Thor (2011) review: How does it impact Infinity War?

Credit: Paramount Pictures/Marvel Studios; from Thor (2011)

What didn’t work?

As an actor and director, Kenneth Branagh is brilliant. Given his stage background, however, he does have a tendency for the theatrical in his films. Sometimes this works very well such as his adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1989) or Hamlet (1996); other times, it can become fascinating train wrecks like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1994). What’s ironic about Thor is that it suffers because Branagh, uncharacteristically, holds himself back.

While the scenes involving Asgard appropriately have the grandeur and pageantry you might expect, much of it is paradoxically minimalist. Even with such CGI splendor as Asgard itself and the Bifrost bridge, these scenes pale in comparison to some of the other fantasy films from this same period. Even the fight in Jotunheim, for instance, comes across like a lesser imitation of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a poorly lit one, at that.

By contrast, the Earth scenes feel like they’re from of a different movie altogether, especially in regards to tone. It’s apparent this was deliberate on Branagh’s part, to contrast our world with the one Thor comes from. Only they don’t ever mesh together like you’d expect. Moreover, it looks even more minimalist than the Asgard scenes, especially since “Earth” seems to consist of nothing more than a small town in New Mexico and its surrounding desert.

This also highlights a larger problem with Thor, and that is it never quite seems to find a proper balance. It can’t seem to decide if it wants to be this epic, sci-fi, medieval-style fantasy, or an action-comedy about a stranger who claims he’s a mythological god banished to Earth. I can’t help but think Branagh wanted to make the former, but Marvel Studios kept insisting on the latter. As you’d expect, this makes for one disjointed, at times muddled, film.

Also, compared with some of the other Marvel Studios films, it has a short running time. This makes Thor’s journey from arrogance to worthiness–the very heart of the film–feel extremely rushed, which also has a delirious effect on the budding romance between Thor and Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster. Sure, Hemsworth and Portman display good chemistry, but you just don’t buy that these two would fall heads over heels with one another in less than three days.