the trailers have given this away, so hush. To me, while one really can't deny that Portman and Hemsworth have really good chemistry together (some of the best onscreen chemistry in a superhero movie, I might add), the romance just feels a little slapdash. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would have liked to have seen more of that relationship (and I would have had absolutely no problem with this movie being another hour long, I might add). Part of the problem is that they were deliberately downplaying the romance - an idea I wholeheartedly support in a movie with this much mythology - but another problem was time constraints. I'm sorry, but considering the amount of talent that was onscreen and the sheer amount of plot and material this film had to work with, it could have easily been longer than 114 miniutes (less than two hours). And that's the thing - Thor could have easily been three hours long, and I wouldn't have cared at all. I just think with more time, this movie could have surpassed being merely good and gone straight for excellent. And I mean, come on: if bloody Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen can be two-and-a-half hours long and still attract an audience, there's no excuse for cutting this one short.

And there was the ending, which I will not spoil. Don't get me wrong, the ending surprised me by being well-thought and interesting, but the motivations and acting of the main villain are a little messed up - I'm just not quite sure I know what exactly he was going for. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of complexity and interesting questions that are raised if you think about the implications, but when a fantasy movie like this is going in big, broad strokes, to have an ending like it did, which almost felt bittersweet to me, threw me a little offguard. I'm just not entirely sure of the message that the movie was trying to convey, what the movie was trying to say. I know I'm probably reading far too much into this, but with a mythology this extensive and an ending this perplexing, I'm genuinely puzzled with this.

But I've rambled on far too long, so let's cut to the chase. To summarize, Thor is a very, very good movie, probably the best I've reviewed thus far. It's not as great as the first Iron Man, or The Dark Knight, or Watchmen, or Spider-Man 2, but it is very, very good. About as good (in my opinion, better) than Iron Man 2, and certainly worth your time. You will appreciate this movie more if you've seen the previous three Marvel films, and even more if you're a fan of the comics, but that's par for the course with a movie like this. It's a ton of fun, and it's a huge relief to see Marvel succeed with arguably their most difficult property. So a recommendation from me - go see Thor, you won't regret it.

Also, side note when it comes to previews: Captain America looks great (PLEASE don't suck, we've been hurt so much before...), Cowboys And Aliens looks... interesting, Green Lantern looks like a fucking disaster, and the new Transformers trailer nearly made me want to kill everything within fifty meters of me.

Oh, and apparently Robert Pattinson (the dude playing Edward in the Twilight movies), is going to be in a Cronenburg movie. Please excuse me why I go weep for humanity.

 

It's about a dude with a big hammer that fights shit.

edit: quotefail

 

I was all for Captain America until I saw they stuck him in that fucking stupid looking helmet. In comics it's alright, but IRL it just looks stupid and makes me laugh instead of taking the role seriously. Same thing with the shield. Cap IS the shield, so you can't get rid of it, but it just doesn't look right to me.

 

I saw Thor the other day, it was ok, but nothing special. Some excellent one liners, a few good scenes, plenty of meh.

What made the experience for me was that one of the guys I was watching it with was raised to actually believe in the old Norse religion...his reaction was rather amusing!

 

I was wondering why it was shown earlier here in Asia rather than in North America first. (Probably due to the rampant film piracy thing.)

I watched it last week, and leery about any film adaption about mythology due to the epic fail that is Clash of the Titans, Thor really surprised me with its well written script. Hemsworth carries the character well without any effort at all, though I did find his and Natalie Portman's flirting a bit awkward.

The best thing about this movie was how they portrayed the world tree with Asgard on top and with other eight realms making up the branches including Earth.

I suspect there will be an influx of Harry Potter/Asgard universe fan fiction stories in the near future. I can already see it, with Harry being another adopted son by Odin, or Magical Earth belonging to one of the nine realms that comprises the Yggdrasil.

 

How does that even happen?

 

I see what you did thar.

Fixed that for you.