Thor

***1/2

If there’s a fault to Thor it’s that it feels like two different movies smooshed together into one ying-yang narrative. One of these films is a standard superhero origin story, which is, in fact, part of grander tapestry that will be realized next summer in The Avengers, and the other is a dynamic drama about family and duty and the fate of a kingdom. One of these is very paint by numbers; the other is given a relevant gravitas befitting an epic stage tragedy.

It was an unusual choice to select Kenneth Branagh to direct Thor, who along with Iron Man and Captain America makes up the core trinity of the Avengers super-team. Branagh, known predominately for his screen adaptations of Shakespeare plays like Henry V, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, brings these considerable resources to bear in painting the God of Thunder’s life on Asgard, a mythical realm where the Norse gods dwell. Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) believe he is ready to be king, his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is not so sure, and his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) seems unusually shifty.

But when Thor is banished to Earth for jumping the gun to start a war with the Frost Giants, the family psychodrama takes a backseat to the paint-by-numbers superhero origin, and the not-suitable stuffing of Easter egg references of Marvel movies past and future. Clark Gregg reprises his role as Agent Coulson from the Iron Man movies, and is the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent supervising all the other-worldly stuff afoot in the New Mexico desert. Jeremy Renner appears briefly as Clint Barton, better know to the comic book mafia as The Avengers’ archer in residence, Hawkeye.

Aside from all the superhero drama, Thor encounters a lovely human scientist named Jane (Natalie Portman), her sarcastic sidekick Darcy (Kat Dennings) and their mentor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård). This aspect of the film is probably the most underdeveloped in an already loaded script that still clocks in at just over two hours. We’re supposed to believe that in two and a half days Thor falls in love with Jane, discovers the value of mortal existence, and learns the lessons of humility and self-sacrifice that his father sent him to Earth to learn. Possible, I guess, but I don’t feel that the film gives this aspect the proper time to develop naturally.

Of course, technically the film is an achievement all its own. Asgard is beautifully realized thanks to master production designer Bo Welch, a seamless mish-mash of futuristic Cloud City and old school medievalism; they’ve got both horses and temporal portholes. After all, Thor reminds us that Asgard is a place where magic and science are the exact same thing. The effects are outstanding and the worlds that Thor explores beyond our mortal realm blend very well with the real world we know. The film is vivid and colourful and jumps off the screen, but it doesn’t overwhelm the humans in their make-up and costumes.

The cast is very solid. Hemswroth makes a convincing Thor in both physicality and personality. He has a commanding presence, but is able to show some humanity, but I’m not sure that the film tests him as much as it could have. Thor lacks the same kind of personality crutch as say Tony Stark, or a pessimistic you lose when you win fate like Peter Parker. Hiddleston does snivelling well, but I have a feeling that the Loki’s true villain potential has been left to be explored in The Avengers. Hopkins, meanwhile, finds a descent balance between scenery chewing and the hyper-reality of playing an old world god.

The DVD includes some simple features, like the barebones “Road to the Avengers,” which doesn’t tell you anything that you couldn’t have gotten from a movie spoiler site three months ago. A commentary by Branagh offers some interesting insight into the filmmaking process and there are a couple of gems in the deleted scenes, including a warm, brotherly moment between Loki and Thor that I wish had stayed in the film. It might have made Loki’s later machinations much more impacting to see the brothers in a rare friendly moment.

As a film franchise, Thor definitely has potential. It would have been nice had in this first outing the film hadn’t been weighed down with all this Avengers preamble, but in this respect it’s a crutch that Thor shares with Iron Man 2. I will say that I warmed more to Thor in its second viewing. Perhaps the characters were more familiar now, or I was able to appreciate it on its own merits. Still, as superhero movies go, Thor demonstrates above average achievement and dedication. Hopefully when the eventual sequel rolls around, Thor might be able to stand on his own.

