Out of all the MCU’s solo franchises, it’s arguable that the Thor trilogy has bounced around a few different styles, genres, and tones to see what fit.
As it turns out, some fans are skeptical. Here are 5 Things Thor’s Solo Trilogy Did Right (And 5 It Did Wrong).
Wrong: Love interest
By the laws of Hollywood filmmaking, every MCU solo movie needs a love interest. But where some of those movies have developed complicated and interesting relationships that fans have enjoyed following, like Peter Quill and Gamora or Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, others have given us banal romantic interests played by actors who have no chemistry with the lead, like Christine Palmer, or Jane Foster.
Natalie Portman is a terrific actor – one of the best working today, some would say – so she could’ve given the MCU a brilliant character if she was given any interesting material to work with in the scripts.
Right: Thor’s relationship with Loki
What makes Thor’s solo franchise unique is that it’s not just about him. Since the beginning, it’s been about his relationship with his brother, Loki, who continues to deceive and betray him.
Their relationship is a little like Jimmy and Chuck in Better Call Saul; you know that one brother is constantly screwing over the other brother and the other brother should just cut them out of their lives, but since they’re brothers, you know they can’t do that. The on-screen chemistry shared by Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston is an integral part of this – if they didn’t have chemistry, it wouldn’t work.
Wrong: An uninspired second chapter
MCU fans are pretty much unanimous in the opinion that Loki’s fake-out death is predictable, the battle scenes don’t come close to matching Taylor’s work on Game of Thrones, and Jane Foster is given both her biggest role and her least substantial material.
Being the second chapter (the one that is usually the best: The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II), Thor movie had to be out-and-out bananas just to make up for how uninspired the second one was.
Right: Family themes
The strength of the the key to understanding him as a character.
Thor’s relationships with his brother, father, and mother have always been at the forefront of his stories – or, at least, they’ve been at the forefront in the first and third movies, which worked better than the second. A big part of the reason why The Dark World failed is that, even with moments like Frigga’s death, it lost sight of the family themes.
Wrong: Pre-Ragnarok comic relief
It’s often said that Thor trilogy by making it funny. The problem before was not a lack of humor, just a lack of good humor. The first two movies made attempts at comedy, and aside from a couple of fish-out-of-water gags involving Thor adjusting to life on Earth in the first one, it simply wasn’t that funny.
Kat Dennings and Chris O’Dowd gave it their all, but Thor movie, this issue was under control.
Right: Anthony Hopkins as Odin
A lot of the casting in the Thor franchise is spot-on, Hemsworth and Hiddleston being the most obvious examples, but since they’re players in the wider MCU, that’s not really a point in favor of Thor’s solo series, but rather the franchise as a whole.
Anthony Hopkins as Odin, however, is Thor movies, he always brought his A-game. Whether he was stripping Thor of his powers or dying, Hopkins always sold the weight of Odin’s scenes.
Wrong: World-building
Although we know what Asgard looks like from afar with ample sweeping crane shots (plus, we’ve seen various locations close up), the world-building in the Asgard is a fascinating place in the comics, and yet none of the movies have managed to convey that. We don’t get a sense of Asgard the way we get a sense of Hogwarts or the Death Star and that’s a huge disappointment.
It meant that we didn’t really care when Asgard was destroyed in New Asgard, the small Norwegian fishing town that the Asgardians have relocated to, in just one movie than three directors did with three movies set largely in the original Asgard.
Right: Villains
Apart from Malekith, the primary villain of the one-villain-per-movie system is getting to be a drag).
Even the Destroyer felt like a real threat. And in Jeff Goldblum’s hysterically unhinged Grandmaster, and a suitably formidable Surtur.
Wrong: No narrative consistency
While each it was constantly trying to “fix” itself.
Kenneth Branagh’s Thor trilogy.
Right: Finishing strong
The hardest movie in a trilogy to pull off is the third one, since it has Ragnarok, was still faced with a difficult challenge.
Thor movies were missing was humor.
