Lets Review: Thor

Hello geeks and welcome to my first Lets Review. I’m going to talk about the new Thor movie so if you don’t want any spoilers now is the time to stop reading, go see it, then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here by the time you get back. In any case Lets Review Thor.

The Negative

I really don’t have that many complaints with this film as I do with other superhero movies. I personally feel like this was a well accomplished stab at a character that is really hard to grasp. That being said, this film could have used about a half hour more of exposition. We leap into the story fairly quickly and we really don’t slow down from there. Odin gives us a very brief explanation about who the Asgardians are and what went down with the war with the Frost Giants. Being a fan of Thor comics, I easily understood what was going on but I couldn’t imagine how other audience members were wrapping their heads around the brief scraps of information we were given. The same could be said for the major plot points of Odin Sleep and The Destroyer Armor which never get any real explanations. Odin slips into a coma randomly and were not given a clear reason why. Being a Thor fan I knew that this was Odin going into Odin Sleep in order to recharge his almighty god powers, but I had to later explain this concept to my parents after watching it with them.

As another problem I really didn’t believe that Thor had a life changing moment because of falling in love with Natalie Portman. Thor barely spends anytime at all with her onscreen and it just doesn’t seem like this would be why he changes. For me the big life changing moment was when Loki slipped into Thor’s prison room and told him that Odin was dead and that Thor was forever banished in the hopes of maintaining a piece with the Frost Giants. You can clearly see the guilt across Thor’s face at this moment and how he is truly ashamed of his actions. This is the moment that seemed to teach Thor his much needed humility that he was lacking. Even more ironic is that this moment was brought about by Loki who was only using it as a ploy to get Thor to fall into a depression. I would easily ignore Natalie Portman and accept the prison scene as the explanation for his change but it is made blatantly clear during the final fight that she was his reason.

My final problem with the movie is that for a film about the God of Thunder, there was a severe lack of power behind it. That is to, I didn’t really get to see Thor cut loose with his powers. He uses his lightning powers maybe twice in the film. I don’t know about you, but I distinctly remember lightning being Thor’s main attack of choice. Sure it was really cool how Thor fought with the Frost Giants by spinning Mjolnir like he does in the comics, but I would have really preferred to have seen him setting the skies alight with massive bursts of lightning. It’s kind of like going to a Superman movie and finding out the only powers he uses are flight and super strength. You want to see Superman cut loose and use heat vision or super breath at some point in the movie. That’s why this came off more as a disappointment as I felt like I hadn’t really gotten a good scale of how powerful Thor really is based on what the movie gave me.

The Positive

I was a big fan of the supporting cast in this one. I really liked how all the Asgardians were portrayed, especially Heimdall who was just freakin awesome in every one of his appearances. Asgard was beautifully designed and really came off as a futuristic haven for the gods. Overall I really liked the entire film, except for those three complaints. I felt like for a film about a Thunder God from another dimensions it was easy to get into it and enjoy. Thor, Loki, and Odin were all amazingly well portrayed and I look forward to how a sequel will continue to play on this broken family dynamic. Of course one of the gems of the film is the after credits scene which promotes the Avengers. Like I said at the beginning if you haven’t seen Thor yet this will be a spoiler. We find out that Shield has the Cosmic Cube and is pulling one of Natalie Portman’s coworkers into find out how to tap into its unlimited resources. We then find out that Loki is secretly controlling this coworker and urges him to start working on it. That was a freaking awesome preview of the Avengers. If you don’t know what the Cosmic Cube is…..look it up somewhere else because I am not about to explain to you one of Marvel’s greatest pieces of fictional lore in a movie review (aka: I’m too lazy to write about it now, maybe later). If you have been keeping up with the rumors going around the Captain American film, you should know that the Cosmic Cube is what the main villain, The Red Skull, is going after in the movie. This is how Captain American and Thor are going to tie into each other. I can only guess how Nick Fury got his hands on the Cosmic Cube, but it looks like we’ll find out more in the Captain America film. Having Loki be the one who gets to look at the Cosmic Cube definitely sets him up for being one of the major players in the Avengers movie, but that is of course a year away.

 

Overall

Overall, I really look forward to seeing a Thor sequel and how this film will tie into the Avengers movie. The ending comes very suddenly and I wish it gave a bit more story explanation for the audience’s sake but I still feel like it accomplished what it set out to do. I would say that it could easily stand next to Iron Man as a prime example of how superhero movies should be made. The problem with that statement is that Marvel shouldn't be trying to compare how to make Thor grounded within the same world as Iron Man, but instead take on the fantasy epic that is his story. I give Thor a 3.8 out of 5.

Thanks for reading
-Headshot Bunny