Thor

Hammer time! (sorry)

Thor is the lat­est Mar­vel super­hero film to hit the screens, and another taster for the forth­com­ing Avengers movie. And that’s the main worry. Does the film do it’s own thing, or is it (like Iron Man 2 has been accused of) an extended advert for the super­hero team-up that’ll emerge in 2012?

Whilst appear­ances from the likes of SHIELD are quite preva­lent in Thor, they’re there for a good rea­son. If a god with super pow­ers falls out of the sky, I can well imag­ine them inves­ti­gat­ing it thor­oughly. So their pres­ence works, and doesn’t feel bolted on to cre­ate some sort of con­ti­nu­ity between the dif­fer­ent Mar­vel franchises.

I’ll admit that my knowl­edge of Thor is pretty lim­ited. He was never a super­hero that really grabbed my imag­i­na­tion in the same way that Spider-Man or Iron Man did. Maybe it was the cos­tumes and the more grounded set ups of the lat­ter two heroes that appealed more. Would I be able to take seri­ously a film star­ring a god who wears a big winged hel­met, who feels espe­cially pow­er­ful whilst clutch­ing his big hammer?

Is it sup­posed to be even taken remotely seri­ously, any­way? Prob­a­bly not. This isn’t the tor­tured angst of Bat­man, after all. Gone is the winged hel­met, but there’s still lots of silli­ness to enjoy in the cos­tumes, which look great with­out being overly camp. The best gear prob­a­bly belongs to Idris Elba as Heim­dall: encased in gold, with a ridicu­lously huge two pronged hel­met sat on his bonce, he exhibits sheer cool where lesser actors would just look embarrassed.

Look at the size of that helmet!!

That’s not to say some of the other actors don’t turn in nice per­for­mances. They do. Anthony Hop­kins is suit­ably grand as the Thor’s dad, Odin. And Chris Hemsworth, as Thor him­self, expertly con­veys the shift from arro­gant bat­tle hun­gry god, to less arro­gant bat­tle hun­gry god who wants to fuck Natalie Port­man.

The real star is Tom Hid­dle­ston as Thor’s brother, Loki. Set against the back­drop of Asgard, and with all the elab­o­rate cos­tumes on dis­play, it would’ve been easy for him to slip into pan­tomime baddy mode. But he’s bet­ter than that. For a while, I actu­ally had some sym­pa­thy for him. He’s smart and capa­ble, more so than Thor, who is a bit of an idiot (a like­able idiot, but a bit of an idiot all the same). But it’s Loki’s jeal­ousy, and van­ity that prove his undo­ing. Until he lets rips at the end with a few more the­atrics, Hid­dle­ston lets his eyes do all the acting.

The film’s not per­fect, mind. Huge chunks of the story are spent in Asgard. It’s ren­dered mostly in CGI, and has a plas­tic toy-like sheen to it. Thanks to the free­dom that CGI affords the cam­era, it’s for­ever swoop­ing and div­ing, and loop­ing the loop, never seem­ingly rest­ing for too long in any one area. It gets a bit bor­ing. And the ice giants, which Thor bat­tles, have the whiff of a bad Stephen Som­mers movie.

All of this is at the expense of Thor’s time on Earth, the best parts of the film. Funny, and excit­ing, it’s a shame more time isn’t spent on our shores, watch­ing Thor adjust to our way of life. I hope the sequel will be more Earth-bound.

So how does it com­pare to other Mar­vel pro­duced super­heroes? Bet­ter than the two Incred­i­ble Hulk movies (I sus­pect Branagh tried to shy away from a more arty film, after see­ing how the orig­i­nal Hulk flopped), but not quite as good as the first Iron Man movie. The final Avengers solo film, Cap­tain Amer­ica, is released later this year. Maybe they’ve saved the best for last?