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THOR (review)

Produced by Kevin Feige
Screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne
Story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich
Based on characters created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston,
Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård, Kat Dennings, 
Clark Gregg, Idris Elba, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, 
Josh Dallas, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo 
Directed by Kenneth Branagh  
 

I had high hopes for this latest adaptation of an iconic Marvel character, but unfortunately its a bit of a mixed bag, and doesn’t really bode well for this summers Captain America: The First Avenger (by another workaday director, Joe Johnston).

A brief outline of the plot: Jane Foster, an astrophysicist, and her two companions, stumble across the alien god of Norse mythology, Thor, lying unconscious in the desert. He’s been banished to Earth, from another dimension, Asgard, by his father, Odin, for fuelling a war between the Asgardians and their enemies, the Frost Giants. With the help of Jane, he now has to accustom himself to human ways, whilst attempting to return to Asgard to defend it from the iniquitous manipulations of his seemingly evil brother, Loki.

First off – the director, Kenneth Branagh, is a bad choice.

Did anyone see the awful travesty that is his only other stab at out-and-out fantasy, Frankenstein?

It was as much of a discombobulated, insipid mess as the terrible and uninspired make-up job for Robert De Niro’s monster! Thor is a superhero action movie…err…did anyone notice that Branagh isn’t well known for producing rip-roaring, well orchestrated fight scenes? Or creating fantastic, supernatural worlds? I can see it now – the suits at Marvel Studios probably thought “Hey, Thor is sorta ancient mythology and full of Shakespeare-ian swashbuckling and medieval romance stuff – lets get someone like Kenneth Branagh in to helm it! ” But they should have taken a rain-check and thought it through properly, before committing to such a folly. The few action scenes just about pass muster and – as is the norm with blockbusters like this – there was obviously a lot of input from the usual small army of second-unit technicians and crew to guide Branagh’s rookie sensibilities with these detailed action set-ups – all beefed up, of course, by the CGI special effects experts in post production, later.

The Mighty Thor (which would have been a much better title) is an epic, far-out storyline in the Marvel Comics decades-spanning, complex continuity – but in this adaptation there just wasn’t enough of the cosmic grandeur, immense vistas, brutal action sequences and complex narrative connected with such a seminal character, who – lest we forget – is a god from ancient Norse culture, and thus a potent ancestral memory for all of us. Thor is way more important in a mythological and historical sense than Iron Man or The Hulk, but it didn’t feel like the appropriate amount of authority or depth was given to the character. Fundamentally, It just didn’t feel ‘epic’ enough and needed to have more of the classic Lee/Kirby ambiance to it!

There were, however, some inventive and well crafted elements and scenarios, in terms of mise-en-scene. The depiction of Asgard, with its gleaming, retro-futuristic halls, chambers and castle-like spires beneath a colourful Hubble Telescope-like sky of distant swirling galaxies; and the frozen, mountainous fairy tale wastes of the Frost Giants kingdom, Jotunheim, are good and look pretty – but that’s about it. They are what I call ‘CGI light’ – they don’t quite look realistic enough, and have an odd surface quality to them. I think the problem here is a recurrent one in so many similar fantasy action films, with their CGI rendered fantastic landscapes – so much money, time and effort is spent on creating these incredible other-worlds, but then the (partly in-computer) camera whizzes by at break-neck speed, swerving this way and that, all in a matter of seconds, and you hardly get a chance to take in what just went by. I’m not saying that fast is necessarily bad, and like a lot of horror films, its sometimes better to have only briefly glimpsed whats on screen, but most of the time you feel like you are being hustled and bustled through such sequences, perhaps because the CGI isn’t actually that great in detailed close-up. It would be worthwhile to let the camera linger on these fantastic creations, for more than a few seconds, once in a while (if they can stand up to the scrutiny).

Again, the same problem appears with the action set-pieces – as with most blink and you will miss it, family-friendly CGI blockbusters these days – a lot of the fight choreography in Thor is incomprehensible and ends up being a mish-mash of punches, limbs and flailing bodies, all cut up into abstract segments, with split-second edits and over-abundant, harsh sound effects.

There is no real sense of three-dimensional space in these scenes.

I pine for the days when brilliant, realistic fight sequences were done with mid-range, static or slowly moving cameras, without all this confusing fuss and bombast. Its a case of over-egging the pudding, basically. The authentic fight sequences in early James Bond films like Goldfinger (1964) or From Russia with Love (1963), and to a lesser extent, the recent Bond and Bourne films, attest to this argument. Or the scene in the superb dystopian sci-fi thriller Children of Men (2006), when Clive Owen’s character helplessly watches, from afar, the murder of Michael Caine. Another example of a perfectly executed fight scene is in Scarecrow (1973) where Al Pacino is cornered and beaten up by a bigger opponent on a countryside farm, but – unlike most films then and now  – the camera stays about 30 or 40 metres away and doesn’t move for a good few minutes, whilst Pacino gets viciously pummelled, and it is this all-seeing, but frustrating distance from the scene of the crime which gives it such a hypnotic power.

