Thor

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Infinity Saga

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Edit Coming 01/23/26

After 'Iron Man 2', it seemed abundantly clear that 'The Avengers' was definitely gonna be a thing. But one upcoming title that put me at unease was 'Thor'. Being that this was a comic book character who was, in essence, a God, lived in a whole other world, and was always one of Marvel's more fantasy-based characters, I never saw it working out well. However, it turned out that the formula needed for this to work was really quite simple.

The film hits the ground running, when Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and her friends, Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) happen upon what seems to be some sort of meteor crash, but turns out to be some guy who had fallen from the sky. From there, the film recaps the events on Asgard, Thor's home world, that lead up to his banishment to Earth, and his unworthiness to wield the hammer, Mjölnir. He then spends his life in exile, befriending and getting to know Jane, Erik and Darcy better, and coming to the realization that human beings are more than meets the eye.

In the meantime, however, Thor's brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) finds out revealing secrets about his past from his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and he essentially becomes the villain everyone knows and loves out of this information. However, unlike in 'The Avengers', he doesn't quite threaten Earth as much as he threatens Asgard here.

It's kinda funny, but the big concern of mine here was that they were going for a fish-out-of water story by bringing the character to Earth. 'Masters of the Universe' did it, 'Smurfs' did it, and sure enough, 'Thor' did it too. However, in this case, I overlooked the obvious. Thor HAS to come to Earth if the Avengers were ever gonna assemble. In this case, the fish-out-of-water thing works out quite well.

To be perfectly honest, I find some of the funniest dialogue in the MCU come from this movie, when a Norse God gets confused about how to handle every day Earth situations. They were very smart with this movie in that they ended up making it a pretty solid comedy, but they left enough room to throw the fantasy aspect in there. This movie served as the beacon of hope for me that an 'Avengers' movie could actually work. This was the first sign that Marvel was just ready to throw that reality-grounding out the window and say "this is a comic book, lets make it look like one".

'Thor', as a character along with his films kinda meets that middle-ground for me. But I do have to admit that I was actually quite impressed with the first chapter here - even if it does turn into a bit of a love story. This was the title that ultimate proved to me that the MCU was definitely a thing, and it was gonna last for a while. Now, here we are, 10 years after it all began, and still going strong. Who'd have ever thought this was all going to work?

4/5

POST-CREDIT SCENE: Erik Selvig is brought in to meet with Nick Fury. Fury shows him the Tesseract, and mentions of it's immense power. We then see Loki, eavesdropping on the conversation, setting the upcoming the plot for 'The Avengers'

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