Catching Up on Superhero Movies with Thor

I was impressed with Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. I finally had a chance to see it, because Y won a free Redbox code from the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. I have been so busy lately that I have fallen out of touch with much of recent movie and television going-ons. Thor, however, was a treat tonight, because I made some time to watch it with Y and it was a pretty good story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosvich. I believe that the film is a step in the direction for superhero filmmaking. There is certainly spectacle, but that spectacle is tastefully rendered and presented to the audience through good cinematography (for the most part). Despite the compression of Thor’s path to wisdom, it was done in a way that connected with the audience in a stronger way than, say, Hal Jordan’s (Ryan Reynolds) terrible training montage in the Green Lantern. Also, I liked the tiny bit of explanation of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge or wormhole, but Natalie Portman’s “science” didn’t make the story itself as science fictional as it could have been. What about all of the other Asgardian technology? How does that work? Perhaps the movie was largely meant to be magical. At least they mentioned Arthur C. Clarke, but they should have given him his due with a full quote.