Cine Review: THOR12A – 114mins – 2011
Story by: J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich
Screenplay by: Ashley Edward Millar, Zack Stentz and Don Payne
Based on the Marvel Comics character created by: Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård, Clark Gregg, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Jaimie Alexander, Joshua Dallas, Rene Russo
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Proud and overconfident warrior Thor (Hemsworth; well cast), the mighty God of Thunder, is stripped of his supernatural powers and his iconic battle hammer Mjolnir and banished to earth by his incensed father, Odin (Hopkins), ruler of Asgard, after his war-mongering arrogance breaks the fragile peace treaty between the Asgardian’s and the Frost Giants of Jotunheim.
Such is the state of play at the start of this fourth Marvel Comics superhero movie from the collective Universe which has so far brought us Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 (reviewed HERE), and will continue in Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers and a third Iron Man film over the next few years.
British director Kenneth Branagh – a man most noted for his Shakespearian adaptations – may seem like a leftfield choice for a blockbuster Hollywood superhero movie, but then Thor (a character born from ancient Norse mythology) is hardly your typical superhero, and the dialogue spouted – particularly by the deities in the scenes set in celestial city of Asgard – is reminiscent of the lofty language of the Bard’s renowned stage plays.
Visually, the shimmering Asgard locales (in particular the rainbow-coloured Bifrost Bridge ; the road to other realms) look magnificently grandiose, even in the 2D screening I saw. An oft-compared fusion of Flash Gordon’s fantastical pomposity and Lord of the Rings’s towering majesty, you would expect the earth-bound scenes set entirely within a small dustball community in the New Mexico desert to feel disappointing flat given the almighty contrast, but I actually preferred the fish-out-of-water plot as the felled Thor adjusts to a mortal existence in a territory where people bawl instead of bow at his presence.
Not since Tony Stark’s silver-tongued charm in the first Iron Man adaptation has a comic book film so successfully embraced the comic without coming across cheesy: the entire audience were laughing along as Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster and her band of storm-chasing scientists (Skarsgård and a standout performance from the dryly derisive Dennings) quip sarcastically (“Mjolnir? What’s Mmnnn-mnnnn?!”) about the raving loony they accidentally hit with their car… twice.
The humour really works, and it’s almost a shame when the action shifts back to the decadently divine dimension to illustrate Thor’s nefarious brother Loki’s (the quietly slimy Hiddleston) deceitful duplicity. The shift in tone is so gigantic that you may as well be watching two entirely different films. Fortunately, Thor’s trusted compadres, Sif (Alexander) and the Warriors Three (Stevenson, Dallas, Asano) retain a playful sassiness which keeps the comedy quota at a comparative high, even when Loki sends metallic monstrosity “The Destroyer” to Earth to dispatch with his indomitable sibling and the narrative gives way to a full blown CGI sandstorm showdown.
As super-secret agency S.H.I.E.L.D. – lead once more by Iron Man’s Agent Coulson (Gregg) – descends on the dessert to quarantine the unshiftable Mjolnir and confiscate Foster’s wormhole-locating research, links to this ever-expanding Marvel-verse are further enforced without isolating those hazy on the mythology. The now-obligatory post-credits teaser once more sees Samuel L. Jackson make a cameo appearance as Nick Fury, but it feels somewhat less worthwhile and more compulsory than previous tags, but at least we know this is one silver screen superhero saga in full flight.
In a CR@B Shell: A welcome injection of dry wit helps ground this potentially outlandish Norse-God-come-arrogant-superhero tale and keep the fantastical accessible. I still heavily favoured the Earth-bound scenes, but Branagh’s Thor was nevertheless a mighty good summer blockbuster – even if it is only April.
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Okay, to be fair, as the film progresses and the two couples converge and formulate something vaguely resembling a plan, the disjointedly fragmented shards of narrative do start to fuse together somewhat, but by this point in the film I had lost all hope of logic and was simply watching in a gore-thirsty braindead state akin to the reanimated dead, who, I may have forgotten to mention, seem able to beam themselves in and out of thin air for no reason whatsoever – and you had a problem with zombies who could run?!
The answer, dear readers, is the latter, despite the wounded psychopath being seen running away from the ambulance which was transporting him and his victims to the hospital, thereby keeping open the possibility of his survival. But this is just one of the many red herrings Craven throws at us, which, when you consider the film as a whole, are actually rather large plot holes. The Riverton Ripper’s soul has, in fact, been transported into one of the seven newborns who came into this world the night he left it. That’s right; the killer was that darn evil that even death couldn’t stop him. Sound 
It's dark and disturbing stuff which doesn't sit particularly well alongside the more fantastical boogieman slasher flick elements, but the attempt to further demonise the striped jumper-wearing foe (who became something of a camp quipper by the tail end of the sequels) is totally justified. I will admit to being impressed by the slick link made to folk tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin, where the multi-coloured instrumentalist kidnapped the children of the German town as vengeance for being cheated by their parents. Here, Kreuger was hunted down and burned alive for his sickening indecency by the children's rightfully outraged 'rents.
Well the issue certainly isn’t with the cast; they’re all game for a laugh (impish Toby Jones even strips naked to reveal a worrying lack of genitalia), and the homage to retro "swords and sorcery" adventures makes for a remarkably rousing quest as the Prince’s encounter fantastical creatures, traitorous kinsmen, a village of murderous savages and a lithe female warrior (Natalie 
The blood-sucker's aesthetics are clearly heavily influenced by the terrifically terrifying beady-eyed snarlers from 30 Days of Night (check out my review of the DTV sequel 
Furthermore, the monsters only appear four times in the entire film – the first 45mins passes by with only a brief glimpse over the opening titles and TV news footage to quench your sci-fi desire. Even when the pair are seemingly doomed in a climatic showdown in a deserted gas station, the result is more dreamy than dramatic. Unexpected? Totally. Stunning? You betcha. “Action packed”? Dream on, Daily Mail!
