Thor (Tuesday, May 24, 2011) (35)

There's something special about the size and slickness of an action movie released in May, which these days they all seem to be comic book movies. Big stories of Good vs. Evil; great computer-generated special-effects; lots of explosion. It all adds up to a big "popcorn" movie experience where you can turn your brain off and watch something fun and easy. Thor offers none of those things - it's neither fun nor easy. It is slow, cumbersome and confusing.

Based on the Marvel comic book, this is the story of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the oldest son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins), king of a land called Asgard, which is in some other part of the universe, but where they wear Viking costumes, speak English and have Celtic design motifs on their weapons and clothes. The idea is that the Asgardians had a major battle with the beings from Jötunheim who are "ice giants" and freeze people wen they fight them (see: Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin, un film de Joel Schumacher). This fight happened in the not too distant past in Norway (so the idea is that the Norwegians got the whole viking thing from the alien Asgaridans who brought it...).

Anyhow, Odin took the ice giant's source of power, a blue crystal that has icy goodness in it. There's a confusing thing where the ice giants try to steal it back, but fail, so Thor goes to fight them at their place and when he gets back, his dad is angry that he went to fight them there, so he banishes him to Earth without his super powers. Then Thor's runty brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) takes power from his dad and organizes a confusing thing where he tries to work with the ice giants to destroy Asgard. Meanwhile, these people can travel between Asgard, Earth and Jötunheim on a special worm-hole maker that's controlled by a big black dude with a sword (Idris Elba).

Oh, and on Earth, Thor works with Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings, who are astrophysicists looking at weather or something... and there's a thing with a men-in-black-like government organization who wants to research all these things coming from outer space (never seen that one before). And they're in New Mexico, which is (also) home to wonderful tax breaks for film productions. And Thor's mom is played by Rene Russo, who literally hasn't been in anything since 2005... or anything you've seen since 1999. In the meantime, she apparently lost her tongue because she doesn't have a single line here... Oh - and this movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh. Wha...?

This is one of the loudest movies I can ever remember seeing in my life. Every time the Asgardians go from one place to another in Idris Elba's teleporter, there is such a gigantic noise with lighting and crashing that I really wished they would have skipped that part totally (I mean, I get it - it's a teleporter). It was one of the most painful movies I've ever been in - and I mean that physically painful to my ears.

There are so many problems with this movie it's hard to know what to mention. For reasons that are never clear, the Asgardians speak in a proper English accent, even though their king is Welsh and prince is Austrialian. Hemsworth really struggles with the accent... and with the acting. Why can't all the characters speak whatever accent the actors speak with? Did the Asgardians also give English to humans when they were in Norway? Why don't they speak Norwegian? And who exactly are the bad guys in this? Loki? The Ice Giants? The men-in-black?

This movie is a big mess and gets worse the more you think about it. Of course it's set up for a sequel - or at least they'll bring Thor back for more movies in The Avengers... I wish they wouldn't. Ugh.

Stars: .5 of 4