Thor (**) | ||||||
directed by Kenneth Branagh | ||||||
written by Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz and Don Payne from a story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich based on the comic book by Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and Jack Kirby | ||||||
Rick Norwood
The story is loosely based on the Jane Foster storyline from Marvel's Silver Age Journey Into Mystery
comic book, the Warriors Three back-up feature in the Thor comic, and the recent story of Thor losing
his hammer by J. Michael Straczynski. Also, I suspect that Branagh has seen Neal Adam's comic book art,
with its many tilted panels (though not when Adams drew Thor), because in this movie the camera
is often tilted to one side and occasionally upside down. The upside down camera to indicate the point of
view of an upside down person is a movie cliché, but anyone who has actually been upside down knows
that an upside down person sees the world right-side-up. The inner ear knows.
The movie isn't bad, but it never thrilled me the way the Jack Kirby comic book did. The special effects are
expensive, but seldom dramatic. The transformation, over the course of a few days, of Thor's character from
mindless brawler to sensitive lover is not convincing, to put it mildly, nor is the transformation of his
language from Stan Lee Norse to modern slang.
The best superhero movies have good dialogue and memorable characters. Here there are too many characters,
who only stand out if you already know them from the comics, and no dialogue that sticks in my mind.
The most interesting character is Loki. My interest perked up whenever he was on screen. But in the climactic
battle between Thor and Loki, Loki is so obviously overmatched, it's like watching Superman battle Aquaman.
And Volstagg the Magnificent is several orders of magnitude too thin. Given that Orson Wells is dead, there
are surely some really fat actors among the living.
Even the post-credit scene is a cookie-cutter credit cookie.
Rick Norwood is a mathematician and writer whose small press publishing house, Manuscript Press, has published books by Hal Clement, R.A. Lafferty, and Hal Foster. He is also the editor of Comics Revue Monthly, which publishes such classic comic strips as Flash Gordon, Sky Masters, Modesty Blaise, Tarzan, Odd Bodkins, Casey Ruggles, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, Barnaby, Buz Sawyer, and Steve Canyon. |
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