There’s not a crashed space probe or leaking vat of nuclear waste in sight – these zombies (if, indeed, that classification even applies?) are possessed by demonic spawn, and “Dr.” Owen is in actuality a priest on a mission from the church to purge the Anti-Christ through the recitation of religious mantra and locating a vile of restorative blood from the original source; namely, the gangling Medeiros girl who dragged reporter Angela (Velasco, who returns here) into the darkness in the penthouse loft in [REC]’s unnerving final reel.
Sure, the plot is predictably sanguine fare as the camp’s all-important climatic competition looms and Nick pressurises Shawn into jumping ship early in favour of a football player’s house party (love or X-box – hmm, tough choice!!), but Fired Up! has real flair which elevates it above a generic direct-to-video fusion of archetypal genre tent-poles American Pie and Bring It On. Incidentally, the scene in which the entire camp lips syncs along to an outdoor screening of the “iconic” Kirsten Dunst cheer flick is laugh-out-loud hilarious.
There are obvious shades of Groundhog Day and Quantum Leap in the body-swapping, time-repeating, scientifically ludicrous concept, but this isn’t time travel (or, indeed, a comedy); the events have already taken place, so using the precious minutes to save individual passengers – such as Sean’s cute colleague Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) – is an exercise in futility. The “source code” must be utilised to analyse and investigate, so to avert any further attacks from the unapprehended bomber.
By the film’s third act, Colter has fallen in love with Christina (a woman he has only spent variations of the same 8 minutes with – 8 minutes in which he has had the overriding pressure of hunting out a bomb suspect!) and completely rewritten the laws of time and space, in severe discordance with the programme’s creator’s prior account of the source code’s limitations! I’m sure Jones and writer Ben Ripley could launch into a longwinded, jargonous explanation to verify Colter’s event-altering master plan, but this just screams “PLOT HOLE!” to me.
The early episodes in this 13 episode first run see our Thracian hero (Andy Whitfield) betrayed by Roman general Gaius Claudius Glaber (Craig Parker), separated from his loving wife, Sura (Erin Cummings), and enslaved to fight for his life as a gladiator in the ludus (or training compound) of ambitious but lowly domina (master) Quintus Lentulus Batiatus (Hannah). Aside from the grief swirling beneath Spartacus’s buff macho exterior, there’s little depth to the indulgence as heads roll, men fall and claret splatters the screen in overly protracted arena showdowns. Episode 4, “The Thing in the Pit”, is a prime unapologetically visceral standout.
Life is insignificant, everyone is a bastard and loyalty is a foreign concept in this dog-eat-dog culture. But there are varying degrees of immorality, and you will find your opinions shifting as frequently as the sands. Meathead Crixus lets his elevated status go to his head and you don’t squirm when he is humbled, but he fights for honour and his secret romance with Lucretia’s servant Naevia (Lesley-Ann Brandt) proves that a heart beats beneath his six pack. Conversely, Batiatus’s bookkeeper-come-henchman, the crippled Ashur (Nick Tarabay), initially appears harmless enough, but he has a slimy and shrewd manner which saw him fall greatly in my estimations.
The screen continually cloaked in a dense fog, and the narrative unfolding entirely on the grounds of the eerie and isolated rural house, the filmmakers certainly cannot be accused of not summoning up a remarkably appropriate atmosphere. The Banshee – a blood-stained, ghost-faced, rag-wearing spirit – is a genuinely creepy creation. Alas, it soon becomes clear that her arsenal of abilities is strickly limited to floating and shrieking (the majority of which she does off screen) – making her no more fearsome than the ghouls she awakens.
Rescued from the black hole of cancellation and back on an all new channel, this “sixth season” (if we count the four DVD movies as a 16 episode run) has been split in two, with this first volume of 13 episodes being followed in June 2011 by another 13. Spread over two discs, the episodes look fantastic in widescreen format, even in spite of all the much-debated budgetary cuts resultant from a move to a cable network. The scenes rendered in 3D (of particular note a scene from “The Mutants Are Revolting” in which Bender remains static while holding a combustible soufflé as the ship jilts and wobbles around him) look particularly clean and vivid.
Fry’s innate idiocy is once more mined in “The Duh Vinci Code” (no prizes for guessing the inspiration behind that one!), where the Fry and his great-great-great-great-gr.... nephew unlock a secret hidden in the great Renaissance artist’s works which sees them transported to an alien world where the man himself still lives – and is taunted for his relative “stupidity” by a race of gifted aliens. The source reference has long since past its kitsch peak, the story is far too much of a stretch and the plot weak, making this one of my least favoured episodes of the new batch.
Other successful episodes are “Lethal Inspection”, in which Hermes and Bender team up to track down the Bureaucrat who failed to notice a mortal glitch in Bender’s programming, “That Darn Katz!”, in which Nibbler and Amy must try to stop a race of irresistibly cute felines from altering the orbit of the earth, and the aforementioned “The Mutants Are Revolting”, the series' 100th episode benchmark, which sees the crew sentenced to a spell in the sewers – and will have an almighty impact on the future demarcation of the deformed sub-species in all future episodes. 
