Take a Marvel Norse god superhero, Shakespearean director Kenneth Branagh, and special effects up the wazoo and you get the epic battle-fest, Thor. After venturing to icy Yodenheim to fight blue-skinned, red-eyed giants, the jacked, blonde Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished from Asgard—his magical, gilded home in the sky—landing on Earth in a magnetic tornado, where he meets astrophysicist Jane (Natalie Portman) and her entourage. Asgard’s a paradoxical, seductive mix of Elizabethan, mythological and sci-fi: they fly through space, but also ride horses. The warrior-god’s manners translate hilariously on Earth—smashing a coffee mug on the floor doesn’t say “thank you”—but Jane, the size of Thor’s bicep, falls for him anyway. Omit half an hour and it’s a kickass summer movie. Branagh salutes his past with the Asgardians’ pseudo-British accents and Anthony Hopkins as patriarch Odin.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2011.