Thor. What Is He Good For?

My wife once called me at work and said, “Your dad sent you another box.” Bring it inside, I said, I’ll deal with it when I get home. “I can’t lift it,” she told me.

When I got home I found that my elderly, ever-helpful father had shipped me his lifetime collection of force multipliers. I was looking at a box of hammers, and yes, I did feel like a punch line. But I also felt that I was now prepared to drive, join, strip, disassemble, or pulverize any object that displeased me. Of course you can take this preparedness thing too far. My wife needed a hammer to install stakes in her garden. As she reached for the tools hanging on the back wall of our garage I heard myself say, “Use the 30-year-old hammer, not the 70-year-old hammer.”

A well-made tool is a joy forever, but Thor, the story of the hammer-flinging Norse God of Thunder, will not match that record. Director Kenneth Branagh once stood for something and I believe that something was Shakespeare. This, however, is not Othello:

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) are half-brothers. One is blond and one is not, so right away you know there’s trouble coming. Thor, heir to the throne of Asgard, approaches life with the swagger and smirk of James T. Kirk and the confidence only a great hair stylist can give you. Loki, unemployed and unemployable, produces bad ideas the way my dog sheds fur – continuously, and without thinking. The plot lurches into first gear once he convinces his idiot brother to invade a kingdom of angry men dressed in Lands’ End swim suits.

I guess we’ve all wanted to do that at one time or another, but this escapade turns out to be the worst foreign-policy mistake in the history of Asgard. Cranky dad Odin (Anthony Hopkins), who already suspected that Thor was a doofus (takes one to know one), hits the roof and throws Thor out of the house.

The disgraced thug falls with a thud in the Arizona desert where he is promptly run down by Natalie Portman, who plays Tina Fey playing the ditzy scientist. Here I closely identified with our protagonists because this is an almost exact replay of my first date with my wife. Alas, the movie grinds on with the traditional action/adventure formula of emotionally potent moments trampled by visually uninteresting battles. Thor’s hammer kills time buried in a crater. It might as well be hanging in my garage.

We don’t watch superhero movies for the sex scenes
Thor plants a kiss smack on his nerd girlfriend somewhere around the 90-minute mark. Kirk would’ve been in another galaxy by then. He wouldn’t remember her name, either.

Open letter to director Kenneth Branagh
Rene Russo plays Winona Ryder playing Frigga, Odin’s trophy wife. Russo has even less screen time as Thor’s mom than Ryder had playing Spock’s mom, and this includes her three-second battle to defend her comatose husband. Director Kenneth Branagh, you put a sword in Rene Russo’s hand, and then you ran away. Why are you afraid of strong women?

Another open letter to director Kenneth Branagh
A faceless, homicidal robot in chain mail that shoots fire from its empty helmet is not imaginative or even scary. Yul Brynner as a wooden-faced, homicidal robot in a cowboy hat in Westworld is imaginative and scary. Director Michael Crichton didn’t need special effects because Brynner’s face just naturally did that.

Not so fast, director Kenneth Branagh
Did it occur to you to hire a writer? Or did you give up when you couldn’t get Thorton Wilder?

Thunderstruck!
If you’ve been waiting for my point so you can stop reading and get in line for the upcoming Captain America biopic, you’ll be relieved to hear that I’m about to put the hammer down.

I didn’t expect to learn anything from this film, not even the name of the God of Thunder’s shampoo. But then, sitting there with the 14-year-old boy in my charge (who thought Thor was “epic”), director Kenneth Branagh taught me something.

Stellan Skarsgård, who plays William Hurt playing the avuncular scientist, takes Thor to a tavern for some demolition drinking. Thor carries him home. “We drank, we fought, we honored our ancestors,” Thor tells Ms. Portman. Skarsgård announces, before passing out, “I don’t believe you’re the God of Thunder. But you should be.”

And that’s the heart of the thing. We’re all Walter Mitty, walking around with secret lives inside us. We can fly, we have X-ray vision, we’re rich, we’re thin, we’re young, we’re heroes, we’re risk takers, we’re sending intimate photos to inappropriate people. (I’m speaking theoretically.) We want to walk in slow motion toward a desperate battle, with a soundtrack by Tim Burton or Danny Elfman but not Coldplay.

When I go to a movie and see Spider-Man swinging through space, I think, this movie was made in a lab. But when I see Peter Parker trying to win the woman he loves, I think, I know what that’s like. Or Clark Kent trying to hold down a job. At least I had severance. Or Bruce Wayne the lonely billionaire pretending to be happy in stately Wayne Manor. Been there, done that.

Battles in superhero movies are boring and predictable. What attracts me are the moments when the X-Men or The Avengers are trying to live normal, everyday lives; when, at least for one scene, they’re one of us. Just a slob like one of us.

One of my Dad’s hammers was designed to chip through rocks in search of fossils. Dad never used this hammer; it’s a souvenir from one of his superhero selves. It fits well with my legion of hammers, ready to fly to my hand to battle evil. Or drive stakes in a garden. Either way, I’m prepared to answer the call.