Rachel’s Monday Cinema

Hello Everyone :-)

Yesterday was Bank Holiday Monday and seeing as I had the day off I indulged myself and went to the cinema to see ‘Thor’.

Readers of my blog will know I have been excited about this for a while so I went with baited breath to see if my excitement had been well placed.

‘Thor’ finds our titular hero, the powerful yet arrogant Prince of Asgard on a mission against the Frost Giants. He is expelled from his home and banished to Earth after disturbing a truce held by his father Odin and the King of the Frost Giants. On Earth he meets Jane, an astrophysicist and then all sorts of shiz goes down and Thor finds himself on a mission to protect Earth and the ones he loves.

I’ll get this out of the way. Chris Hemsworth who plays Thor is to die for. The man is sexy beyond belief. Couple that with the fact he’s playing, not just a SUPERHERO but a PRINCE as well, that’s all a girl wants in one package (I know I know, I’m a shrink’s field day).

On that note Chris Hemsworth actually plays a really good part. He does arrogance as well as the softer side of our favourite Norse god. Needless to say he’s totally massive (he actually got so big he couldn’t fit in his costume…) and that helps you believe that he’s an other-worldly super being.

The romance between Thor and Jane some might find a little sickly but I actually quite liked it. As previously mentioned he’s a character seemingly designed to make girls go weak at the knees so ever woman that sees this film is going to identify with her. Natalie Portman sucks less that she has done in her last two films (‘No Strings Attached’ and ‘Your Highness’) but really it could have been anyone in that role.

Odin, King of Asgard, is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins and brings the kind of gravitas you could expect to such a role. For me it makes up for the hammy beyond hammy performance in the dismal ‘The Rite’.

Tom Hiddleston plays an excellent baddie. I worry that he’s going to be typecast because he plays it so well but hopefully he’ll prove his mettle in his upcoming role in War Horse (which I am also super excited about).

One underused character is Darcy played by Kat Dennings. I love her in ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ and in this she provides some excellent comic relief but I wanted to see more of her character. I also love Heimdall played by Idris Elba. Elba is eminently watchable in everything he does.

The thing that struck me most about the Asgard scenes is the grandeur of it all. It looks amazing. The CGI has been used to great effect; the ‘rainbow road’ thankfully did not look like it’d been lifted from Mario Cart. The scenes on Earth were really good and funny in the right places.

It’s not all good, then opening Asgard scenes are a bit boring and just serve to set up the rest of the story, but thankfully they don’t last very long. I also found Thor’s band of mates a bit unnecessary, one of them reminded me of Cary Elwes in ‘The Princess Bride’ which I found terribly off putting.  But that’s about it really; a couple of minor niggles in an otherwise excellent film.

I think what makes this is the direction. Kenneth Branagh gave Chris Hemsworth a speech from Henry 5^th to learn to help identify with his character and he carried some of his Shakespearian clout through other areas of the film. I loved that. Admittedly I’m a fan of the Bard so I loved the drama of it all but it was subtle enough so that anyone who isn’t as keen wouldn’t take offence. I found the Father and Son scenes between Odin and Loki particularly smacked of Shakespeare and rightly so, they needed that kind of feel to them. Branagh was admittedly an odd choice for this kind of film but I swear, if you watch it you’ll wonder why he doesn’t do more stuff like this. I hope this leap of faith in a less obvious Director is bringing in a new attitude to directorial choices. The fact Matthew Vaughan has directed the upcoming ‘X-Men: First Class’ and Joss Whedon (of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ fame) is to direct ‘The Avengers’ makes me think this might be true.

Overall I loved it. I’m such a sucker for a super hero film and I’ve been let down in the past by the two attempts at the Hulk, ‘Superman Returns’ and although I didn’t hate it, I’d be lying if I said ‘Iron Man 2’ left me totally satisfied. ‘Thor’ left me happy and excited about where it’s going to go and how they’re going to tie it all together and of course with a massive crush on Chris Hemsworth.

Also the trailers before Thor were all kinds of awesome. We had ‘X-Men: First Class’ (love the Fassbender) and then two more ab-tastic superhero offerings in the form of ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ (Hugo Weaving OMG!) with Chris Evans who seemingly has a Achilles heel for superhero roles (previously having played the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four films) and ‘The Green Lantern’ which I hadn’t seen before but it looks a little more light-hearted, a bit less serious than the rest of 2011’s comic book based offerings and Ryan Reynolds is hopefully on as good a form as he was in ‘Buried’.

It all looks really good so hopefully I won’t be short of a hero or two in the coming months!

That’s it from me tonight.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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P.S if you go and see Thor, hang around till after the credits for an exciting glimpse into ‘The Avengers’!