Thor brings hammer down on overblown epic

Many people are surely wondering what drew devout Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh to helm a movie about the comic book version of a Norse god who swings a hefty hammer. One has to wonder if there is another guy (an evil twin perhaps?) out there with the same name.

Sadly, no. The real Branagh took Thor and drove it straight into the Land of Lost Plots. There, the misguided cast of this failed epic meander around aimlessly for what seems like an eternity. Even at the very end, viewers are left waiting for the real movie to start. Perhaps Mark Protosevich, one of the guys who developed the story, should have been allowed to script the screenplay as well. He’s got a pretty good track record.

In the magical realm of Asgard, King Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is about to give the throne to his son, Thor (Chris Hemsworth). That ceremony is interrupted when the Frost Giants of Jotunheim break into the palace and try to steal back a casket of immeasurable power. Before taking his rightful place, Thor goes hammer-wild against the intruders, causing a major rift in a tenuous peace. Odin is forced to take away his cherished weapon and banish him.

He and the hammer end up in New Mexico where brilliant astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) stumbles upon him. There in the dry and dusty desert a fresh romance finds its first bud. Of course, Thor wants to get his power back and return home where a new threat has emerged to usurp Odin from his throne. The threat actually finds its way to the U.S. so the burly brawny god of thunder doesn’t have much choice but face up to it.

Frankly, I expected better and worse. Branagh, in the minds of many people, stands for quality and reverence towards fine dramatic productions. A comic book adaptation doesn’t immediately come to mind as a worthy project for him. Granted, it happens a lot where successful quirky genre directors (Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer come to mind) who were recruited into the high-stakes, high-profit world of superhero movies. Not that Branagh did a bad job, but you can’t really turn source material like this into Hamlet. He did try, with Thor giving one brief soliloquy. It wasn’t exactly Henry V, but it was something.

Hemsworth, it seems, was only picked for this role because of his striking eyes and willingness to prance around without a shirt. But it’s more modelling than acting. Then again, no one from the cast did much acting, though Hopkins is always a fine choice for a stately and wise king.

Thor comes to us after being laid up in development hell for years before it got green-lit. With so much time and money invested in one movie, no producer would dare just walk away. Sadly, this means the continued streak of comic book superhero movies is still gathering momentum. Within the next year alone, we can expect Green Lantern, another Batman, another Superman, Captain America, Nick Fury and The Avengers. That last one is doing its darnedest to conglomerate so many of the aforementioned into one mega movie that it just might supernova. If we’re lucky, the resulting black hole would vacuum up all of the other cartoons that should just stay on the page and never make it to the silver screen.