FILM - THOR REVIEW

I’ve written and spoken often about how important expectation is to the success (or otherwise) of films in this hype-heavy, instant-reaction world we live in nowadays. This is a film world where people get excited to see still images from a film – something I’ve never understood – and hype has the ability to make or break a film. You go in expecting Spiderman and you get Spiderman 2, Sam Raimi is a directing god. You go in expecting Spiderman 2 and you get Spiderman 3, and you’ll be cursing out Sam Raimi on internet message boards for the rest of time.

So as I went into the cinema to see Thor, I was aware that the hype had been middling in the lead-up to the film’s release. The promotional pictures had been gaudy and ridiculous, the trailer was uninspiring and the fish-out-of-water humour was in danger of derailing the whole operation. All I was hoping for, as someone who has never read a Thor comic but desperately wants this whole Marvel cross-film pollination to succeed, (I’ll never get sick of superhero films) was a three-star movie that regular punters would go and see.