Review: Thor:
I know, I’m late to the party again. But now that I’ve seen it, I’m glad I waited for the DVD to see this movie.
I’ll say off the bat that I am a big Norse mythology buff, and coming into the movie, I already had low expectations based on the fact that I knew it would never live up to the greatness of its source material.
Oddly enough, though, the mistakes with the mythology — such as the way they seemed to confuse Jotunheim with Niffleheim — didn’t bother me all that much. In fact, I rather liked the sci-fi explanations they gave to the Norse myths. Most of the gods’ portrayals felt right to me, if a little rough around the edges at times, and re-imagining the Rainbow Bridge as a wormhole was quite clever.
In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the first twenty minutes or so of the movie that were set purely in Asgard and Jotunheim.
And then the rest of the movie happened.
What follows is a spree of cliche “fish out of water” silliness that I’ve only seen in every sci-fi or fantasy crossover story ever. Even this I could have lived with, as Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, is quite charismatic and does an adequate if not stellar job in his role — not that it was a challenging part in any way.
But the movie just keeps spiraling downward. Going in, I at least expected a fun action movie, if not a smart one, but it didn’t even deliver there. The action sequences in this film were few, short, uninspired, and generally uninteresting. Chris Hemsworth, while likable, was not enough to carry the movie as a character piece, so it needed the action to hold the viewer’s attention, but it didn’t work as an action movie, either.
I also have to take issue with Thor’s love interest, a scientist played by Natalie Portman.
Now, I like Natalie Portman. I’ve seen her in other things, and I think she’s a very talented actress. Which leads me to wonder what the Hel* happened.
*(Mythology nerds will see what I did there.)
As should be obvious by now, I was not overly impressed with Thor as a movie, and Natalie Portman’s character was easily the most irritating part of it for me. She spends the entirety of the movie doing nothing but gush over Thor like a thirteen year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. I just wanted to punch her.
Perhaps the most important of my objections to this movie, though, is the fact that it simply didn’t make any sense. I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, so I won’t get into specifics, but there are plot holes in the ending that I could drive a bus through.
I will say one good thing about Thor, though. I thought that Tom Hiddleston was very good as Loki. In fact, he was too good.
Despite all his sleaziness, selfishness, and pettiness, I ultimately found Loki to be the most likable character in this movie. In fact, due to some of those plot holes I mentioned above, I spent the film’s climactic fight scene hoping Loki would win. Considering Loki was supposed to be the villain, I really don’t think that’s “working as intended,” as we gamers would say.
Overall rating: 4.7/10 Thor has some very good parts, but they are few and far between.
(PS: I did not come up with the title of the review. I wish I had, but I didn’t.)
New article:
WhatMMO has posted another of my articles, Most Famous WoW Players. You can probably guess who made it to number one, but if you need a hint, he has chicken, and he will be your pal for life.
The book is presented as something out of the Diablo universe, a record created by the character Deckard Cain. In fact, Barnes and Noble’s website even lists the author as “Deckard Cain.”
One thing I found particularly interesting was the notion that humans are the children of both angels and demons, which explains why they are simultaneously capable of such love and such hate. I was also intrigued by the implication that the High Heavens and the Angiris Council may be just as much of a threat to humanity as the Hells and the seven Evils.
Overall rating: 8.5/10 “The Book of Cain” won’t appeal to many people, but it’s a must-have for those few who do fit into its targeted demographics.
