Earth becomes that corner where King Odin sends his kid for a time out in director Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Marvel Comic's latest lead up to The Avengers, due out May of next year. When his homeland is attacked by his father's enemy, the son sets out on a reckless course that will potentially cost more than the attack that provoked it ... yes, I'm talking about the movie Thor; the homeland is Asgard and the enemy is Jötunheim.
Because this is a comic book movie, there's a father to stop the son before he does something really stupid, and Thor is banished to Earth without his power until he can prove himself worthy of it. In other words, with great responsibility will come great power.
Thor is found in the American southwest by a team of scientists played by Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgård and their driver, played by Kat Dennings. Meanwhile, back on Asgard, younger brother Loki becomes the interregnum ruler after Odin falls into some kind of grief-related coma governing in a way that befits the bearer of that name.
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At its best, with the setting of a superhero learning to live without his powers, Thor recalls Richard Lester's Superman II (1980), and it never really gets boring; at it's worst, it's unconvincing CGI with inexplicable overuse of tilted angles. Overall, Thor is fun and watchable even if mostly forgettable. Chris Hemsworth is believable in the title role and Skarsgård is credible as a scientist, but much of the casting seems to have been influenced by marketing. I had higher hopes for the American film debut of Tadanobu Asano.
