Thor: Alien of Thunder

I don't think it's unusual to see a summer blockbuster-type of movie and be entertained and then nitpick it to hell after you leave the theater. My problem with Thor is that I thought it was just okay, at best, and then I nitpicked it until I think it's garbage. The love story plot is simply pathetic. The CGI in Asgard is just too much; it looks really fake. The major battle at the end is so weak that it makes the battle at the end of Iron Man 2 look good. Yes, there are a couple of decent parts, good comic relief, but that's overshadowed by what I thought was the unwatchable nature of almost every scene that doesn't happen on Earth.

But my biggest problem with the movie has nothing to do with the plot or look or acting (which, granted, wasn't so bad). My problem is in the way the movie kowtowed to the religious right. Odin, Thor, Loki, and company are gods. They are Norse gods. It's the mythology, no different in the comic. Shoot, the video game of the movie is even called Thor: God of Thunder. In the movie, though? Nope. The movie makes it very, very clear that they are not gods in any way, shape, or form. They are called warriors in the voiceover at the beginning, warriors who came to our world to defend us from evil. At one point, a character tells us that they are essentially aliens, beings from another realm who may have been mistaken for deities by a primitive people. I'm not kidding. The script comes just short of having a character turn to the camera and say, "Hey, please don't protest us for saying that there's more than one god!" There's a lot I didn't like about the movie, but I admit it's a necessary evil to set up for The Avengers next year. This kowtowing, however, is unforgivable to me.