Thor

A lot of comic fans did a double-take when it was announced that Kenneth Branagh would be helming the film adaptation of Thor. Known primarily for his acclaimed work in bringing Shakespeare to the big screen in the 1990s, Branagh isn't the first person most would think of when it comes to norse god-superheros and their mighty hammers, but on closer inspection (and a viewing of the film itself) he is revealed to be quite a natural choice given the nature of the script and the way it brings Marvel's Thor mythos to the screen.

The film Thor has two missions - the first is to introduce audiences to the character of Thor and to have him engage in a suitably spectacular adventure for our entertainment, and the second is to put the character on track for the upcoming Avengers film (which will team up the Marvel superheroes Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America). The Avengers stuff isn't quite as intrusive here as it was in Iron Man 2, at least not in the sense that it seems to be stealing screentime from the film's main plot-strands. In fact, the film does quite a deft job of juggling the Earth-set sequences and the perilous Asgardian brink-of-war stuff back on Thor's homeworld, without either coming across as a 'main' plot to the other part's 'subplot'. And if it wasn't lumbered with being a set-up for The Avengers, we would have a surprisingly self-contained superhero story that could stand apart quite confidently from its peers. Even with The Avengers foreshadowing, it's still quite a decent movie.

Branagh's familiarity with Shakespeare actually makes a lot of sense in the context of this story. In Thor we have a hero with a fatal flaw - much like Othello had jealousy and Hamlet had indecision, Thor has arrogance. The jealous and slippery, silver-tongued nature of Loki also makes him a villain very much in the style of Iago and Polonoius; the villains to the aforementioned Shakespearean heroes. Add to that the way the film very naturally segues back and forth between the more humourous and grounded Thor-on-Earth stuff and the high drama of the Gods back on Asgard, and you have the bones of a story that isn't all that far removed from the all-encompassing tragedies of Shakespeare. Of course, this being a Marvel superhero film, it can't exactly end with the hero's death - but there is certainly a sense of melancholy in the coda that suggests Branagh's confidence in marrying these low and high culture forms of storytelling together.

The Asgard sequences look amazing, a lot of the design work is a lot more inspired than anything I was expecting. Chris Hemsworth is actually the standout of the entire cast, he's charismatic and quite funny when Thor is put amongst the mortals... it made me only wish there had been more sequences exploring his interactions with everyday humans, but I can also appreciate the balance that Branagh and the creative team were going for and I guess it doesn't hurt for them to leave us wanting more.

DIRECTOR: Kenneth Branagh
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne. Based on the Thor characters created by Stan Lee (which are even more loosely based on Scandanavian myth).
KEY ACTORS: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, Colm Feore, Rene Russo, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Jeremy Renner, Josh Dallas

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Thor comics created by Stan Lee, Larry Leiber and Jack Kirby.
- Thor has appeared in several animated series and animated films. He also made a live action appearance in The Incredible Hulk Returns.
- Thor is part of an extended storyline set up by Marvel films in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2. This follow through Captain America and into the superhero team-up film The Avengers.