Thor

A film in which a god is exiled. A handover of the throne is being prepared in Asgard. Thor is to be king; during the ceremony there is a break-in, and Thor goes to the enemy realm without permission and starts a war. His father punishes him. He takes his power, drives his hammer into a rock and throws his son down to Earth. Thor wakes in a desert in New Mexico. A science team hits him with a van and it starts from there. From there the film runs in two places. On Earth a town, a government unit and the crater where the hammer fell; in Asgard, what Loki is quietly doing. What the narrative is interested in is not power but worth: there is a condition written on the hammer, and all the feeling in the film is about when Thor will meet it. The Loki line is the best written part. The character is built not as a villain but as someone who has just learned his own story. The Asgard sections are close to theatre. Costume, speech and space work deliberately in a stage language, and the director does not hide where he came from. The Earth sections are mostly comic; a god throwing a coffee cup on the floor and starting a fight in a hospital are the most relaxed scenes. The New Mexico sections were shot in that state; Asgard was built entirely in the studio. Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba and Stellan Skarsgård are in the cast. Kenneth Branagh directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants a different tone out of a superhero film. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; there are few fights and the middle takes place almost entirely in the town.