Ranking Every MCU Film From Worst To Best

Just as James Gunn would for Guardians Of The Galaxy, Kenneth Branagh succeeded in making Thor a mainstream property because of the way he treated the source. Despite the inevitable appeal of sanitising the Norse God/Alien to fit more conventional expectations, Branagh neither treating the material like it was silly, nor attempting to go gritty with it.

The director was an inspired choice, drawing on his theatrical experience and fully embracing the camp of the character. It was also his approach - of dropping the arrogant hammer-wielder into his own George Of The Jungle/Crocodile Dundee culture clash story - that established the model for Thor's dynamic in the Avengers.

Though the lore and mythology around Asgard is compelling, it's simply not as entertaining as seeing how Thor interacts and clashes with "modern" characters, where he is a curio and an anomaly, rather than the norm. And Branagh's film was smart enough to stack his film towards those sequences, while introducing the franchise's most popular character, in Tom Hidleston's serpentine Loki.