StarThor, Why is he from outerspace all of a sudden?

THOR

(or should I say Star-Thor?)

Tom and I recently watched Thor  from 2011 (wow, a new release for once!) starring star-thoring Chris Hemsworth (Tony...heh, heh, Tony, pretty boy, Tony...), Natalie Portman, and Anthoy Hopkins, and directed by Kenneth Branagh (who?). The cast was ok, no really horrible acting in this one, but it was strangely put together. There are 2 completely different movies going on at the same time that are both different in the type of story and in the style. One story is actually entertaining while the other is super goofy. With these 2 separate stories going on at once, we were left wondering if Branagh was attempting to make The Godfather part II of superhero movies.

Thor starts out alright, and on Earth, with a story about scientists working on some research project. Natalie Portman plays an astrophysicist (Really? I mean, she is a good actress and all, but an astrophysicist? I'm not buying it. She is way too young to have a doctorate or the type of credentials that an anstrophysicist with a government research grant would have.) whose path crosses with Thor when she hits him with her car. I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but Tom and I have this running discussion about pretty girls in movies. A trend that we have noticed, and discussed a great length, is that when they put a pretty girl in a role where she is playing an intelligent character, they always have her wear glasses. (and be have been having this discussion long before Larry tells Leon to wear glasses to get more respect on Curb) Why does she have to wear glasses to be/look smart? Do they think that the stupid masses will buy it if they have a dumb girl with glasses play a scientist? This, by the way, has nothing to do with Natalie Portman. We were pleasantly suprised to see that they did not put her in glasses to make her more believable as an astrophysicist, apparently she is a good enough actress to carry the role on her own, but we have seen many movies where they try to pull this off. My favorite example of this (and by favorite, I mean the most ridiculous) is in the movie Alone in the Dark where Tara Reid plays a genius anthropologist. Yes, you read that right, Tara Reid as not just an anthropologist, but a genius anthropologist. In an attempt to make Reid look the part, they pulled her hair back into a bun and put glasses on her. Yeah, that makes it believable. Dosn't she look smart?

So anyway, Natalie Portman, the astrophysicist with 20/20 vision, hits Thor with her car and gets out to see if he is alive. While He is laying in the road, the camera zooms in on his face and we are suddenly transported to movie #2 that takes place not in the rhelm of the gods, but on another planet. Aparently in this version, Thor is an alien not a god. I have a big problem with this. I am really trying not to get all "Miss know it all" on you, but I do have a little knowledge on the subject considering that Classical History & Archaeology was my minor in college and therefore I have spend a lot of time studying mythology. I mean, my  fat cat's name is Loki for alien's god's sake (who is also a character in Thor) so I think it is safe to say that I know the basics of Norse Mythology. How can they just make the Nordic Gods from outerspace? Do they think that they can get away with it because Norse isn't as commonly known as Greek or Roman theology? Wouldn't it have been strange if the remake of Clash of the Titans took place in space? I just don't get it. I know that this is a superhero/comicbook movie and I should just settle down about it, but this was my big issue with Thor (or should I say Star-Thor?) right from the get go. Oh, and if you were wondering how fat my cat Loki really is, here ya go:

Isn't she huge?

Once we are transported to Thor's home planet, we get to meet his family and his gang of followers. His father is Hannibal Lecter, who is the king of the rhelm/planet/deathstar or wherever they are supposed to be, and his brother is Loki, the alien trouble maker, not my fat cat or the god of mischief. They all live on what looks to be either the Deathstar or some place within the world of Tron, but since Thor never runs into The Dude, it must be the Deathstar not Tron. Now that we have established that Thor is from the Deathstar, it still seems a little hard to imagine it being run by Dr. Lecter rather than Darth Vader, but Thor helps us to easily envision this. On the Deathstar, Dr. Lecter, Thor and Loki  wear some interesting armored costumes too. They all have large silver disks all over their chests. Tom and I have a theory that the amount of disks you wear denotes your importance. Since Hannibal Lector is the king, he wears many more disks then everyone else. It is an interesting way to show their Deathstar class system. Thor and Loki wear less disks then their father, and Thor's gang wears none at all. Speaking of Thor's gang, it consists of a very unlikely group of characters. It features Roman Warrior Titus Pullo (from HBO's Rome) with a mop glued to his face, Xena Warrior Princess, Cary Elwes' little brother Lynn, and that guy from Tekken.  

