This is a movie review of Thor, from Paramount Pictures. It stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgård & more. It’s directed by Kenneth Branagh.
It was Saturday, mid-afternoon at the Redwood Century 21 movie theaters. It’s an excellent facility. The first crowd came out and everyone was smiling from having just seen the movie. Excellent first real-time movie review. My theater was about 90% full for Thor. Don’t fret, it was an early showing.
Thor starts out as we’re watching Jane Foster (Portman) chasing a weather phenomenon and after a few events in this opener scene. We then switch to Asgard and backtrack a bit to see how Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets himself banished to Earth by dad, Odin (The venerable Anthony Hopkins).
The story evolves from there, alternating between Earth and Asgard as the two plots that depend on each other, develop in each realm, respectively.
Each, depending on or supplementing events in the other, to one degree or another.
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Thor was a pure pleasure of a fun movie, pulling together a story line that developed humans and Asgardians alike. The drama was fluid within the story as we watched the development of the various characters. The humor was incredibly well timed and very successful with the audience. The surprise in the movie came from… well, keep your eyes & ears on Kat Dennings, who plays Foster’s assistant. Her comedic content & delivery is wonderful. You’ll see. (“Meow meow. ” You’ll get that when you see the movie.)
They also captured the raw power of Thor rather effectively and despite the raw power that he possesses, it’s not overplayed as much as it could be. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they captured the part in his skills with how he spins his hammer, Mjolnir, to generate and deploy the powers at his disposal.
Despite having never been a fan of the Thor comic title from Marvel, I was yet not surprised that in the end, I came out pretty jazzed from the movie experience. I had a great time.
Almost scoring a 10 with me, it missed the mark there with the developments that took place in Asgard, a place too distant from me and it didn’t grab my heart strings as the story that took place here, on my home planet, Earth. This movie could not have played as it did only being on Earth. It was very critical that some of it take place in Asgard, but I was left curious/wondering who was a god and who wasn’t in Asgard. Are they all or just some. Yet Thor is a fantastic popcorn movie and I give it a 9 on the popcorn chart on the Cinema Static movie review scale.
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Extras:
I forgot to keep my eye out for JMS, who has a bit of a part as a townie… JMS, being J. Michael Straczynski. Also, we get more than a mere glimpse of Jeremy Renner in his new role. Sweet. The extra scene that is always at the end of the credits of all the Marvel movies, was as they always are, quite the little teaser for the upcoming movie, The Avengers.