By now everyone in the country that is going to see this movie already has, so you’ll be glad to know I would recommend it. I mean, after all, you don’t want to spend your money on a movie and then find out I wouldn’t recommend it two weeks later ;)
What Works: The Asgard scenes in the viking realm. I usually tune out to overly fantastical and complicated universes but this realm held my interest. Certainly better than the Earth bound scenes. And the villains–the frost giants–are really good, much better than recent comic book movies with cartoonish and unfrightening villains.
What Doesn’t Work: Thor can’t get the same magic going in the Earth bound scenes. Natalie Portman tries but she never really connects with the actor playing Thor who is good in one dimension (smashing stuff) but not two (loving stuff). Plus, the weakest part of the movie is the government honcho who has played a (too large) supporting role in everything from Hulk to Iron Man trying to push this Avengers movie where they all come together. Thor should be allowed to stand on its own as a franchise for at least the first movie before setting up a second franchise. Like any excitable start up business that has experienced early success, Marvel is trying to over expand too quickly at the risk of diluting all their franchises.
What I Would Have Done Differently: I know the entire plot of the movie is that Thor gets banished to Earth, but I might have stayed in space for the entire thing. That’s clearly where the movie is most fascinated and the spooky majesty of those scenes do laps around Thor sitting in diners. If they really wanted to do a fish out of water story, they could have committed to that more and had Natalie Portman’s Jane show Thor the ropes of life instead of just spar with the government on Earth.
I have not yet had a chance to go see it…I was waiting for your review before I decided to go or not. I guess this gives me the green light officially