“The thing is, though, that the kind-of-O.K. aspects of “Thor” have the effect of making it more depressing, rather than less. The movie cannot be an interesting, appalling train wreck because it lacks the spoiled grandeur of ambition gone off the rails. You can’t sit and marvel (as it were) over what went wrong because nothing, at the level of execution, really has gone wrong. Mr. Branagh has not failed to make an interesting, lively, emotionally satisfying superhero movie, because there is no evidence that he (or the gaggle of credited screenwriters, or Paramount, the sponsoring studio) ever intended to make any such thing. On the contrary, the absolute and unbroken mediocrity of “Thor” is evidence of its success. This movie is not distinctively bad, it is axiomatically bad.”
— | ‘Thor,’ With Chris Hemsworth - Review - NYTimes.com I mostly enjoyed Thor for what it was, but I also kind of agree with this (without agreeing with the conclusion.) |
