Film Review - Thor (2011)

Thor is based on the Marvel comic and stars Australian Chris Hemsworth as Thor, the God of Thunder and son of Odin played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, but after a battle with the Frost Giants, Thor is exiled from his home of Asgard to Earth, but that is only the beginning.

Now before I go into the film itself, I want to talk about my expectations for this were, after I saw the trailer for this it made me think that I was going to expect a slightly better version of last year's Clash of the Titans, which wasn't all that much of a movie to begin with but were my expectations met?

Well, no as I thought this was 'Thor'-ing being a representation for boring, allow me to explain why:

1. No Strong Villain: Probably my Paramount objection to this is the lack of a strong Villain for Thor to do battle against, I have said this before but I will say it again that in an action picture or sci fi picture or whatever you have to have a strong villain for it to work, look at how successful the Star Wars Trilogy is still after all these years, chock that up to Lord Darth Vader and the awesome might of the Galactic Empire, here Loki just comes across as a total gimp who posed no real threat and personally, I wanted Kratos from the God of War series to come in and rip his guts out so he'd become the villain, now you'd have a movie.

2. Lack of Imagination: Next would be no real imagination in the script, the early scenes on Asgard and the fight with the Frost Giants was well done but the scenes on Earth felt a lot like the small town scenes in Superman II and the SHIELD stuff felt lifted from last year's Iron Man 2 and even with the whole frost world, it looked more like Mordor after a 100 year Blizzard.

3. Waste of Talent: It's hard to believe a movie this boring has all of this talent attached: Director Kenneth Branagh, Actors Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard, Rene Russo, Hopkins and even Writer J. Michael Straczynski, the worst of this is Portman, a good and intelligent actress reduced to a giggling nitwit when in the presence of the big strong man, if Anne Hathaway had been in that role it might have worked but not with Portman.

As for Hemsworth well he is charismatic but tends to go into the Gerard Butler style of SHOUTING SOME OF HIS LINES LIKE THIS at times but apart from that I didn't mind him too much.

4. The 3D Effects: Last but certainly not least is the 3D effects work done for the film, quite frankly it sucks the big one the size of a vacuum hose, the CG effects look very substandard and in a post Avatar world it isn't good enough it looked more like digital tinfoil more than anything.

And as for the 3D, grrrrrr, let me repeat it as best I can, Dark, Dim, Fuzzy and every bit as bad as Tron Legacy's appalling 3D, made half the movie look fuzzy, seriously guys 3D is starting to get really annoying.

So all in all, I didn't enjoy this movie and as this is the first of the 2011 blockbusters to see release, it's not a good sign, hopefully Green Lantern by Martin Campbell and X-Men First Class by Matthew Vaughn will deliver the goods, 1 and a half out of 5.