Thor - Film Review

  TheBloodyCritique’s ‘Thor’ Film Review

I’m playing catch up with all these Marvel products and in a lead up, of sorts, to my Thor Ragnarok review I thought I’d watch the other Thor films first, so here we go! Thor was released in 2011 and it’s directed by Kenneth Branagh who, after a quick scan of his filmography, hasn’t done anything particularly noteworthy. The film stars Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins and Chris Hemsworth as Thor. After an attack on Asgard (the magical realm Thor’s from) during Thor’s inauguration onto the throne Thor, despite his father’s orders, seeks out the culprits by travelling to their planet and attacking them. His father punishes him by taking away his powers and sending him to earth to do some soul searching. 

Thor is a fun little movie and it kept me entertained but it’s extremely mediocre. Visually it looks fine, it’s Marvel and it looks like a Marvel film but nothing particularly eye catching was done despite the amazingly colourful visuals. It’s written fairly sloppily, the balance between Asgard and Earth is a little off and the Natalie Portman storyline felt forced, she’s literally in the movie for no other reason than to give Thor a love interest. I thought it was a solid good, it’s decent film but it’s not something that connects with you or really leaves any impression at all, I watched it, I was entertained enough and two hours went by, if I wasn’t writing this I’d have probably immediately forgotten it already. 

I laughed a few times, I liked some of the fish out of water human with Thor when he arrives on earth and interacts with the ‘mortals’, I also really liked the two young actors they recruited to play Thor and Loki as boys, they’re only in the film briefly but I totally believed them as the young versions of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, whoever picked them has a great eye! The film moves at a good pace, you could trimmed by 10/20 minutes probably but I never quite got bored, I rolled my eyes but I don’t think I was bored, I have been drinking though. I didn’t really like the Lord of the Rings style opening with the Anthony Hopkins narrated history lesson of Asgard, I liked it in Lord of the Rings though.

The performances were all okay, Hemsworth is a likeable meathead, Hiddleston was great as Loki who’s a better villain than Marvel are usually able to produce, he’s given enough depth character-wise to justify his actions and is somewhat conflicted which makes him interesting, kind of. Natalie Portman probably delivers the best performance but it’s based on nothing, it’s just a waste of effort, she could have delivered a terrible performance and her character would have had the same impact, there’s no chemistry between her and Hemsworth and the idea of their relationship being a love story is stupid, obviously that’s what they were going for but the film does absolutely nothing to earn or even establish it, really, they’re in love? Fuck you. 

I was entertained enough to give this a recommendation but only to people who are in a particularly Marvel sort of mood, it’s a bit of fun! I didn’t connect with it emotionally of course and I wasn’t really invested in the characters that much either nor was there any tension in regard to their fate but I thought overall it was an okay movie. If you’re looking for something really good you can give this a miss, you wouldn’t be missing much not watching it but if you’re looking for an easy popcorn flick Thor works just fine for that. One down, two to go, I’ll be posting my review for Thor: The Dark World in a few hours so be sure to check back for that! I’m gonna give Thor 6.7/10.  

What did you think of the first Thor movie?