Thor

That's MY fuckin' hammer...

How do I put this eloquently? My dick just grew sideburns in the shape of lightning bolts. Such was the raw power of Thor.
The film is based on the Marvel comics “The Mighty Thor” (obviously also pulling heavily from Norse mythology) and, as such, is unfortunately tarred with the same brush as other masterful pieces of shit as Hulk, that other Hulk with Edward Norton, any of the X-Men movies after the first, but mostly the Hulk movies. I really can’t stress that enough. Those movies were utter piss.

But I digress.

This movie is awesome. It’s like a potent injection of undiluted chest-hair-machismo right into the dick. This is probably one of the only movies that meets my beard quota of no less than 12 beards per scene.

Going into this I knew what to expect. I had no delusions that I was going to see some kind of Kubrick/Coppola cinema art here, but to be honest it surpassed my expectations. Not by much, mind you, but there isn’t a metering system on that particular phrase. My major concern was Chris Hemsworth, but I was pleasantly surprised to find him both amusing and believable (as far as one can believe that a 6’3” Australian ex-soap star with like 4 six packs on his biceps is a mythological God from another plane of existence that just happens to speak English with perfect diction), even when sharing the screen with the one and only Anthony Hopkins.

Now there is a man whose very birthright it was to portray Odin, King of Gods, on film. I have always envisioned Anthony Hopkins as a bearded Adonis wearing a bearskin toga; skin lightly bronzed from the sun and body chiselled like a Greek statue, easily hurling full grown sharks at despondent orphans ‘for funsies’. Then he washes down the taste of victory with an assortment of fine ales administered - from the carved horn of a dragon - by beautiful and scantily clad maidens who all look like Bruce Campbell with long hair.

So the movie...

There was, as much discussed over post-show drinks, far too much “space bullshit” thrown into the mix. I get that Asgard needed to be impressive, but the royal palace looked like nothing so much as the set from the Fifth Element with more braziers and less Bruce Willis. There is also the feeling that it has been a little ‘family friendly-fied’ by the publisher so pull in wider audiences. And this wouldn’t be all that bad if it wasn’t for Thor saying that the Asgardians came to earth on a bridge made of fucking rainbows. Rainbows. Norse Gods walk on bifrost, titanium and other cool sounding elements ending in ‘anium’. They most certainly do not walk on sunshine, no matter what the song may say.

There are some very clever clash-of-culture type parts when Thor is banished to New Mexico, as well as a few cameos (one from Stan Lee, as always) and references to other Marvel universe characters such as Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. It has action, drama, comedy and – to please the less Alpha of its viewers – a hint of romance. It’s clearly not going to win any awards however. It was spectacular, and dripping with manliness, but at the end of the day it’s a superhero film, and they just aren’t that brilliant. Good fun, no thinking.

I wouldn’t really recommend bringing the lady friends along to this one. It’s not that they wouldn’t like it (which they probably won’t), but mostly that they don’t shut up in the cinema. And besides, with the awesome testosterone that this movie is synthesized from she’d probably grow a pair on balls or two before the movie was out.

So basically, if you want to see a bearded man smashing shit with a hammer and massive robots shooting fire out of their eyes then this might be a movie for you.