13 Movies You Really Wanted To Hate (But Actually Couldn’t)
3. Thor
When Marvel announced their grand plan to make a series of solo movies for their major characters - and eventually team them up for The Avengers - other studios scoffed, claiming it would never work. Now everyone is Xeroxing their idea, with varying degrees of success. Back in the early days, it looked far from certain they could pull it off, though.
Why You Wanted To Hate It: Iron Man took a b-list character and made him a star, thanks to the efforts of Robert Downey, Jr. Thor, on the other hand, sounded like it would never work. A movie about a god running around with his magic hammer sounded preposterous to audiences who’d never read the comic, and Chris Hemsworth was a total unknown.
Kenneth Branagh also seemed like an odd choice, and his decision to constantly use dutch angles didn't bode well.
The Reasons You Couldn’t: Despite some faults – the insipid romance for one – Thor was a solid comic book movie, introducing viewers to a rich new mythology and cool characters like Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. It’s not the best of the Marvel movies, but for a movie that looked like a royal mess in the making, it certainly proved doubters wrong.