Movie Review: Almighty Thor
I watched this movie so you don’t have to.
It could be worse, consistently getting two out of five stars on other sites, but I won’t be watching it again or recommending it to anyone. But hey, maybe this is your cup of tea. In my opinion, the best thing aboutthe movie was the soundtrack and the second best were the CGI beasts. Before I get into details though here is the trailer:
The synopsis for the 2011 Universal production I caught on the Syfy Channel reads “The hero from Valhalla rises up against a demon who threatens to obliterate Los Angeles.”.
Okay, for me the main detractors are:
1. Poor writing – indemic of lower budget films, but there are good ones out there. The main issues are (1) pacing and (2) holes. There’s a few parts where you just have to assume “no, i didn’t miss something, they just didn’t explain it”.
2. Disregard for Norse mythology – This is also my biggest issue with the Marvel stories, but this takes it to a whole new level.
3. The camera work – a very common way for lower-budget films to make scenes or specific actions seems more exciting or cover sub-par acting is to do stuff like jolting the camera around when two swords hit each other or switching camera angles several times in a row.
The first segment of the film takes place in Asgard when Loki (played by Richard Grieco) kills Odin while trying to get the “Hammer of Invincibility” and Thor is avoiding him and his two-story tall demonic greyhounds with Jarnsaxa. It appears like this segment takes course in a very short time, I’d guess no more than a couple hours. But after he meets Jarnsaxa, Thor and here start acting like it has been a long time, like months long – this is what I mean by poor writing.
Thor and Jarnsaxa make it to Midgard, a very dreary L.A., where Thor learns about humans and these things called “guns” . Goth Booker, I mean Loki, is hot on their tail. They throw on their ill-fitting trench coats and head to a portal to the Tree of Life where the hammer has been hidden. At this point I almost cried and had to fast-forward through the rest of the Human Society commercial that had come on. How do people abuse animals like that? I would adopt every single dog I could if I had unlimited funds and space and time.
Okay, back to Thor. Thor makes it through the portal and must battle a warrior who is really into decorating with rubber tires. Thor is victorious (sorry for the spoiler) and makes it to Yggdrasil where the disembodied voice of his dead father gives him the hammer everyone wants. Jarnsaxa tries multiple times in this movie to convince Thor he is no where near ready to face down the Trickster God; he should have listened more than he did. Okay, this is my favorite part, Thor is spinning around in a parking lot looking like a drunk cosplayer trying to hit Loki with the hammer. Surprise surprise, the two leads have a developing romance.
Thor heads out on his own to fight Loki behind an auto shop, this time quickly defeating him. IT’S A TRAP. Thor finally decides to listen to Jarnsaxa after he realizes he did not kill Loki and prevent Ragnarok. Just kidding, he doesn’t listen. But this scene happens:
Thor gets shot, then drinks some magic liquid from somewhere that he got somehow and his arm is healed, but Jarnsaxa is injured and Thor used all of the “Potion of Healing” already because he had a hurt shoulder; and it’s a good thing because she was really Loki in disguise! Emergency response crews are failing to deal with all the giant serpent things Loki has unleashed on downtown, I don’t blame them though, those could not have been considered in any reasonable person’s contingency plan for LAFD.
Loki throws Jarnsaxa into Muspelheim and Thor quickly follows. Loki makes his way past the one guy fleeing the destruction of the second most populated metropolitan area in the United States and into the dimension holding the Tree of Life and begins chopping it down with the Hammer of Invincibility. The worlds are ending, and Thor is doing something – I’m not sure what is going on here. Ah, Thor has made his own hammer, and his is shinier! A non-Uzi fight scene ensues and Thor smacks Loki’s hammer so hard with his that the so-called “invincibility” weapon disintegrates. The Tree is healed and life returns to normal. Whew, that was close. Really, the score isn’t bad and I like the end-credits song.
All-in-all, it’s a little worse than what I was expecting, but for this kind of movie maybe I shouldn’t hope for too much. Hey, I wouldn’t mind getting in on this quick-movie racket. I hear these companies put about two weeks of work into these things and make a killing at Redbox, on the midnight movie circuit, and with streaming contracts.