Kenneth Branagh didn’t screw up Thor
By Alex Larman, published on 16 May 2011
Leaving a recent screening of Marvel’s new superhero, superbells, superwhistles movie Thor, I felt simultaneously quite pleased and annoyed. I was quite pleased because it had been an entertaining couple of hours; absurd, of course, in the way that only very expensive Hollywood schlock can be, but witty in places, with a certain off-kilter sense of grand spectacle, and some well-known actors (Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgaard, Colm Feore) hamming nobly with tongues faintly in cheek, as well as an intriguingly nuanced performance by the young Shakespearean actor Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the villain of the piece.
I was annoyed because I’d been sharpening my metaphorical knife in anticipation of the kind of dreadful, hideous flop that leads to wild laughter on the streets. Every few years, one of these truly special films comes along, including Green Street (Elijah Wood as a football hooligan) and Unleashed (Jet Li as a man trained to fight as a dog in Glasgow where everyone speaks with cockney accents). But I’d had high hopes for Thor’s awfulness because of the involvement of Kenneth Branagh as director, a choice that seemed utterly, deeply bizarre and wretched.
It has been fashionable to knock Branagh for over two decades now. Since his directorial debut, Henry V, in 1989, the knives were sharpened for him, partly because of what seemed his marriage to Emma Thompson and subsequent enshrinement in luvvie pantheons, and partly because of his near-constant daring critics to compare him with Lord ‘call me Larry, everyone else does’ Olivier. After a few films in which he seemed almost untouchable (Dead Again, 1991 – ‘the new Hitchcock’; Much Ado About Nothing, 1993 – the new Zefferelli), he came badly unstuck with an ambitious but risible adaptation of Frankenstein in 1994, billed absurdly as Francis Ford Coppola’s Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Still, he neatly recovered with a fine 1996 adaptation of Hamlet, in which the random stunt casting of bit parts (Billy Crystal? Jack Lemmon? Ken bloody Dodd as Yorick?) was outweighed by superlative performances by the likes of Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Julie Christie (a clear nod to the film’s epic antecedents) as Gertrude and Branagh himself, finely spoken and intelligently measured as The Dane.
Then it all went more than a little wrong.
To this day, it’s not entirely clear what happened to Branagh as an actor the next few years. Why on earth did he think it would be a good idea to start making the sort of terrible films he did? Knock-off John Grisham directed by an off-form Robert Altman? Check. Lowest-par Woody Allen in which he was required to more or less play Allen? Check. A forgotten, dreadful movie called The Proposition, in which he plays ‘a Boston priest in the 1930s with a secret’? Check. And, most demeaning of all, (Wicky Wicky) Wild Wild West, a film so dire and flatulent that its star Will Smith’s later career of pictures in which he plays central characters suffering horrendously is entirely down to this one mistake. Branagh, as a legless scientist called Dr Arliss Loveless who controls giant mechanical spiders, looks upset throughout, and so he should be.
Things eventually picked up. Some great performances as real people (such as Shackleton and Heydrich) saw his acting stock rise again, as did a fine appearance as David Mamet’s Edmond at the National in 2003. Speaking as one who saw the scene in which Branagh appeared naked, I can testify that whatever the reverse of Charles Spencer’s ‘pure theatrical Viagra’ was, he had it in spades. A paycheck gig in Harry Potter followed, as did much-acclaimed performances as Wallander on TV and as Chekhov’s Ivanov on stage. Winning BAFTAs and major awards, his stock as an actor has risen commensurately over the past decade, barring the odd disaster such as his miserably unfunny appearance in Richard Curtis’ flop, The Boat That Rocked.
But what of his directorial career? It seems an odd decision for Marvel to entrust their truckful of money-spinner to a man whose last 3 films as a director were the unnecessary Pinter-scripted remake of Sleuth (total box office receipts: $5 million), a redundant trudge through As You Like It (box office: $500,000, grossing a mighty £38 on one weekend in the UK) and yet another failed attempt to put opera on screen with The Magic Flute, which apparently cost $27 million and has apparently grossed around 2. The combined receipts of all these, then, would barely cover the catering on the film.
Yet the highest praise one can give Thor, paradoxically, is that it doesn’t feel like a Kenneth Branagh film. Gone are the moments of matey casting – thank the Lord, there’s no appearance by Brian Blessed and Richard Briers as sage gods of Asgard. His big innovation from Sleuth – near-constant slanted angles – remains, but this is effective rather than irritating. He directs the action scenes with a reasonably sure hand, even if there is the usual Ritalin-level editing, but handles the Shakespearean dynamics of its three male protagonists with a certain level of skill, and even manages to make the comedy somewhat amusing. It isn’t a classic, but it’s an enjoyable summer blockbuster, and an opening weekend in the US of $67 million is well in excess of the grosses of his films of the past 15 years put together.
So, the Belfast boy done (reasonably) good. I have high hopes for his performance as Laurence Olivier in the forthcoming My Week With Marilyn, especially if he’s allowed to play it like Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles and doesn’t turn into a hammy caricature. And if he is involved with more Thor films, here’s a simple tip, Kenneth: Richard Briers doesn’t need the work. Brian Blessed is popular on the after-dinner circuit. Resist the temptation ‘for old time’s sake’ to give them parts as gods of the underworld, and all will continue to be well.
Kenneth Branagh didn’t screw up Thor
Alex Larman has been to see Thor for us. And the highest praise he can give the new blockbuster is that, paradoxically, it doesn’t feel like a Kenneth Branagh film.
