Thor Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Thor
Year: 2011
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Country: US
Language: English 

I won't lie, I hate superhero flicks with a passion. For the most part they are incredibly superficial (rich/muscular/good looking guy saves us all!) and have the same old Jesus allegory (rich/muscular/good looking guy sacrifices himself for us!) When the opportunity to watch Thor came up I avoided it like the plague. Eventually I caved in, sat down with my girlfriend to watch it and, this is something that I never thought I would say,  actually started to enjoy it.

The warrior Thor (Hemsworth) is cast out of the fantastic realm of Asgard by his father Odin (Hopkins) for his arrogance and sent to Earth to live among humans. Meanwhile his brother Loki (Hiddleson) appears to be creating havoc in Asgard.

There is no polite way to say this, Thor is an assclown. He is self-righteous, narcissistic and arrogant throughout the entire film, even after learning his morality "lessons" on Earth. Along with his piss-poor attempts at being funny, I can only conclude that this Thor character was meant to be a satire of the average superhero  and a criticism of masculinity. Meanwhile the "villain" of this story, Loki, is a tortured soul who just wants to be loved. He is an incredibly deep well written character who I could not help but sympathize with. The entire running time I was begging for Thor to die and for Loki to come out on top. Considering the enormous amount of fans Loki has, it seems others have done same.

There is a Shakespearean vibe to the plot, if you see the film from Loki's point of view. Loki is a tragic character who is ultimately doomed, his family and friends do not trust him in the slightest even though he's not necessarily doing anything "evil". To quote Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood Loki is essentially a "Bastard in a basket", a creature nobody wants or cares for, he is Hamlet.  If you watch the view from Thor's point of view, then I feel pity you. The "fish out of water" scenario is cliche, tripe and ultimately pointless. It's as if the writer's had set up Thor to fail as a character. Ultimately I enjoyed the flick, but wished it had been focused on Loki. 

In conclusion, Kenneth Branagh indeed made the film feel larger than life and out of this world, but it's very bi-polar. In some scenes the writing and visuals excel, in others they fall completely flat. Despite coming straight from her Oscar Winning role in Black Swan, Natalie Portman bored me and her acting just didn't cut it. I would have been happy if the entire picture was just a one act play featuring Loki, that's how much the other character's did not matter. 3/5