Let the Summer Begin!…
“Thor“ (2.5 Stars out of Five)
**SPOILER ALERT** I may or may not give away the entire film here. The choice is yours to continue reading. Marvel Comics’ character Thor, suffers from the same problem that his predecessor, Hulk, suffered from. Neither of them have very exciting origin stories. They’re just the bruiser characters from the Avengers team. In fact, of the Avengers holy trinity of founding members, (Captain America, Iron Man and Thor,) I would go so far as to say that Thor is the least interesting of the bunch. Thor is the heavy hitter with a tender heart. His role is to hit things very hard with his hammer and to ask questions later. I for one have never been very interested in where he’s come from. And thus, that is the exact same emotion I felt while I was watching Thor. It’s sort of a ‘yea, okay it’s all happening; but why do I care?’ type of movie.
Thor comes from Asgard, a place far away from Earth and his father is the god, Odin. His father is growing old and it has fallen to either Thor or his brother, Loki, (the god of mischief) to take their father’s place on the throne. When danger rears its ugly head, the quick tempered Thor goes looking for a fight. Thor’s temper brings the threat of war to his people and an angry Odin casts out his son to exile.
Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) accidentally stumble upon the newly vanquished Thor in the desert of New Mexico. Foster and Selvig are physicists studying…something…the movie never truly explains what. Jane, her mentor/father figure Erik and their intern/comic relief Darcy (Kat Dennings) are all thoroughly taken by the intrigue of Thor. However, other than the fact that they were written into the script- the three of them offer nothing to the overall plot. Jane, Erik and Darcy are as important as most of the film’s extras. Even when Jane and Thor somehow fall in love, it still doesn’t feel like any other characters besides Thor and the Asgardians needed to be in the movie. Other than the fact that Marvel somehow had to tie this guy back to Earth so he could join the big team next summer.
The central plot is this: Thor gets exiled. He wants really bad to go back home. Meanwhile, his father takes ill. His brother Loki comes back to Earth and tells Thor that their father is dead and that Thor must remain in exile to carry out his father’s last act. Loki then returns to Asgard where he decides he’ll use the throne to make a pact with their enemies (the Frost Giants…) Loki makes it all very simple: the Frost Giants get to kill Odin, and Loki will give them back something that Odin took from them ages ago. Thor’s friends find out that “mischief” (get it? Because Loki’s the god of it…) is afoot and decide that they need to go and get their friend back so that he can save the day.
Also intertwined, is S.H.I.E.L.D. the secret organization that was introduced to us in the first “Iron Man” film. They’re wondering just who the heck Thor is, and what his hammer is doing immobile in a desert in New Mexico. They know that something is going on, but they can’t for the life of them figure out what. The creepy guy that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has been using as an ambassador (Clark Gregg) through all of the films gets his most screen time here. **SPOILER ALERT** There’s even a great cameo from another classic Avenger. That is, if you’re a fan of the comic books. Those who are not fans of the comics will probably miss it.
The special effects are big and they come often. However, just because they can make things colorful, and three dimensional, it doesn’t mean they’ve made us a great film. Like the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” or even the third “Spider-Man,” this feels like the type of summer movie that was made just so the production company could make money and continue with their ever building hype for next summer’s “Avengers” movie. Marvel needs to shell out all of the origin stories of the core Avengers guys before the “big” film hits theatres. Of the ones they’ve released so far “Thor” probably falls in between Edward Norton’s “Incredible Hulk” and “Iron Man 2.” Aside from expensive special effects, a weak origin story mixes with pretty much worthless secondary characters, creating nothing more than the usual summer movie popcorn film that we’ve seen a million times before. The big man, Captain America, gets his big budget, big screen treatment next. After an average Hulk, a decent “Iron Man 2” and a barely passable “Thor” film, I wait with bated breath. With the boys of summer currently playing on grassy diamonds across the U.S. if Marvel were a baseball team, they’d be batting about .250 with their film offerings since “Iron Man”. Hopefully were not all bored by the time “Avengers” gets here. (Joss Whedon hear our prayers.)
Stay until after the credits for Marvel’s usual teaser!!
