Thor: Hammer Of The Gods: a.k.a. "Thor: Swing And A Miss"

[/caption][caption id="attachment_1068" align="alignnone" width="95" caption="This is NOT Thor!"] This is what Thor SHOULD look like...

When I think of Thor, I think of a strapping Viking who laughs in the face of danger, has a lust for life, and is generally a bad ass worthy of wielding a gift from the gods. Instead we get a young, chubby-cheeked whelp who hurts his knee when he swings his sword at an enemy and misses, and then hobbles around nursing it, who whines about how he can't possibly be destined for the heroic things he sees in his visions, and makes me want to send him to his room until he can be a big boy and not cry about everything.

Okay, I exaggerate, but this is not the Thor I expected. They make sure you never see him without lots of fur and armor, because I suspect he's as physically unfit as his chipmunk cheeks make me think. Okay, he's supposed to be a young Thor. He's still learning, he's not a leader yet, and he definitely hasn't obtained the Hammer Of The Gods. But that shouldn't mean he can't be an impressive specimen of a Viking, that he shouldn't have command presence, and that he shouldn't be able to shake off bumping his knee without making a show of it. I don't know how Zachery Ty Bryan (formerly of Home Improvement) got the part, but he doesn't fit, and it ruined what little else this movie had going for it.

The whole plot is convoluted, as well. It's like they started off with one idea, then decided, no, that won't work, let's make it be this, instead, but don't bother rewriting anything, just zig instead of zagging. And then they did it again about two thirds of the way into the movie. So by the end I just summoned up my own Norse heritage as a call for strength, and suffered through what should have so very, very cool.

The story starts off with a group of Vikings landing at what they believe to be undiscovered land. Shortly in a wolf monster takes one of their crew who went scouting with Thor. They venture deeper in, all the while discussing various visions that Freya, the wife of the leader, sees. They also put up with Thor nearly fainting when he starts seeing visions of a great warrior wielding a mighty hammer. Then they discover survivors in a cabin who tell of more wolf people, and beg they leave this place. Instead of taking that as sound advice, our Viking group sets off to find their missing comrade. That's when the wolf men start picking them off more quickly. Somewhere along the line we discover the wolf men are really shapeshifters, minions of Loki, and that Loki guards The Hammer, which was used to slay his brother, a serpent demon, so long ago. After a betrayal you could see coming a mile away, and a predictable character death, we're introduced to another mysterious survivor, Vali, that we never learn the purpose of. Is he there to take The Hammer? Is he there to help? Or was he just an extra character thrown in because they ran out of ideas? By the end I didn't care, other than it was over.

The graphics of the wolf men at least were decent. There wasn't a lot of gore for the sake of gore. And the main representative of Loki's minions does the whole evil and manipulative thing with a lot of style, and is probably the only character I liked. She delivered her lines with a passable accent, but didn't overdo it, and wields her twin blades in the inevitable fight scene with surviving Viking warrior women with panache. Sadly I can't locate any information about her character on this movie's IMDB page.

There are too many problems with Thor: Hammer Of The Gods to make it passable, even by my standards. Between the lazy, wandering plot, the dialogue relying on tons of 'By Odin's Beard!' and other such stereotypical Viking-expected exclamations, and the mostly lackluster acting, it's boring at best. If they'd stuck to one storyline that would have helped. If they'd cast the lead properly, and not given us a Thor that just needs a hug, that would have been even better.