 Filming
In October 2008, Marvel Studios signed a long-term lease agreement with Raleigh Studios to photograph their next four films—Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers—at Raleigh's Manhattan Beach, California facility.
Production Weekly reported that filming on Marvel's Thor was scheduled to begin in Los Angeles mid-January, then move to Santa Fe, New Mexico from March until late-April. Principal photography began on January 11, 2010.
 A few days after filming began, it was reported that Clark Gregg had signed on to reprise his role from Iron Man and Iron Man 2 as Agent Coulson. In February, Paramount Pictures entered negotiations with Del Mar, California to use a 300-yard stretch of beach to film a scene for Thor involving six horses running down the terrain.
Paramount said this coastline was ideal because its gradual slope of sand down to the waterline creates excellent reflective opportunities on film. On March 15, 2010 production of Thor moved to Galisteo, New Mexico, where an old-fashioned Western film town was extensively modified for the shoot.
 Branagh, a fan of the comic book since childhood, commented on the challenge of bridging Asgard and the modern world. "Inspired by the comic book world both pictorially and compositionally at once, we've tried to find a way to make a virtue and a celebration of the distinction between the worlds that exist in the film but absolutely make them live in the same world.
It's about finding the framing style, the color palette, finding the texture and the amount of camera movement that helps celebrate and express the differences and the distinctions in those worlds.
If it succeeds, it will mark this film as different.... The combination of the primitive and the sophisticated, the ancient and the modern, I think that potentially is the exciting fusion, the exciting tension in the film".
By April, the prospect for filming parts of Thor in Del Mar, California had fallen through. Paramount Pictures sent a letter informing the city that it has instead chosen an undisclosed Northern California location to film a beachfront scene for the film. The letter cited cost concerns with moving production too far away from its headquarters.
 Music
The film's score was written by composer Patrick Doyle, a frequent collaborator of Branagh. Doyle described Thor as "the most commercially high profile film I have done since Frankenstein", adding that the composing process had the challenge of trying to find a tone that fit the duality of Asgard and Earth.
Thus Doyle and Branagh had frequent discussions on the musical direction, with the director suggesting a contemporary feel and having a balance between the music and "grand images that were not in any way hyperbolized." The composer in turn implementing "a strong sense of melody, which he responds to in my work".
 As Doyle declared that his own Celtic background made him familiar with Norse mythology, an old Celtic folk song also provided the inspiration for Thor's leitmotif. A soundtrack album was released by Buena Vista Records in April 2011.
The film also features a song by the Foo Fighters, "Walk", in both a scene where a powerless Thor shares some boilermakers with Selvig in a roadhouse, and the film's closing credits.
Marvel president Kevin Feige stated that "Walk" was a last minute addition, that the crew felt had "these eerie appropriate lyrics and themes" upon hearing it. Branagh in particular thought that "these lyrics about learning to walk again" were appropriate "of a movie about redemption, learning to be a hero."
 Box Office
Thor earned $181,030,624 in North America and $268,295,994 in other territories for a worldwide total of $449,326,618. It is the tenth highest-grossing Marvel film and the fifth highest-grossing film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was also the 15th highest-grossing film of 2011.
The film opened solely in Australia on April 21, 2011, generating $5.8 million and placing second behind Universal Pictures' Fast Five. The film's box office was just 1% more than Iron Man, Marvel's most popular release, did in Australia in 2008.
The following week, Thor opened in 56 markets and took in $89.2 million through the weekend. The film opened in North America on May 6, 2011 in 3,955 theaters with $25.5 million (including $3.3 million from midnight screenings in about 1,800 theaters) and went on to earn $65.7 million during its opening weekend taking the number one spot.
$6.2 million of the gross came from 214 IMAX 3D theaters. 3D presentations at a then-record 2,737 locations accounted for 60% of the gross. Thor closed in theaters on August 25, 2011 with $181.0 million, becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of 2011 in North America and the highest-grossing comic-book adaptation of Summer 2011.
In total earnings, its highest-grossing countries after North America were the UK ($22.5 million), Australia ($20.1 million) and Mexico ($19.5 million).
 Critical Response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 77% approval rating with an average rating of 6.7/10 based on 264 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "A dazzling blockbuster that tempers its sweeping scope with wit, humor, and human drama, Thor is mighty Marvel entertainment."
Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 57/100 based on reviews from 40 film critics, a mixed score on their scale.
Richard Kuipers of Variety stated, "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".
Megan Lehmann of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The hammer-hurling god of thunder kicks off this superhero summer with a bang".
 In the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper liked the film "Thanks in large part to a charming, funny and winning performance from Australian actor Chris Hemsworth in the title role, Thor is the most entertaining superhero debut since the original Spider-Man".
Conversely, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it a negative review stating, "Thor is a failure as a movie, but a success as marketing, an illustration of the ancient carnival tactic of telling the rubes anything to get them into the tent".
A.O. Scott of The New York Times also disliked the film, calling it "an example of the programmed triumph of commercial calculation over imagination".
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times had mixed feelings, describing the film as "an aesthetic stand-off between predictable elements and unexpected ones". Turan praised the performances of Hemsworth, Hopkins, and Elba, but found the special effects inconsistent and the Earth storyline derivative.
Resources: wikipedia.org, imdb.com |
