Almighty Thor (2011)

In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no-one, I'm pretty into the Marvel Cinematic Universe; I went to see Infinity War and Endgame pretty much on the day of cinema release, mostly to avoid spoilers, but also mostly because me, my girlfriend and our pals were all that hyped for the movies. I've always been big into Superhero movies, more so Marvel than DC admittedly but for no other reason than I grew up with the Marvel comics, so that's the side of the tracks I find myself on. And I've been making an effort lately to try and catch up on their TV stuff because my girlfriend is hounding me to watch Wandavision, Falcon & Winter Soldier and Loki, which I need to get round to, but I've started off light and I've been following the What If...? animated series, which I've really enjoyed by the way, and... and I am getting massively off topic. Case in point: I like the Superhero movies. And it occurred to me that I haven't really covered one on here yet, aside from maybe the Sharkboy grey area, but I'm not calling that a Superhero movie. So it's time to change that, and it's also time for FTW week, so aptly; I've picked an Asylum film that rips off a Marvel IP. Naturally. 2011's: Almighty Thor released to coincide with the Chris Hemsworth Thor of 2011. But that is likely where the similarities will begin and end...

Loki (Richard Grieco) ascends from... well, hell, seemingly and begins to rain down a shower of fire on the city of Valhalla, whilst looking for the Hammer of Invincibility, alerting former WWE and WCW Champion; Kevin Nash (Odin) with Thor (Cody Deal) and... one of his other Sons...? to pay a visit to the Norns... three women, who tell him Ragnarock has begun, and he must submit the Hammer of Invicibility to Loki. He refuses of course but when returning to Valhalla and catching up with Loki he is fooled into killing whoever his other Son was (genuinely didn't catch a name...) and is murdered by Loki, all seems to have gone according to fate but not before he flings the, admittedly underwhelming looking... Hammer into a portal, hiding it from Loki. Left behind after the battle, Thor, hears his Father's dying breaths telling him to retrieve the hammer from the Tree of Life before Loki finds it and furious with anger Thor confronts Loki, but is easily beaten and on the verge of being killed himself when he is rescued by Jarnsaxa (Patricia Velásquez), a Valkyrie who, after demonstrating to Thor how terrible he is at actually battling, proceeds to train him with everything she knows... which presumably happens in seconds and off screen, because in the next scene, after travelling to the portal to Midgard; home of the Tree of Life, Thor is suddenly "well trained" and after a distraction from Jarnsaxa to evade a following Loki, Thor and Jarnsaxa emerge in Midgard, or... modern day New York. Jarnsaxa takes them to a lockup where she gives Thor human clothes and a pistol... yes really, and they jog off around the city looking for the gateway, which... they find minutes later, behind a brown painted wall in workshop... Meanwhile Loki has arrived in Midgard / New York looking only slightly more out of place cosplaying as Ryuk from Death Note than he did in Asgard and sets about tracking Thor and Jarnsaxa. Emerging in a cave Jarnsaxa leads Thor to a light where Thor proceeds to have a very clumsy fight with somebody clad head to toe in armor and after killing it, finds himself inside the heart of the Tree where Kevin Nash tells him to "take the hammer son" and Thor is gifted with a rock tied to a bit of wood... sorry the uh... Hammer of Invincibility. Teleporting back through that brown wall and into a workshop Thor and Jarnsaxa proceed to have an argument, mostly because Thor just wants to kill Loki and get this movie over with but Thor is obviously no match for Loki and nearly loses the hammer in battle before, just sort of escaping I guess... so that he and Jarnsaxa can almost have a romantic moment on top of a roof somewhere, but just when it looks like Thor may be coming round to rational thinking, he vanishes when Jarnsaxa's back is turned. Tracking down Loki, Thor falls for one of his illusions when Loki makes him believe Thor has defeated him and with it Thor takes possession of his bone... wand... thing... but Jarnsaxa, the only sensible person left alive it seems, tries to convince him he is wrong but takes him back to their lockup anyway where Loki emerges from the wand and the pair have to escape from him again. Finally coming round to Jarnsaxa's way of thinking, Thor and her summon a portal to return to Asgard but when Thor AGAIN refuses to leave and moans about just wanting to stop Loki, they are interrupted by Loki and his creatures attacking. After a brief fight where Jarnsaxa slays the creatures and Loki attacks Thor with a fucking Uzi... Thor is mortally wounded but transported back to the lockup by Jarnsaxa who is captured by Loki. Thor uses a potion of healing, presumably, and returns to the alley, and finds Jarnsaxa dying, where he confesses his love for her, but Jarnsaxa is one of Loki's illusions and capitalising on Thor's moment of weakness he seizes the hammer and defeats Thor easily in battle, sending both Thor and Jarnsaxa to hell, killing Jarnsaxa. However Thor survives and hearing Jarnsaxa's voice begins to forge his own weapon. Meanwhile Loki opens a portal to destroy the Tree of Life, and after striking it with the hammer a few times and delivering some corny dialogue, lays waste to all of life on Earth. Returning to Earth, Loki begins to go about destroying everything; lots of explosions, buildings falling down e.t.c. until suddenly, Thor emerges from hell, newly forged hammer in hand, and after a fight scene that recycles the same running shot, I think, four times, Loki is defeated and smashed to atoms, Hammer of Invincibility with him, by Thor's hand. Thor then uses his power to revitalize the Tree of Life and just for good measure travels to Asgard and smashes up the Norns place! No really!

