On the couch

Thor
****
Directed by: Kenneth Brannagh
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston

Star Wars: The Complete Saga
*****
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Yoda

Of all the superhero movies Marvel were going to make in the build up to next summer’s uber-blockbuster The Avengers, Thor was always going to be the toughest character to sell as being even remotely believable.
Even in a world where the physique of an Olympic gymnast comes as standard, everyone worth their salt can fly and underpants are always, always worn on the outside worn, making the Norse god of thunder was going to be a tall order. But Kenneth Brannagh, the most unlikely of comic book flick directors and world famous Shakespearholic, cracked it.
The story is a simple one. Overprivileged kid (Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth) destined to take over the family business annoys his dad, gets kicked out of the house, learns a lesson in humility, falls in love and  returns home just in time to save the day with the help of his new-found powers of not acting like a git at every possible moment.
Of course things are slightly more complicated than that – the dad is Odin (Anthony Hopkins), king of Asgard and the family biz is protecting the nine realms from evil of all sorts. Getting kicked out doesn’t mean crashing on a mate’s sofa till daddy cools down either. Thor gets stripped of his powers and banished to Earth with his only hope of redemption lying in his ability to cop himself on and also to recover his hammer, Mjolnir.
En route to redemption Thor meets, helps and falls for astrophysicist, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who finds the depowered deity just after he gets the boot from Asgard and lands in the middle of the New Mexico desert.
A film of two parts, Thor’s action is split over two worlds – the fish out of water stuff involving Thor himself on earth and the more melodramatic craic in Asgard where Thor’s brother Loki may or may not be trying to sell out his family to a race of evil ice giants.
Despite the difference in wild difference in setting – Asgard looks like someone raided Liberace’s bad dreams and shined it within an inch of its life while New Mexico looks… dusty and New Mexican – Thor’s tone remains constant and entertaining. Never taking itself too seriously but never straining for a laugh either, the casting does a lot of the director’s work for him. The moments that require gravitas have Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgård to take care of them. Need somebody to point out a comic book trope that really shouldn’t be taken for granted? Kat Dennings as Foster’s assistant Darcy, is all over it.
Even Hemsworth in the lead, despite spending a good part of the film dressed like a disco gladiator, manages to maintain a bit of dignity and be convincing as something more than just a royal brat. His romance with Natalie Portman, not a central plot point by any means, is well handled and understated. Courtly even. Portman, for her part, gives a solid showing as Jane Foster who is, unusually for this type of flick, neither a ditz, damsel in distress nor a secret, super-powered agent of some sort. She’s a smart lady caught up in a weird situation.
Also weathering the burden of one of the silliest hats in recent screen memory, Tom Hiddleston is convincingly sneaky and smart, as Thor’s brother, Loki, living up to his character’s reputation as the god of lies and mischief. 
Another minor achievement for Brannagh is that, unlike Iron Man 2, Thor doesn’t feel like an extended trailer for The Avengers. While there are plenty of tie-ins for the Marvel-philes out there, it can be viewed in isolation as a thoroughly entertaining romp.
From an ancient myth to a modern one. Star Wars: The Compete Saga. If you’ve never seen George Lucas’s six-film series you really should, starting with episodes IV-VI (the first three) and then, moving on to the the first three chapters. It’s the stuff that childhoods are made of – spaceships, mystics, magic, love, friendship, missing fathers and tiny furry people instigating revolution. The Lord of the Rings with lasers.
Whatever might be said of the more recent instalments, watching all six back-to-back does have something of an epic feel to it and you have to admire the breadth of vision, if not the horrible, horrible dialogue (Ford famously telling his director during one of the original three “you can type this s***, but you sure as hell can’t say it”.)
Presented in Blu-ray, much has been made of the constant tinkering that has seen some of the originally animatronic  characters digitally replaced and some lines of dialogue tweaked or changed.
They’re the sort of changes that will only  break the hearts of the most diehard fans. For the rest of us it’s just another excuse to enjoy one of the greatest stories ever told.