It bothered me enough that I'll actively avoid 3D versions of other movies given the choice.







Agreed. In fact the Asgard stuff was in danger of overshadowing the Earth stuff until SHIELD showed up.







Likewise.













Sif was the girlfriend Thor should have had all along; but the comics worked that out in the end too.




That was why I was disappointed we didn't see much of it in the main sequences of the film. It made a loevely backdrop but where was it when we needed to see the Aesir fighting frost giants in its streets?

Interestingly, the latest episodes of the Avengers cartoon I've seen also feature a Loki/Asgard plot, and [Spoilers blacked out here] take the Avengers to each of the nine realms. Again the Warriors Three and Sif play major combat roles and again each gets pretty well portrayed. The difference with the cartoon is a sense that the whole of Asgard is fighting and the whole of the city is in combat.

And as with the Thor movie, the big fight starts when Thor calls Mjolnir to him and ends when Odin wakes up to give a spanking.

Of course, the Avengers being in the Nine Realms is extra gravy. Giant Man in Jotunheim's a natural. Tony Stark getting the dwarves to help him forge uru armour was real fun. Cap meeting "Jack Fury and the Howlers" in Hel was pretty spooky; of course Hela would crush on him. And Hawkeye teams up with, um, Legolas.

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The hammer makes wonderful metallic noises when it whomps things.


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There's a reasonable trade-off between Asgardian Shakespeare-speak and modern English. When the Asgardians get cross they tend to speak more "olde-worlde".


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SHIELD is presented quite ambiguously, with a meaty role for Agent Coulson. Special Agent Barton was a very pleasant surprise and his personality seemed spot on.


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Sif, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg are all well portrayed and each has a strong role in the first half of the movie. And there's a great line where a SHIELD observer warns that "Xena, Robin Hood, and Jackie Chan have just arrived". The initial mission featuring these four, Thor, and Loki does a great job of defining each of them.

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That line was a classic!! Those four were all pretty good. I also liked the interpretation of Heimdall.

I'm not sure why Heimdall had to be black, other than to either tick the ethnic sensitivity box or to irritate white supremacists; but as a purist I was offended Sif wasn't the same skin colour as her brother.

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Thor himself has a genuine story arc as he goes from being Flash Thompson to becoming a true hero. The moment where he finds he's not worthy to lift Mjolnir is a great dramatic turn and beautifully sets up the payoff where he can heft the hammer. The actor managed to carry off the quiet scenes as well as the heroic ones, demonstrating a real range.

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I was pleasantly impressed by Hemsworth as Thor. The one thing that irked me about the look (and it's such a minor irk) was his obviously dyed eyebrows. That just looked funny.

The actor impressed me. He had to carry the main emotional load of the movie and he managed it. Special commendation to the scene where Loki speaks to him about his father's death; both actors nail their various emotions and responses perfectly.

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The "map" of the Nine Realms is very well done.

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Indeed.

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The post-credits sequence offers a direct lead-in to the Avengers movie, reveals that Loki might be behind the formation of the team, and sets up a potential tie-in from the Captain America movie too. Another "Oh my!" ending.

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Ooo that's a huge spoiler! but yes, worth hanging around through the closing credits to see it.

So far I haven't been overwhelmed with Jackson's casting as Fury, but that might be because he's been given so very little to do except play default Jackson.

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The bad:


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The movie shies away from baldly admitting that these guys are Norse gods, or that they live in a magical realm. If you want to believe that these are aliens who were mistaken for gods by Vikings and that their power comes from very advanced super-science you can do. It's one area where the script feels like it lost confidence in its ability to draw its audience along; which given it blatantly includes frost giants, the Casket of Ancient Winters etc.seems odd.

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I thought it was clear enough. The exposition during the introduction. The Erik Selvig character did pick up a book about Norse mythology at the book shop. Jane Foster also made a few comments.

Yep, but likewise we had the "these guys could be aliens using cosmic gates to visit us back in history" stuff too. I'd have preferred a less ambiguous take that allowed for more mystical trappings. Loki used very little magic and the Realm of Wonders was less wonderful stripped of its sorcery.

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No one jumped up and said "wait up - you're saying your Thor? THOR!? Norse god of thunder and what not?" granted.

This is a guy who has a day of the week still named after him. We needed to see more payoff to the "who is this guy" subplot. I wanted to see Coulson trying to explain it on the phone to Fury.

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Balder is on holiday. No sign of him anywhere in this movie.