By Odin's Beard! This was abysmal. Even by Asylum standards, this isn't my first rodeo, it was fucking terrible. I... I'm not even sure I know where to start. This is hands down, potentially one of the poorest displays of effort, in terms of producing a movie, I think I've ever seen. Half the film uses the same recycled shots of Loki wandering past a wall, Loki wandering down a street, and the other third uses the same recycled shots of Loki looking into a camera. I think they shot roughly, 30 minutes of actual movie and the other 1 hour was just recycling those same 5 minutes cuts over and over again.

The characters. Wow. Let's address Loki first who, played by Richard Grieco, was genuinely convincing as the villain of some movie in some universe somewhere, but his outfit made him look like he was cosplaying as Ryuk from Death Note and his accent did nothing to convince watchers he is Loki - the God of Mischief; "gimme the hammer." They also used this weird semi-sepia, semi-desaturated filter on every scene with him in so he ended up looking like a cross between Data from Star Trek Next Gen and Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Thor... I mean how long have you got? "Almighty Thor"?! Ok which bit? He spends half the movie... no more than half the movie bitching and whining to Jarnsaxa, and 2/3rds of the movie getting his ass handed to him. I actually liked the idea of young, naïve Thor having to grow and become the strong, determined leader he is destined to become but here? This Thor? Not a chance. At no point does he demonstrate he has the potential to overcome Loki, or be any of that, he just sort of does because the movie needs him to. 

Everybody in this movie delivered an underwhelming, unconvincing performance, and I feel for Patricia Velásquez the most, because despite being genuinely decent in her role, she was so horrendously miscast here that the effort almost wasn't really worth it. Richard Grieco again was just not the guy for Loki, and I'm trying hard not to compare him to Tom Hiddleston's version, but... well... they hit the nail on the head with that Loki. Here, he's just a stock, stereotypical bad guy in a terrible costume. Cody Deal did nothing for me. I felt like every scene he was trying so hard, he tried too hard and maybe it wasn't so much him, maybe it was the script, but he reduced the almighty God of Thunder to nothing but a whinging, annoying, bratty teenager, trapped in the body of a manchild in his mid-20's. When the leader of NWO Wolfpack is outperforming you in the acting department, you need to have a look in the mirror.

And that's just the characters! There's more! EVERY SINGLE FIGHT SCENE every one was shot in slow motion, presumably to gloss over how terribly choreographed they were, and shot at ridiculous angles so that they didn't have to show any actual violence. It stunk so bad of low budget it couldn't have gotten much lower really to be honest. And there is one scene, I absolutely shit you not, where Thor and Jarnsaxa are arguing as per fucking usual, that's interrupted in the background by a woman walking down the road with a pushchair! And they left it in! Didn't bother to re-shoot it?! Nah fuck that. Leave it in!

Fuck everything else. There were scenes that look like they were shot with a smartphone, by somebody with no arms standing on a stool made of jelly. The soundtrack was the same stock dramatic music export, it could have been written by a computer using Fruity Loops; just type in: dramatic music and click export and bang: you have the Almighty Thor OST. When Loki wasn't on screen, most of the rest of the film had a de-saturated filter applied to it for... some reason... The special effects, whilst modern and new; were unconvincing. The parts with buildings exploding and falling apart and stuff were... not bad... and bits where the "action" caused cracks in the floor and stuff were alright as well, modern enough to be... sort of acceptable, but again so smacking of low budget that it almost felt lazy. For what it's worth Loki's creatures at least looked sort of cool.

Let's not even talk about the bit with fucking Loki and the Uzi.

I was getting strong Hercules in New York energy from this movie. A Lead clearly out of his depth, a Support trying their best to prop up a disastrous movie, horrendous levels of production everywhere else, and the resulting product being a mostly uncomfortable experience for anybody unfortunate enough to be watching. I'm not even measuring this up against the actual Thor of 2011. I'm measuring this by the standards of being an actual fucking movie. And it falls way short way fucking short of even reaching for that standard. Almighty Thor? More like Whingey Thor. ZEEEEERRO.