If this picture dosen't help you with my little comparison, here are some more pictures for you to compare to the above image of Thor's gang:

 

Can you see the similarities?

On the Deathstar that is run by Hannibal Lecter, there is a battle going on between Dr. Lecter's followers (mainly Loki, Thor and his gang) and the Frost Giants. (Yes, the bad guys are called the Frost Giants. They couldn't even come up with a cool name to call them. Frost Giants? Really?) The Frost Giants sneek onto the Deathstar and steal Dr. Lecter's giant glowing blue raspberry jolly rancher and stash it at Superman's Father's place on Krypton. Thor, Loki and the gang decide that they are going to get the jolly rancher back but this makes the Frost Giants angry and untimately starts a war between the two groups. To get to the place where the Frost Giants live, they all have to travel through this machine that looks a lot like the roter from the Great Escape in Lake George. You remember the Roter, right? It spins around really fast, you stick to the wall, the floor drops out from underneath you and then you throw up all over yourself. We have all been on it at least once.

The Rotor that they keep on the Deathstar is guarded by that guy who played Charles Miner on The Office. (You remember him, right? He is the guy who is in charge when Michael is running the Michael Scott Paper Company who really hates Jim.) He is called "the Gatekeeper" in this movie, and stands at the entrance of The Roter (possibly awaiting the arrival of the Keymaster).

It seems like every other scene in Thor's movie #2 is a CGI action sequence. There is so much CGI that I felt like i was watching a cartoon. The 3D effects are so gimicky too, every other scene features a shot of Thor's hammer flying at the camera. It got old really quickly.

Once Thor is finally banished to Earth by Dr. Lecter for starting a war with the Frost Giants over the glowing jolly rancher, the movie gets a lot better. We are finally back to movie #1 taking place back on Earth.

Astrophysicist Natalie Portman hits Thor with her car and either because she thinks he is cute or she feels bad for almost killing him, she takes him with her. This is where the movie starts getting a lot more enjoyable. We have the privilege of seeing the unoriginal and overused theme of "the fish out of water" but it is still fun to watch. Thor has encounters with diner waitresses and a bunch of rednecks that make him realize that now that he is on Earth, he is powerless. There is a really great Sword in the Stone scene where a bunch of tough guy men, including Thor, attempt to pull the hammer out of the crater that it created when it fell to Earth. It really drives home for Thor the fact that he is now a weak Earthling. The movie goes on for a while like this. Thor is weak but trying to regain his powers and can't figure out why his father would punish him in this way.

I don't want to spoil the entire ending for you, so I wont give you the movies specifics, but just like in mythology, Thor does a selfless act that makes him once again worthy to wield his powerful weapon and is able to finally pull the hammer from the ground and save the day. There is a really great scene after he regains his power in which Thor cockily (did I just make that word up? it was in my spell check dictionary) strolls towards the big bad monster for the final showdown. Tom couldn't help but compare this scene to the awesomely bad but still great movie Stone Cold starring Brian Bosworth. Thor certainly had the Bosworth strut down perfectly. The only thing that he was missing the the famous "skunk mullet". Just in case you have never seen Stone Cold (and why would you have? Tom and Brian Bosworth's mother are the only ones that actually own a copy of this movie) here is a great clip from it.

Now I know what you are thinking. How could I possibly include a supermarket scene from a movie that isn't Cobra? We all know that Cobra's supermarket scene is by far the best movie supermarket scene in film history. So, just because I can't help myself, here is a montage from the best movie ever made, Cobra. 

And this, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with Thor.

So anyway, let's get back to why we are here. Thor ends the same way that all comic book/superhero movies end, with an over the top (I am trying really hard to not include a clip from another Stallone movie here) CGI action sequence where the hero has a show down with the big monster. 

All in all, it was an entertaining movie for what it was. It was pure fluff, a popcorn movie, and yet it was embarrassingly fun to watch; even though they made Thor from outer space. While we did enjoy watching this movie, it left us wondering one very probing question. What the hell happened to the giant, glowing, blue raspberry jolly rancher?

We officially rate Thor a 5 out of 10.