Just like in real life when you stumble upon a terrible car accident or violence, it is gut wrenching and traumatically real, not some uber-souped-up parade of silly, unbelievable camera angles, jump-cuts and fast edits. But then, as Thor, like so many other films of its type, has to pander, somewhat, to a lowest common denominator demographic, the film-makers aren’t allowed to make the themes too troublesome, or the violence too realistic, even if they wanted to.

This is partly the reason why one of the best superhero movies ever made – Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009) works so well; it was given the liberty of containing essential, more adult content, with an ‘R’ rating. Until superhero movies start to deal with more mature, risky themes, as the best superhero comics do, then they will always be popcorn kiddy candy, basically. It may not necessarily be Thor’s job to do this, but it is indicative of the over-all problems inherent within the superhero movie sub-genre.

But, as I say, there are some finer elements to Thor, like the pleasant undercurrent of quirky humour that runs throughout most of the film; for instance the awed, but witty and slightly cynical banter between Jane and her companions, when they discover The Thunder God in the desert; or the disjoint between Thor’s heroic, olde-world presence, with his arrogant, regal attitude, and the mundane, day-to-day realities of small-town New Mexico (some of these humorous scenes could have been developed even more, without injuring the overall atmosphere).

There are also some intriguing developments which further the upcoming Avengers storyline, when SHIELD capture Thor and his hammer, Mjolnir – including a tantalising cameo by Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. The familial confrontations between Odin and his two sons, Loki and Thor, are played with enough gravitas, and attest to Branagh’s forte for directing actors, with Loki’s sinister machination’s fuelling much of this. Chris Hemsworth is surprisingly good and plays Thor with the right balance of bolshy, uptight attitude, witty demeanour and endearing charm. The whole father/son conflict is a tried and tested meaty subject, but it doesn’t really take flight here, even though the narrative arc creates a moral quandary for Thor, who’s willingness to sacrifice himself for his friends ultimately redeems and wisen’s him. The inter-dimensional love story between Jane (played by Natalie Portman) and Thor may be slightly cheesy and cliche, but it was handled reasonably well.

The scenes with the Kirbyesque ‘Boom Tube’ type wormhole, Bifrost Bridge and its guardian Heimdall, are all well rendered, but more could have been made of this, and the same goes for the whole Asgard back-story, which feels kind of rushed and skimpy, even though it takes up a lot of screen-time – perhaps a three-hour film was needed to do justice to the resonant symbolism of Thor’s multifarious history, and the film is found wanting in this sense. The Frost Giants of Jotunheim are cool villains, but weren’t scary or dark enough for my liking.

Perhaps the best sequence is the New Mexico showdown with Thor and the Loki-controlled Destroyer, with its Colossus/robotic like imagery and formidable powers, but frustratingly, we only get a glimpse of Thor’s animistic manipulation of the weather, when he briefly creates a min-cyclone and employs lightning as a weapon against the Destroyer. I would have liked this primal, crucial battle to have taken its time and be more fleshed out – the slow-burning finale in, say, Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968) is a good example of how to make such showdowns thrilling and suspenseful. But – again – I think this lack of imagination and genuine craftsmanship is a creeping malaise which increasingly taints the commercially impelled, action-blockbuster genre.

Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008) is probably the best Marvel superhero movie to date and its a shame the screenwriters didn’t take such a – relatively – radical, subversive line, with the equally seminal character, Thor. Maybe its as much a fault with the pedestrian, lacklustre direction of Branagh, as it is with the generally uninspired, average script. If only the big studios – now including Marvel – would take some risks with the more ‘independent’ and imaginative screenwriters and directors! Perhaps If the producers had used some of the Ultimates, or countless other fascinating Thor story-lines, as inspirational templates, this could have been an excellent addition to the few classic Marvel adaptations, like X2 and Spider-Man, but as it is, it’s a bit too reminiscent of the style-over-content, paint-by-numbers origin stories of the likes of Fantastic Four (2005), rather than a super-heroic, cosmic version of Richard Fleischer’s Nordic masterpiece The Vikings (1958).

Oh, and forget about the 3D wow-factor – its strangely flat and almost non-existent in this, being originally conceived and filmed in 2D, then scanned into 3D.

Thor is generally entertaining, interesting and fun enough, but it is sorely lacking in the kind of visionary, epic conceptualisation required for such a legendary Marvel superhero. Fingers crossed for Captain America!

Guest review by James De Carteret

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