I’m not a Thor fan. I haven’t read up on his mythology and I don’t follow his comic books. I’m just a guy who likes to watch a good superhero movie. I won’t be discussing actually accuracy to mythology or comic books or the way your mother told it to you when you were twenty.

To begin with, I had a little trouble with the timeline of the gods. Thor’s dad, I believe is seen helping humans in a war sometime around the year 900 A.D. Then he’s passing on his throne to Thor in present day because he’s gotten old and it’s presumably time for a new god to rule. I understand that Gods have this immortality thing and all which allows them to live forever but then why are they aging? Maybe it’s a plot device, maybe the screenwriter lost track of things, maybe I misunderstood some element or maybe the Norse gods aren’t being consistent in all stories. If someone could explain this for me or point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.

As far as the plot goes, it’s pretty straightforward. Due to his inexperience and young age, Thor gets in a fight which gets him sent to Earth. On Earth he meets a girl. The girl helps him. Thor is tricked by his brother and gives up on life. The girls helps him become a better person. Earth is attacked. Thor then fights to protect his new found love interest.

Of course I’m leaving out some details here and there but as far as I see it, they’re not important. What’s important, to me, is that Marvel is continuing with its promise to form an Avengers film. The Avengers is another one of those comic book stories I’m not familiar with but I do know one thing about it, it consists of a bunch of superheroes fighting together as a team. Marvel seems to be set on giving each of the superheroes of the Avengers their own introductory film. To break it down, Avengers film means a whole lot of superhero films. That’s what this guy likes to hear.

I can’t help but look at the scene where Thor’s hammer is stuck in the ground in New Mexico and be reminded of an image from Marvel Civil War which was almost identical. The movie Thor helped me straighten out what happened in MCW, I thought Thor had died, but if the movie’s sequence of events is true then I was largely mistaken. But the fact that scene was seen elsewhere in the Marvel Universe make me wonder if marvel is not only setting themselves up for The Avengers but also for Civil War. That would be a series of films I’d like to see.

Thor, as a whole, is quite lackluster. I felt no draw to the plot. The characters, mostly Thor and his friends, seemed out of place wherever they went. I felt like I was watching caricatures of them on screen. It didn’t feel right. From the moment we saw Thor and Loki as children and they were talking with their father Odin, I knew one of them would end up being noble and great while the other fell to darkness. There were no surprises.

However, I do feel like Thor’s decisions towards the end up the film give a bit of redeeming quality. Thor, in an attempt to save an entire world from annihilation, chooses to sever his ties with Earth and the woman he came to love in his short stay there. The ending wasn’t completely predictable due to this once choice of Thor’s.

As always, Stan Lee’s cameo was worth watching.

I cannot say I recommend watching Thor. It’s a decent film if you like superhero films or are watching the buildup to The Avengers but if you want to watch for any other reason, I don’t recommend wasting your time.