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Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman
Plot: Arrogant god Thor is exiled from Asgard to live among humans on Earth. but must try to stop his brother Loki from becoming king of his homeland.

Since the release of Blade in 1998, Marvel Comics films have been churned out at an alarming rate. X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Iron Man have been among the franchises to be launched at the cinema-going public on a seemingly never-ending conveyor belt.

The latest of these is Thor, a new interpretation of the Norse god of thunder legend. The main crux of the story begins in 965 A.D. in the realm of Asgard, where Thor (Hemsworth) and his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston – no, that’s not a Tottenham Hotspur-related typo) are feted by their father Odin (Hopkins) to potentially one day become his heir. Thor becomes the obvious choice for his father but gets a little too big-headed. Asgard comes under threat from the Frost Giants, who would rather like to have the source of their power, The Casket of Ancient Winters, returned to them after it had been stolen during a war. Thor goes on a rampage and upsets the fragile truce that exists between the two camps and is subsequently banished to Earth by Odin, until he can prove worthy of wielding his hammer of power once more. Meanwhile, pantomime villain Loki has designs on the crown himself.

There are two main, wildly contrasting strands to the story – the events in Asgard and the consequences of Thor’s exile to Earth, where he lands in modern-day New Mexico. This is where the whole concept just doesn’t work. Whereas with most comic book heroes, the world they inhabit is plausible to some degree, we flit back and forth and, well, back again between the two worlds – from camp, hammy acting in the clouds to a mildly amusing fish-out-of-water storyline on Earth as Thor comes to terms with being cast into unfamiliar surroundings without his powers (which, by the way, he does rather too well).

Reminiscent of California Man and perhaps ‘Napoleon’ in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Thor’s all-but-brief struggle with modern life is constantly interrupted by what is going on in his home kingdom. It appears as if Thor is trying too hard to give us two films for the price of one, spreading itself too thinly as we are forced to endure the one-dimensional characters of Odin and Loki, when the most interesting aspect of the plot is seeing how Thor’s relationship with astrophysicist Jane (Portman) develops.

The result is a shambles, with only Natalie Portman coming out of this mess with some credibility. It’s a nice try by director Kenneth Branagh to do something different, but he seems to be out of his depth as much as Thor is himself.

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