- 9
Expanding the cinematic Marvel-verse in stranger ways than the casual viewer might expect, it sets the stage for a larger storyline while still delivering a heroic tale for old-school comic readers.
—L. Thompson E!
- 9
...the movie, though it's often a very funny god-out-of-water origin comedy, has a stirring emotional core as well.
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 8
It's a noisy, universe-rattling spectacle full of sound and fury with a suitably epic design, solid digital effects and a healthy respect for the comic-book lore that turned a mythological Norse god into a founding member of the superhero team known as The Avengers.
—Megan Lehmann Hollywood Reporter
- 8
...a big, loud, relentlessly entertaining film around him...
—Keith Phipps Onion AV Club
- 7
The last 25 minutes of Thor aren't much better than the first. But that hour in between ? tasty, funny, robustly acted ? more than compensates.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 7
Though it may not leave a lasting impression once the lights go up, Thor is lighthearted and thunderously good fun.
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 7
Directed by noted Shakespearean Kenneth Branagh with a class-act grasp of how action works best when it defines character instead of obliterating it, Thor comes on like thunder, delivering epic fireworks that don't neglect the dramatic sparks ignited between father and son, brother and brother, and lovers from two different worlds.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 6
Neither the star pupil nor the dunce of the Marvel superhero-to-screen class, Thor delivers the goods so long as butt is being kicked and family conflict is playing out in celestial dimensions, but is less thrilling during the Norse warrior god's rather brief banishment on Earth.
—Richard Kuipers Variety
- 6
By the end of the film, I felt like Thor did its job, and did it well. But instead of satisfying as its own standalone adventure, it felt like necessary prep work for a bigger party we know we are going to be invited to yet aren't allowed to walk into just yet.
—Sean O'Connell filmcritic.com
- 6
Thor is as serviceable as a hammer, and about as subtle.
—Kyle Smith New York Post
- 6
...an edge-of-summer tentpole production that delivers the goods, albeit in laborious fashion and at enormous expense.
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 5
...continues the trend of weakly jumpstarting a franchise based on a Marvel comic with an adequate but instantly forgettable origin story. Kenneth Branagh's film is reasonably well put-together, but unlike even his worst films, it has no internal life, instead feeling like an impersonal, assembly-line product.
—Simon Abrams Slant Magazine
- 5
...despite all the hype, despite the $150-million budget, despite a post-shooting 3-D conversion, despite stars like Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins and hunky young Australian Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder himself, what we have here is an aesthetic standoff between predictable elements and unexpected ones. Thor has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times
- 4
An astonishingly awkward marriage of ancient Norse mythology and 21st-century nonsense, Thor ... works too hard at simply functioning to assert why it, or we, should bother.
—Eric Hynes Village Voice
- 4
...the absolute and unbroken mediocrity of Thor is evidence of its success. This movie is not distinctively bad, it is axiomatically bad. And that is depressing. A howling turkey is at least something to laugh at, and maybe even something to see. But Thor is an example of the programmed triumph of commercial calculation over imagination.
—A. O. Scott New York Times