THOR MOVIE REVIEW by KJ Eldridge
Thor was good. Not great, but good. It was an excellent appetizer for this summer’s onslaught of super hero, sci-fi, fantasy blockbusters. It had the look and feel of a good super-hero flick. It did exactly what it was supposed to.
Being a comic book fan of the most obsessive order I’m always waiting in great anticipation for these movies to come out. For years, me and my buddies would argue about who would play who in a possible movie version of our favorite characters exploits. Thor’s name would come up with of course guys like Arnold or Dolph getting the nod from most of us. The character of Thor made his first unofficial live action debut in Adventure’s in Babysitting as the mysterious blonde haired mechanic that fixes the babysitter chick’s car. The presence of a Thor type figure on the big screen was awesome then and it is still awesome now.
Chris Hemsworth aka George Kirk (found that out about 20 minutes ago and went “Oh yeah, that guy. That’s cool.”) who’s name somehow never made it into any of our debates back in the early nineties or the heated, beer fueled arguments that carried over into the early twenty-first century, killed the part. He just looks like a badass version of Thor. His face, hair, size, big Thor-like smile and just imposing stature make him a bigger than life superhero on the screen. I believed he was Thor when I was watching. The only negative thing I can take from him was the weird, at times, semi British accent and delivery of lines but even that awkwardness seemed to work (Trust me, I get the fish out of water situational humor lines). I was expecting a little harder effort in making him sound Norse-like but hell, every ancient group of people in movies have a semi-British accent and I guess the Swedish Chef voice would probably get old pretty fast.
I was pleased with the rest of the cast as well. John Quincy Hopkins as Odin was pretty solid. He’s got the stature, royalty, command thing down. Tom Hiddleston was good and malevolent as Loki. A movie like this, the bad guy has to be menacing, scary, or at least interesting. Loki was more in the interesting category and strangely likeable so he worked. Idris Elba was an odd choice for the gatekeeper Heimdall that stirred up controversy in Scandinavia, a black dude playing a Norse god, but he did a good job and looked pretty cool in the role. Other than Thor, my favorite character was the King of the Frost Giants. It may be sacrilege, but his voice was in the realm of Darth Vader good. I found out afterwards that Colm Feore was the man behind it which is probably why I liked him so much. Feore played one of my favorite all-time movie villains, Andre Linoge, in Storm of the Century.
The only character I didn’t really care for that much was Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster. She did not really add much to the movie for me. It was a role pretty much any actress with a pretty face could have pulled off. It wasn’t her fault though, a scrappy astrophysicist trying to get her ‘stolen’ research back just isn’t as interesting as Asgardian Gods dukeing it out on the rainbow highway. Either way her character didn’t take away from the movie and she had way better chemistry with Thor than she did with Anakin.
The movie itself was pure eye-candy. Asgard was a cool set and was basically a chaacter initself. The exterior shots definitely met my expectations, though some of the indoor scenes were a little barren and metallic for my taste. Frost Giant Land was your standard pile of dark rocks under a dark sky that had that ‘Matrix Machine City’ feel to it. As for Midgard they picked New Mexico, which fit the overall feel of the story.
The story was decent enough to keep my attention. I never stopped caring about what was going on but I never really got into it either. I was more excited by the portrayals of some of my favorite characters than for what was actually happening. There was a severe lack of tension throughout. I never felt that anyone was in any danger and that is a problem in an action movie. Everything that happened in the movie seemed to require very little onscreen effort from the characters. It was a pretty easy win for the good guys. But like I said, that part wasn’t really a big deal to me, I just wanted to see Thor swinging his hammer and Loki being a bastard. Mission accomplished.
The one thing that bothered me about the movie the most was the lack of hats. Thor takes off his famous winged helmet in the first damn scene and never puts iton again. I know I’m a comic geek, and bitching about stuff like that is what we do best but that Thor’s helmet! Even the little girl in the Babysitter movie kept it on for the most of it! The Warrior’s Three left their hats at home too. Hogun needs to remind me of Genghgis Kahn dammit! Volstagg needs pink streamers flowing off the top of his dome at all times and that includes when he’s inhaling goat haunches by the bucketful! Okay, I’m done whining about that until I drink a few three years from now and someone asks me how I liked the movie. All I’ll remember is Thor Took off his helmetin the first scene.
Spoilers:
A few cool things I really liked: The short scene with Hawkeye. Though it seemed forced it was still pretty sweet and his few lines were really in character. I liked the cosmic cube at the end. Maybe it’s foreshadowing to the Captain America movie. The name drops with Donald Blake, Stark, using Eric for the name of the Jane’s mentor were all solid.
That’s all I got for now on it. Go see it! It’s good. You’ll have fun.
3.5 out of 5 Moons on the Braveheart scale. (Braveheart is my only 6 Mooner so far.)
