Thor Review

Hiring Kenneth Branagh was the smartest decision anyone made here. He stages Asgard as Shakespearean court politics, a father, two sons, a throne and a lie, and the banishment scene has real weight because everyone is playing it for keeps. Tom Hiddleston builds Loki out of wounded pride rather than villainy, discovering his own origin in the middle of an argument, and that single performance justified three more films. Anthony Hopkins gives Odin an old man's fatigue that costs him nothing and buys the film a lot.

The trouble is the other half of the movie. Earth is a dusty New Mexico town where a god learns humility through diner scenes, Natalie Portman is handed a scientist with no science and a romance with no time to earn it, and the agency subplot exists mostly to keep the calendar moving. Branagh's fondness for canted angles curdles into a tic, tilting the frame in scenes that need no tilting at all. But the Jotunheim raid is a genuinely good set piece, the Destroyer's visor unfolding is the best image in the film, and the sacrifice at the end earns its hammer back honestly.