We’re four (Thor?) movies in to MoviePush’s Road to Infinity War, and this time it’s Thor’s first
solo movie (and to some extent Loki’s).
Thor’s always been an interesting movie for me, I really
like the Asgardian characters (Thor, Loki, Odin, etc) and I love the opening
20-30 minutes (basically everything set in Asgard, the battle with Frost giants
and introducing the mythology). But I’m not a fan of the whole fish out of
water trope, and once Thor gets banished to Earth the film feels a lot smaller
and cheaper. So I had that very much in my mind whilst watching again and to a
certain extent my original opinion stands.
Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston absolutely own the roles
of Thor and Loki, respectively. Even at this early stage, you can see they're comfortable and were born to play these roles. The Asgard design and mythology
is all great and this part of the story shines. But the characters and setting
on Earth is still weak, not as bad as I remember it, but still poor in comparison. It’s interesting to see
that as the MCU and Thor movies have developed we’ve moved further away from this,
with each movie spending less time on Earth and by Thor Ragnarok none of three
Earth based characters make an appearance at all.
That’s what makes Thor such an odd movie for me, there are
elements that I love and then other’s they just feel forced in. I get the fish
out of water idea, it helps general audiences relate to a fairly outlandish
concept and also helps keep the budget low. But I’ve always said I wish this
movie was completely set around Asgard (or Nine Realms based) .
There are two scenes that I absolutely love in Thor, that in
my opinion are some of the most emotionally dramatic we’ve got in the MCU and really
shows off the calibre of the actors involved. The first is when Thor and Odin
clash and results in Thor’s banishment. The second, Loki confronting Odin about
his true heritage is gut-wrenching, and Tom Hiddleston delivers a knock out
performance from a broken son. Two truly great scenes, and some of the MCU’s
best.
It’s also interesting in hindsight watching Loki based on
what we know of the character in context now. How Loki acts and talks to Thor
is so obviously manipulation, and is part of the tried and tested traits
of the character, yet at the time watching this for the first time I remember
thinking he had his brothers best interests at heart.
As is becoming apparent with all the early MCU movies, the
films take their time to introduce the world and the characters, but then are
all guilty of rushing the end to have some sort of climatic show down. I
understand why this happens when trying to keep a film within 2 hours, but it
does standout and stops any of the films being 10/10. At this stage all the
Phase 1 MCU movies are good solid films, but haven’t quite reached the heights
of what we know is to come…
Agent Coulson is obviously included to be the consistent link
between the Phase 1 movies, and there’s a cameo from Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye
that stands out a bit, but this is still early days in the MCU and they’re
finding their feet with how to make everything naturally fit together.
Also, what is going on with the dutch angles in this movie?
I knew they were part of the movie, but they never really bothered me before,
however re-watching it now I found it so distracting, nearly every other shot
has the camera tilted on its side. It honestly took me out of the film for the
first 5 minutes (when it’s particularly prominent).
All in all, Thor still stands as great introduction to he
character and builds solid foundations for the core characters going forward. Next week is Captain America: The First Avenger!
Written by @RossBishop for MoviePush. Follow Ross on Twitter.
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