What would an American Zoetrope superhero film look like? We perhaps came as close as we were going to with Thor, directed by erstwhile Laurence Olivier clone Kenneth Branagh. There’s not much of Branagh’s Olivier-esque intellectual poise and Oxbridge masculinity on display here, which is perhaps to be expected, but it’s the lack of paroxysmal twitches of insanity that most disappoints. Say what you like about Branagh’s 3 ½ hour uncut Hamlet, but his 1994 version of Frankenstein for Francis Ford Coppola’s production company was a deliriously pleasurable gothic grand guignol, revealing that to do justice to such source material it was necessary to remain truthful not just to the text itself but to its tone and its intent (Danny Boyle take note).
But of course, Marvel films exist within a tightly sealed environment that will broach nothing so definitive as an auteur signature. Just as a guiding creative light will spearhead the first episode or two of a television show in order to establish a template for those in their footsteps (stand up, Len Wiseman and Hawaii 5-O, or – more classily – Martin Scorsese and Boardwalk Empire), so Jon Favreau’s breezy-but-clunky aesthetic for Iron Man has become the de facto mode for this studio. Thor mimics this closely, and at times appealingly, but overall it’s the same sloppy product which has been churned out several times before.
At least this time there are some distracting details. Chris Hemsworth’s performance in the lead role has been made much of, and he is appealing, but hardly groundbreaking. The best moments occur in the second act, during our hero’s banishment from the twinkly CGI realm of Asgard to the drab cardboardscapes of New Mexico, as he interacts with a supporting cast including Natalie Portman (filling her one-film-a-month quota without anything further to note), Stellan Skarsgård (who surely should have been hired to fill out the throne room, but makes good cop of a research scientist instead), Kat Dennings (who gets the best lines) and Clark Gregg. Now, Gregg should get more attention than he does, being the glue that holds a lot of Marvel films together (that is, to each other), and he continues here to make what is a rather bureaucratic non-character into an entertaining rather than perfunctory presence. The same cannot be said for the showier Agent of SHIELD who continually makes post-credits appearances – The Avengers movie is coming soon, is it? Well, get on with it then, before everyone ceases to care.*
So on Earth we get a good old fish-out-of-water plot with some nice running gags, and it almost made me nostalgic for the early 1990s, when cinemas were full of such things. There’s something of Terminator 2 in Portman’s attempts to acclimatise the Norse God she has befriended to the niceties of coffee-ordering and breakfast-making. By contrast in the Other Realms we get plastic-looking sets, gods whizzing around like shooting stars, and Rene Russo’s most thankless paycheque yet. This Olympian material is handled better than it was in Clash of the Titans, but there remains something too explanatory, too literal, too banal in the staging which prevents the film from evoking the sought-after cod-profound quality of myth.
Somehow, through sheer velocity, Branagh managed to elevate Frankenstein to such heights, as though willing suspension of disbelief were a matter of centripetal force. While certain kaleidoscopic sequences do set out to dazzle in Thor, they are of a trend with other hyper-cut, orbital-scaled superhero fare, rather than the work of a director trying to bedazzle the audience with audacities. Amongst all the clamour the villainous plot contains slightly more nuance than normal, and is invested with some pathos, but it remains nothing more than moderately inflated sequel-minded trajectory-setting.
There were times when the film made me smile, times when I felt involved, but I suspect these were more down to a subconscious urge to get my money’s worth out of the experience, rather than genuine entertainment. It’s a suspicion which is becoming ever more prevalent. Stop the Marvel Universe. I want to get off.
* … too late.
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