Thor comic con trailerThor: Kenneth Branagh's film...

< >

I just thought it sounded like a weird idea because Kenneth Branagh's directing it, so I was just like: 'Kenneth Branagh doing Thor is super-weird, I've gotta do it'."

That's Natalie Portman's take on Thor, the next instalment in Marvel's ongoing bid to bring its vast catalogue to the big screen (or at least, those characters who weren't auctioned off to other studios before the company worked out that it could do a better job itself). She's right, isn't she? Branagh's involvement is pretty much the main thing the film has going for it: it may have been 21 years since he was nominated for a best director Oscar for Henry V while still in his 20s, but his involvement still gives the project a certain gravitas.

Inevitably, Branagh has the denizens of Asgard speaking the Queen's English, while the earthlings whom the Norse deity encounters after being thrown out of heaven are resolutely American. Sir Anthony Hopkins is Odin, Thor himself is Chris Hemsworth, while the villainous Loki is Branagh's old mucker Tom Hiddleston, an alumni of the stage version of Ivanov, for which Ken won a best actor critics' circle award in 2008. Amusingly, The Wire's Idris Elba plays Heimdall, the all-seeing, all-hearing Asgardian sentry, a casting choice that has stirred much debate. Portman plays Jane Foster, a scientist and Thor's human love interest.

Six minutes of footage was screened at last week's Comic-Con in San Diego, which has now appeared online via ComicBookMovie.com. Check it out in the clip above.

The first thing that strikes me is that Marvel has


pursued the CGI route for Asgard. I suppose this was inevitable, given that other films from the studio have followed the same path, with mixed results. Both Jon Favreau's Iron Man films have shown how it is possible to seamlessly integrate computer-generated imagery with live-action footage, but Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk only proved that an angry green giant is a lot less scary when he looks like an extra from World of Warcraft.

Branagh's Asgard, for me, has all the pomp and grandeur of a cheap computer game intro. I'm fully aware that the cost of recreating a real-life Norse heaven, with all those sweeping aerial shots and all that gleaming gold and steel, might have been astronomical. But surely models, or a mixture of models and footage of epic landscapes and real buildings would have been preferable? Even scenes in the interior of Odin's palace seem to have been shot against a green screen background, which must have made it pretty hard for the actors involved to perform at their best. All in all, if this is Branagh's "weird" take, it's looking like the wrong kind of weird.

With that little rant over, the rest of the film looks pretty decent at this early stage. Once again, Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D (first introduced in Iron Man) seems to be woven intelligently into the fabric of the movie, bringing to Thor a nice feel of consanguinity with the earlier film and helping to set things up for The Avengers (which will unite both characters with Captain America). Hemsworth certainly looks the part as Thor, and Hopkins appears to be on bombastic form as Odin.

The main problem with the film, apart from all that ropey CGI, will be convincing audiences that this character can exist, not only in a version of our world, but in the same world as Iron Man, Captain America and the Hulk. When Stan Lee came had the masterstroke of making his next superhero a living, breathing, immortal God, way back in 1962, he didn't have to worry too much about scientific authenticity: no child is going to take a comic book and start picking holes in the fantasy with which he or she has been presented. But in choosing to shoot its back catalogue in live action, Marvel has forced itself into a position where we have to believe in its universe as a tangible, practical reality, even if it is one in which people can fly and gamma rays transform humans into enormous, snarling green versions of Wayne Rooney after a particularly bad England match.

What are your thoughts on Thor? Could this be the first non-Iron Man movie from Marvel to meet the gold standard? And will Branagh bring just enough "weirdness" to this one to make it interesting, or is it already looking like an almighty mess?