Thor (Kenneth Branagh, 2011)

Branagh??? You may find yourself watching (which largely means enduring) this just for that, thus playing right into the studio's hands. Superhero fans watch the films regardless of who's at the helm, but this way they bag even some of the otherwise disinterested. Fiendish.
Anyway, to the film itself. It doesn't take a familiarity with the comics to know that this'll be NMINO (Nordic Mythology In Name Only), with the names and places lifted just to provide a new setting for the standard pagga, but somehow with Branagh you hoped there'd be a soupcon of something extra. As it is, we get a glossy version of Asgard and all with some giant-battling background, which grinds on until Thor is finally banished to Earth and made human for being unbearably arrogant.
I suppose story arc-wise it makes a nice change to at least have the hero start out as an overbearing ass, so that heroic deed would become gaining maturity rather than any act of beast-slaying (we are talking about a god here, after all - as with Superman it's difficult to make the battles themselves the interesting part). Unfortunately, Chris Hemsworth as the lead has quarterback acting skills to go with the physique and so you hardly notice any growing up take place. And the film takes far too long to get to the potentially tasty part anyway, which is the comic culture clash bit when he does finally get down here, and then it's already game over. Yawn.

4/10