Thor (2011)

Thor was always going to be the riskiest gamble of Marvel’s Phase One. Iron Man was a tech billionaire audiences could relate to. Captain America was a patriot. But a Norse god from a rainbow bridge? That required a filmmaker with the audacity to take the material seriously—and Marvel found exactly that in Kenneth Branagh, the acclaimed Shakespearean director behind Hamlet and Henry V. The result is a film that balances cosmic grandeur with fish-out-of-water comedy, a movie that dares to be both epic and silly, and largely succeeds on the strength of its cast and its director’s unwavering conviction.

The numbers reflect a film that critics respected and audiences enjoyed, even if it didn’t reach the heights of Iron Man. On Rotten Tomatoes, Thor holds a 77% critics score and a 76% audience score, with a consensus that reads: “A dazzling blockbuster that tempers its sweeping scope with wit, humor, and human drama, Thor is mighty Marvel entertainment” [citation:15]. Metacritic assigned a 57 out of 100, indicating “mixed or average” reviews, while CinemaScore audiences gave it a B+ [citation:3]. Against a $150 million budget, it grossed $449.3 million worldwide, a solid return that justified Marvel’s gamble on a lesser-known property [citation:8].

Critics were enthusiastic about Branagh’s direction and Chris Hemsworth’s star-making performance. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Megan Lehman called it “a burly slab of bombastic superhero entertainment that skitters just this side of kitschy to provide an introduction befitting the mighty god of thunder,” praising Branagh as “a man with a highbrow history who knows his way around an epic tale” and Hemsworth’s work as “star-making” [citation:5]. Variety‘s Richard Kuipers noted that Branagh “invests the dramatic passages with a weighty yet never overbearing Shakespearean dimension,” and that Hemsworth “holds his own in distinguished company” [citation:18]. NPR‘s Bob Mondello observed that “when the screenplay gives him something besides arrogance to work with, he owns the movie too—a frat-boy god-out-of-water, amusingly clueless” [citation:13].

Not everyone was enchanted. The New York Times‘s A.O. Scott famously quipped that he left the screening “seeking shelter: in a nearby bar; under a passing bus,” complaining that “you are hammered with one cliché after another” [citation:13]. The Los Angeles Times‘s Kenneth Turan found it “something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be” [citation:13]. Access Hollywood noted “a weak story, a choppy pace and underdeveloped characters” [citation:5]. Yet even the detractors often praised Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, with Sight & Sound noting that “the motor of the film is Tom Hiddleston’s complex, conflicted Loki” [citation:9]. For all its unevenness, Thor remains a charming, ambitious entry in the MCU—a film that proved a Norse god could work on the big screen, and introduced two of the franchise’s most enduring stars.