Almighty Thor Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

I first discovered The Asylum by randomly coming across a used DVD of their “War Of The Worlds” when the movie was about a year old. That I find it to be infinitely better than Spielberg’s version got me hooked on the company. Ever since then, I kept hoping that they’d make a superhero movie as super strength or invincibility (or both) are fairly cheap and easy things to do on a budget. Six years later, as a tie-in to Marvel’s first “Thor: The Mighty Avenger”, The Asylum finally granted my wish and released “Almighty Thor”. Was the finished product worth the wait?

 

We begin, as most Asylum movies do, with the opening titles and credits overlaid on top of the main geographic scenery we’ll be seeing throughout: ie- “Sleeping Beauty” had forests, mountains, and castles. Here, there is a forest, and then a pan to the left and down happens, we see a hellish, molten rock landscape, where the movie proper begins. This is pretty cool, as it introduces us to Loki (Richard Grieco) performing a spell to escape to Asgard and start a war. Unfortunately, it is so poorly edited, with weird cuts and extreme close ups of the various candles and sigils being used. It makes it impossible to get a clear look at anything going on. Sadly, this will be a constant problem throughout. We are not off to a great start.

 

So, Loki invades with his hellhound army (I did not hear a proper name for these jackal-esque behemoths, so I shall be referring to them as hellhounds. If I missed their actual name, sorry!), and kills a few guards defending a forest outpost. As he progresses further, we finally cut to what Odin (Kevin Nash) has been doing. Instead of getting ready to fight this massive threat, he and his sons are slowly walking up a mountain to the cave of the Weavers Of Fate. Only to ignore them entirely, and go fight Loki himself. Loki uses subterfuge and trickery to cause Odin to kill the eldest of his two sons, Baldir (Jess Allen). Loki then uses that shock to literally stab Odin in the back. Odin, with the last of his strength, banishes the Hammer Of Invincibility to another realm. Thor (Cody Deal), Odin’s youngest, runs after Loki, but is easily put in his place. As he’s running to escape, he meets up with Valkyrie warrior Jarnsaxa (Patricia Velasquez), who is to help finish his training. This is better, but why introduce all these people just to kill them. It seems pointless. And I do mean that Odin and Baldir have been in exactly one scene before their deaths, so the audience has very little reason to care or be emotionally invested at this point.

 

The Asgardian portal to the all important Tree Of Life is guarded by a hellhound. So, in order to buy some time, and give Loki the run around, our two heroes go to Earth, to find a portal that is unguarded. On Earth, Thor is trained in how to use guns! This was a fact heavily advertised in the trailers and promotional materials, so one would probably presume it would have some bearing on the story. It does not. It simply serves to pad out the runtime, while it is only ninety minutes, the copious amount of filler makes it feel like three hours. And there’s exactly zero fish-out-of-water moments that could have livened things up a bit.

 

Loki eventually finds the two on Earth, and does get his hands on the Hammer. Thor goes running down the street firing an uzi at Loki, and missing spectacularly. Loki uses his magic to fling the gun away, and we’ll never see gunplay in the movie again (told you it was pointless). Jarnsaxa chastises Thor for being so foolish, and not thinking things through. This could have been an interesting point, if this middle section hadn’t already devolved into a basic and monotonous routine. Thor attacks Loki, or one of his goons, gets his ass handed to him, and promptly gets yelled at by Jarnsaxa. Thor’s inability to learn from his mistakes makes him a hard character to root for, and it causes the film to be too predictable.

After another humdrum fight, Thor gets send to the Underworld. Finally deciding to do something proactive, he creates a new Hammer from the molten rock and his own brute strength. And it’s this kind of awesomeness the movie has been missing the entire time! This last fight, with both Hammers in play, is the best in the movie.

 

I realize this isn’t my usual format, but there was just too much stupid to be contained in a brief plot synopsis. The plot isn’t the only miserable part of the movie though, the characterizations are quite abysmal as well. In one scene, in order to distract Loki, Jarnsaxa throws a battle axe, but magically makes it appear to be the Hammer. The ruse works, and Thor immediately starts bellyaching about how he can’t believe that she would just give him the Hammer. Thor, who continually proves himself to the dumbest person in all the realms, can’t quite grasp that magic was used, despite him having seen magic before! Say what?! And since there are only three major characters, and only one of them has an actual arc, and that arc is solely because he’s an idiot, the characters aren’t fun ever.

 

The acting doesn’t help, at all. Cody Deal is so lifeless and wooden as Thor, I am surprised he never sprouted leaves. He sounds whiny all the time and has the screen presence of a wet sponge. But, compared to Kevin Nash’s brief role, Deal seems to of a high caliber. Nash is offensively terrible; brutally bad; shamefully awful. On paper, given his height and build, he must have seemed ideal. Not in practice though. He not only sounds like he’s just reading his lines, every look or movement also appears stagy and forced. Nash’s performance as Odin is absolutely one of the worst onscreen performances of all time.

 

Patricia Velasquez and Cody Deal have no chemistry (thankfully there isn’t a romantic angle), and seeing as how it’s these two running around for seventy minutes, just them, this kills any buddy-buddy type fun that could have emerged. Outside of that, Velasquez seems comfortable in the action roles, but she constantly says her lines so swiftly it is distracting. Richard Grieco at least tries. It’s clear he’s having a bit of fun, even if his dialogue is unwieldy at times. I won’t go so far as to state that he is hamming it up, but he is the only one clearly having fun, and acknowledging the sort of goofy thing he’s signed on for.

 

The CGI is a bit of a mixed bag. Fire is notoriously hard to get right in CGI, even for multimillon dollar budgeted movies, but even so, the fire and lava look rubbery and fake. The hellhounds though, do look solid and cool. They have a jackal type face and no fur to speak of. On their skin are various magical symbols, which adds a nice visual flair. The portals don’t look too distinctive, but are integrated well.

 

Other good things are Chris Ridenhour’s epic score, which is just wasted on dreck like this. When no character is talking, and it is just the camera movements, etc., telling the story, things aren’t so headache inducing, even if there some unbelievably bad continuity errors throughout- Loki and the hellhounds attack the gates of Asgaard, then we cut away to what Odin is doing, and then cut back to Loki, who only then tells his minions to attack. I don’t care what the budget was, that is piss poor filmmaking.

 

This is The Asylum’s worst movie of all time (to date). It’s not so bad it’s good, like some of their early efforts. It’s not good fun, but flawed like a number of their releases, nor is it just damned amazing like almost all their movies from 2014 (and 2015 so far). To be fair, both times I have watched this, I was by myself, and maybe viewing with friends who are throwing zingers out would improve things. But, there is little fun or enjoyment to be had here, and as much as I like The Asylum and what they represent, this is dogshit.