The Wolfman

Rating: **

Mere words can’t express my disappointment after seeing Joe Johnston’s remake of The Wolfman, but we’ll give it a try just the same.

As it goes, the remake of the classic Universal monster movie starring Lon Chaney, Jr began in earnest some time ago. Universal brought in Johnston, director of Jumanji, Jurassic Park III and The Rocketeer, which despite opinions to the contrary, is da bomb. (Jennifer Connelly in white satin and 1940s glam… Nuff said.)

So you’ve got a man of vision in the director’s chair, good. Next is to get a master make-up man to do the effects, and you can’t get much better than Rick Baker. Baker knows werewolves too having created them for The Howling, An American Werewolf in London and Wes Craven’s Cursed, so there really was no better choice. Next, there’s the actors, and if I told you I had Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving signed to my movie, you’d bet your brains out on it. Especially if it was an R-rated, period werewolf movie designed by Rick Baker and directed by Joe Johnston.

So where did this thing go off the tracks? Excellent question. One gets the impression that there were not only significant reshoots before the film was released, but there were also significant rewrites before/during the initial shoot. Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a stage actor who’s suddenly compelled to come home when his brother is – What’s the word? – massacred. Now Larry is either one of those stiff-upper-lip guys or he just doesn’t care because, boy, I have never seen the wholesale slaughter of loved one have less of an impact on a guy.

But maybe it’s the company. Hopkins does his best Wilford Brimley impression to play the senior Talbot and as part of the effect ends up chewing a lot of scenery while he’s at it. Apparently there’s a lot of unresolved tension between Larry and his father, but what precisely that tension is can be a matter of debate after the movie. Where tension’s lacking though is Lawrence’s relationship with his brother’s finance played by Blunt, which seems practically non-existent on an emotional level. The emotional arc for Lawrence is pretty much, “Oh, you’re my brother’s fiancé? You seem cool, I guess. Maybe we can hook up later when, you know, it’s not creepy.”

Which brings us to Hugo Weaving as Scotland Yard detective Abberline, who is based on the real-life Frederick Abberline who was an accomplished and decorated inspector most notably remembered as being the man in charge of investigating the Jack the Ripper murders. Special note is made of this inference in Lawrence’s first encounter with Abberline and it had all the comfort of one of those TV crossovers where a character from another show is introduced to the characters in the one you’re watching. But if the intro is wince worthy, it would be worthwhile if Weaving was given something interesting to do, but he’s not.

Now you’ll have noticed that aside from the obvious, I have yet to talk about the werewolves in the werewolf movie. In an act of sheer audacity (for modern filmmaking), Johnston made his wolfman nearly all practical, only the transformations were handled with computer effects. The result was awesomely old school, but still, the wait between werewolf incidents could be excruciating. But that’s what happens when the main story is melodramatic pabulum, and I know the movie is set in the 19th century but it doesn’t have to read that way.

Saying that though implies that the movie is read at all. It seems to indicate there may be such a thing as insight or subtext between the lines. Like what was the deal with the gypsy village? And how did the senior Talbot manage to evade detection as a werewolf for so long? (Oh relax, it barely qualifies as a spoiler.) The film seems to jump from plot point to plot point with little fidelity, as if someone were trying to make the transitions between werewolf sequences as streamlined as possible. After all, they know what you people came to see and it wasn’t plot or character development.

I can’t say that The Wolfman was a supreme disappointment, just exceptionally underwhelming. There were some ingredients in place from a technical perspective that could have really made this sing, but like past efforts to revive Universal’s classic monsters, the effort seems to suffer from too much emphasis on how it looks rather than trying to capture the magic that made those movies a source of inspiration and enjoyment for moviegoers in the 1930s. It’s the fear of the unknown, the fear of being out of control and the fear of seeing the monster in the mirror. The only fear this Wolfman seemed to have was fear of coherence, lest somebody actually be able to enjoy this film despite all its self-actualized faults.