For a while, I thought Thor was a GWBush parable. Here’s Thor (Chris Hemsworth, who is every bit as able an actor as Sam Worthington or a can of Chunky soup), the unexamined privileged son of the king, long on bravado, short on cerebral. He lives in an ultra-fancy platinum gated community and travels around with a personal bevy of elitist yes-men do-nothings. His first taste of power coincides with an attack on Valhalla, so after spending a full two seconds to examine the evidence, Thor decides to go after his father’s old enemy. First, however, he “consults” his posse, who do nothing but enable his idiocy. Sound familiar?
After this point, the metaphor fades. Two key things happen to send the plot in a different direction – Thor loses his hammer and gets banished to Earth. Also we introduce Natalie Portman and suddenly the film kind of changes from action/adventure to some sort of weird John Hughes homage. How can Natalie get Thor’s attention? Will Thor care? Maybe if she passes him a note. Does Thor read? And I wish it had been a John 
Hughes homage, because then maybe Natalie’s best friend Darcy (Kat Dennings) would urge Natalie to change her affections from the big-muscled idiot to a guy who actually treats her nice and, BTW, doesn’t live, literally, on another Astral Plane. We all know how long distance relationships work out. At this point in my fictional film, maybe a bespectacled, say, Ryan Gosling or Topher Grace might show up and Natalie could learn the true meaning of love.
Rats. Even my imagination made a cliché. Still would have beaten the actual screen version. My main problem with Thor is the standard formula which allows for the hero to be only as powerful as his weapon. Thor with the hammer = invincible. Despite the big muscles and years of combat training, however, the immortal God sans hammer can still be taken down by a couple of interns. So the movie becomes entirely about Thor’s quest for his hammer. Yawn. And once he gets the hammer back, well, we don’t really have a good opponent for you. Sorry about that. Maybe next film.
Rated PG-13, 115 Minutes
D: Kenneth Branagh
W: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne , J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich (Really? Five guys to adapt a comic book. Really?)
Genre: Boring superhero
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who dig Hammertime!
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Strict monotheists
