Thor

Spoiler Level: Medium

Another great Marvel movie, and a great start to the 2011 summer movie season!

I'll confess I've only read a handful or issues of the Thor comic book.  Most of what I know about Thor came from the Avengers, and most of what I know about Asgard came from the fantastic New Mutants Special Edition #1 in 1985.  Oh, and I remember watching reruns of the old Thor cartoons from 1966.  So while I'm no expert, I know enough to appreciate all the things they got right.

And wow, did they get a lot right. The costume, the hammer, spinning the hammer, the relationship between Thor and Loki, Jane Foster, the references to Dr. Donald Blake, Odin, the Odinsleep, Sif, the Warriors Three... well, okay, I have a beef with the Warriors Three.  Volstagg is way too thin.

What is, for me, the definitive Volstagg moment.

I absolutely LOVED the Rainbow Bridge.  I was afraid they would consider it too cheesy and not use it, but they found a way to make it faithful and still look cool by today's standards-- it's a giant crystal bridge, pulsing and flowing with every color of the rainbow.  Fantastic.

Being the first Thor film, it's also a great origin tale in its own right, as we see Thor go from over-confident, over-eager, and yes even arrogant, and watch him grow into the hero he's meant to be.  As I said, my knowledge of Thor isn't extensive, so this works as a proper introduction to the character's history for me.

And damn, Chris Hemsworth is the same actor who played George Kirk in Star Trek ('09)?  Wow.  He didn't even blip on my radar in that movie, but here he's hot.  And I normally don't go for guys with beards.  What a difference long hair, an accent, and a good shirtless scene can make.

There's some great additional Marvel Universe easter eggs in this movie as well, but I'm not going to reveal them here. I think we've all gotten used to the cameo by Nick Fury by now as the build-up to the Avengers movie continues, but the others completely surprised me.  Marvel is doing a fantastic job of tying these films together in little ways and truly making it feel like a bigger interconnected universe.  In a lot of ways it reminds me of when comics were new to me.

My only real regret is that I didn't get to watch The Incredible Hulk Returns before seeing this movie. I've still never seen it, and I really wanted to see the only other (and widely regarded as terrible) attempt at a live-action Thor before seeing it done here, where I had confidence that they were going to do it right.

And do it right they did.  On to Captain America!