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Jane Foster, a scientist interested in dimensional physics in this version, appears not to have anything other than a default superhero girlfriend personality. All the funny remarks and great play-off expressions go to her female friend. Jane not being a brave compassionate nurse/paramedic robs the character of one of the personality drivers that could explain Thor's attraction to her. And she's pretty much the only main character who doesn't have any contribution to make to solving the threat in the story.

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Darcy (the friend) makes up for Jane's lack of personality though. I was more concerned that her colleague, Erik Selvig, whom I assumed to be her PhD supervisor, was so lapse in his OHS observations. On reflection though I guess Foster was supposed to be the lead scientist and he was just her assistant. I'm not sure Portman managed to pull that off sufficiently in the movie. Minor quible though.

Yeah, Thor should have gone for Darcy.

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Sam Jackson didn't seem that excited about his 45-second screentime and seemed to phone in his Nick Fury. The impact of his appearance was lessened because we'd not seen him at all before the post-credits sequence to set him up.


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Somewhere in the plot meetings somebody accidentally edited out the bit that explains why Odin needs a snooze and why he might faint suddenly in the middle of a conversation with Loki. The essential two lines of exposition just aren't there.

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I thought Frigga had one line on it at least?

I'm sure there was some stuff there which I might pick up on another viewing. First time round it seemed insufficiently laid out to me (but I know from the comics what the deal is). My 13 year old son was pretty baffled.

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The indifferent:


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It's great that Loki gets more motivation and more development than the average superhero movie villain. However, on a first viewing I was left uncertain about what was going on in Loki's mind at any given time; a natural featrure of Loki, you might say, but when it leaves me puzzled as to why he's doing what he's doing even after the film's ended it's not a good thing. I applaud offering Loki some depth, but I could have used a few more depth markers. Why did Loki decide to commit genocide on the frost giants including his true father?


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See, I think Loki was awesome! I'd say he was one of the standouts and Tom Hiddleston did a great job in bringing him to life. I think that kind of confusion about why Loki is doing what he is doing is part of him being Loki - though I understand what you are saying above.

I maybe didn't praise the actor doing Loki enough. I thought he managed a nice mix between theatrical villain and nuanced troubled plotter. It's not his fault that his "daddy issues" motivation wasn't properly worked out in narrative.

To fix this we really needed more on his adoption, on his learning about his adoption, on why he might blame Laufrey and the frost giants for his adoption, on his Odin issues (does he want to rule Asgard replacing Odin or save it then wake Odin up to praise him?), etc.

Some of Loki's best moments weren't scripted. His disappointment when Sif doesn't give him the enthusiastic cheerleader support she offered Thor, his surrupticious attempt to lift Mjolnir, and of course that final scene of pure absolute Lokiness were all made effective because of the actor's interpretation of the scene.



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The battle scenes were well done but the two big set-piece finale battles both felt too easy for Thor. When you put Thor up against the Destroyer it should require a supreme effort; this was just a tough fight. Thor didn't even rip his cloak. Then the last battle with Loki felt a little anticlimactic. They stand on the rainbow bridge and have a spear and hammer fight with some minor illusion trickery. I didn't feel it served the drama. Meanwhile, the ice giant invasion of Asgard and the bravery of the Warriors Three and Sif in, um, taking Heimdall to hospital, happened entirely offscreen. These fights needed to be better storyboarded with better pacing.

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Yes, sometimes the battle scenes felt a bit off. The Destroy was visually cool, and there were a few good moments in the fight in the town with it (Sif jumping on it being one) - but there was one stage where the warriors three and Sif were just standing around in the background looking useless I remember thinking looked bad.

We really needed more civilians or SHIELD agents in danger to give everyone something heroic to do. And we needed another twist after the whole Thor-gets-his-hammer-at-last moment to establish that even with Mjolnir Thor is facing a specially tough threat.

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I did enjoy the Frost Giant world battle though, particularly the chase by the large creature.

That first battle scene was the most complete and satisfying.

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So, this movie's a strange beast, flawed by very watchable, different from other superhero fare but sometimes uncertain because of it, strong in many places but lacking in some key battles, excellent in offering character yet occasionally failing to convey motivation. I'd recommend seeing it. I'd watch it again myself. I'd really like to see Thor 2 learn from this start and put all these elements together again with those tiny tweaks to take it from good to great.

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I agree. I got more from it than I didn't. Visually I think it was stunning. Asgard as said, and Thor flying just looked so dang cool up there on the screen.

I'm told Brannagh is a fan of the Reeve Superman movies and that much was plain here. The Destroyer might as well have told Thor to kneel before Zod. But that's no bad thing.

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:)