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Last night, esrblog and I went with pmat and shakati to see the latest movie bringing a Marvel comic hero to life: "Thor".

I understand from esrblog that this movie represents backstory for the character of Thor that did not appear in the original comic, so he couldn't really say that it was true to the comic or not. Consequently, I can't say very much about the film without emitting spoilers. (However, I can and will note, for the titillation of my costumer friends, that there was a scene in the movie set in 965 C.E., in a Viking age Scandinavian village, where we get a brief glimpse of a woman wearing a recognizable, Hedeby-style apron dress, held up with a convincing pair of tortoise brooches, over a long-sleeved off-white shift. Unfortunately, the dress itself was made of an ugly plaid fabric that looked like a cheap modern synthetic, but I was impressed that the film makers made that much of a nod to authenticity.)

According to this movie, Thor, and the other inhabitants of Asgard are a race of space aliens who use advanced technology to travel about the "nine realms" of which they are aware, one of which is--surprise!--Earth. Specifically, the Asgardians end up in the desert near a small town in New Mexico, where Natalie Portman, playing a physicist named Jane Foster, is attempting to study bizarre electromagnetic phenomena. Most of the phenomena turn out to be caused by the Asgardian transport device, which they call the Bifrost Bridge, and which Jane and her physicist friends think of as an Einstein-Rosen bridge (I'm not kidding; they actually use the term "Einstein-Rosen bridge" in the movie). Anyway, Thor gets kicked out of Asgard for Conduct Unbecoming the Heir to the All-Father's throne, ends up in New Mexico, and has various adventures involving Jane and her crew until he has suffered enough to be reunited with his hammer, Mjollnir, and his godlike powers. Unfortunately, in the inevitable battle for control of Asgard, the bridge is destroyed and Thor is cut off from Earth and from Jane, with whom he has managed to fall in love.

I'm of two minds about whether I liked this movie or not. On the one hand, the special effects--the bronze and gold towers of Asgard and the Bifrost Bridge itself--were neat. The film makers work hard to bolt a plausible science-fictional back story onto what, even in the movie itself, is mythology (one of Jane's colleagues is a gentleman of Scandinavian descent with a rough general knowledge of Norse myth). They don't succeed, but that's because the premises are so intrinsically absurd and not for lack of effort. On the other hand, there is so much hardware and so many explosions (yes, explosions) and so little characterization allowed to the actors that I found myself unable to care about what actually happened to the characters in the story.

Still, as esrblog remarked afterward, "It's a good summer popcorn movie." And I suppose it is. I don't regret paying for the tickets to go see it, anyway. But I suspect I'll enjoy the final Harry Potter movie more.