Thor (2011)

Chris Hemsworth played George Kirk in Star Trek (2009) and to me his performance felt forced and stiff. In that role, he had a familiar quality to me, and searching IMDB and Google, I can't seem to find any performance that I would have seen him in. I did find a quick note from someone saying that Hemsworth reminded them of a young Nick Nolte, so I'll go with that for now.

In Thor, Hemsworth didn't feel stiff nor contrived, he felt right at home. In a lot of ways, his Austrailian roots showed through, in so far as he kept reminding me of Heath Ledger. Not a bad thing, but if he can't separate himself from Ledger a bit, it might be hard for people to accept his acting for what it is, rather than compare him to Heath.

Natalie Portman was great in this. She compellingly portrayed a driven scientist who's spent her life researching atmospheric phenomena, yet she digs deep into her vulnerable side to become the girl smitten by a new love interest, and contrasts it all with some sass when she looks upon a transform Thor and says "Is this how you normally look?" To his affirmative response, she says "I like it!" There's attitude in the delivery, and she really pulls it off.

There were no real surprises in the plot points, but the movie pulled you along with a great pace, and even better special effects. Asgard strikes us as a completely fantastic place, but never looks out-of-place.

The cast, padded with a few well-known stars, namely Russo and Hopkins, gave performances that were real yet fantastic, and through it all never felt over-the-top. I think there was a very real risk of these performances going over-the-top given the source material, and we can see this in other films like the Stephen Lang's performance in Avatar which to me was very overdone and cardboard like. Lang could have made the Colonel's performance more like R. Lee Ermey's Sargent Hartman from Full Metal Jacket who had a lot more realism and believability (mind you, he was a retired Sargent). I can't help but wonder if Tim Colceri, who was originally cast to play Sargent Hartman, would have delivered a performance similar to Lang's had he maintained the role.

One of the aspects of Thor that I didn't fully expect was how inspirational it was. Natalie delivered passion, and you always felt like she was striving towards something, and that left me with the verve to go and do something great. Not many super-hero movies leave me feeling that way, as they're often too far fetched, which speaks to the well-grounded nature of Thor.