The Almighty Thor

 

  So when Thor came out in late April of 2011, the SyFy Channel helped produce a Mockbuster film of similar origins, Almighty Thor.  It was released to video 2 days later.  That's not a good sign.  I immediately put it on my Netflix queue, let the horror begin!
  Often, film-makers of ill-repute will try to make a film of very similar themes based suspiciously on a film's hype, usually direct-to-video to try to ride upon the theatrical release.  This is called a "Mockbuster" to trick the user into buying a low-budget knockoff release.  The only people suckered into buying or renting or viewing it are the old and/or feeble-minded.  It's the same people that get the InterWebs and then start clicking the bouncing monkey Java-script-based icon to "shoot the monkey" game which then installs a gateway virus (in the same way AIDS is) which invites thousands upon thousands of other viruses to cry havok on their helpless non-updated Windows machines.  These fools then discredit Windows for being slow and buggy, and end-up buying an Apple because it only comprises of 8% of the home-market out there and there's not a lot of call to invade these guys yet... though it's started with a few dozen.  Apple doesn't have the army of anti-virus personnel in-place as Microsoft does and they'll die painfully once the ball gets rolling.
  Some examples of Mockbusters are: Terminator II (not "Terminator 2, Judgement Day"), Jaws 5, Transmorphers, Transmorphers II Fall of Man,  The DaVinci Treasure, Snakes on a Train, Halloween (night), AVH (Alien vs. Hunter), I am Omega, The Day the Earth Stopped,  and Titanic II.
  Some that get you when you're not looking is like Recon 2020: The Caprini Massacre.  It fooled me back in 2004 as being not created by seemingly a bunch of junior-high-school kids.  Considered by me as one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time, I give you the trailer...

Instert recon 2020 trailer

 

So what's up with Almighty Thor ?  Well, let's start with some issues.  First, it's low-budge to a scale of a Taco Bell student-wage salary of slightly under $200,000.  In this day and age of Hollywood, that's like mom buying the store-brand "cola" in 3 liters because, "the kids don't know the difference".  Guess what, mom, we know the difference.  Oh yes, we know.  Guess you couldn't spend the extra 8 cents for Pepsi, huh?  Ah, well.  So I took my notebook and wrote down some key interesting facts I had with the film.  I'm a bit of a Norse mythology fan, so here goes:

  The plot involves Loki showing up and killing Odin and a small city so he can get Odin's hammer (?) and make Ragnarok happen.  A very whiney Thor takes the hammer and fights Loki and nearly loses until a Valkyrie (actually listed in the film credits as a Jotunn but admits she's a Valkyrie in the film) comes and opens doorways to a training ground so Thor can train in hammer-use.  Loki sends hellhounds to get Thor so the Valkyrie opens a door to Los Angeles but Loki follows and beats them both up a lot and kills the Valkyrie and takes the hammer.  Thor goes to Hell to forge his very own hammer and battles Loki to victory.  LA suffers.

  The story is a boy-to-manhood story with the help of a female guide due to the untimely loss of a dad.  Pretty sad, really, and more whiney than Luke Skywalker's want to go to Tashi Station for more power-converters. 

The AV Club rates it as follows:

Almighty Thor received largely negative reviews from critics. Reviewing the film for the The A.V. Club, Phil Dyess-Nugent gave "Almighty Thor" a rating of "D-", taking issue with the film's low budget: "The film is so underpopulated that most of the awful deaths Loki inflicts go down off-camera; he points his stick or gives a command to his dogs, and then you hear somebody holler, "Argghhhh!!"". Dyess-Nugent also criticised the acting of the leads and took issue with the producer's decision to shoot the LA scenes in abandoned parking lots: "The comic high point is a fight between Thor and Loki, with the guys spinning around and waving their weapons at each other while keeping one eye peeled for cops who might demand to see their filming permit." The Blueprint website review of the film stated, "This brain numbing 80 minutes of constant noise, cheap effects, background music that never once stops and ropey acting will test the patience of even the most hardened B-movie aficionado...Almighty Thor was just one giant headache of a film."

  I myself found a few incorrect or unusual points:

• Valhalla is apparently an Austrian castle
• Asgard is surrounded by eucalyptus trees and looks a lot like Santa Maria, California
• Odin has tattoos on his forearm
• Odin's horse Slipnir is nowhere to be found (likely because a horse was too expensive to budget)
• Odin apparently has a Brigadoon-like stone hammer (?!) that appears once a month during the full moon, if not seized, disappears forever of which Thor must find and take.  This is assumed to be Mjolnir, though there are no texts that suggest Odin ever had a "hammer".  Odin never uses this hammer, it's kept away for some reason, though he holds on to his spear, Gugnir, though its powers are never used, even to save himself from death.
• Loki is not related to Thor or Odin in any way and has a New York accent
• Thor wears a red thong
• Valkyries are from Tijuana and are taught to fight by Borr (Odin's father).
• Thor never learned how to fight using a weapon and needs a girl to show him how
• Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, is a palm tree, not an ash.
• Loki doesn't know how to run
• The Norns (similar to the Greek's Three Fates of Moirai) are suspiciously not near Yggdrasil, but like the Greek-version in a cave (some producer didn't do their homework, tsk tsk)
• In Los Angeles, there's graffiti of the word, Loki just about everywhere, suspiciously, though Loki may have done this in his spare time, as he's very slow chasing the hero.
• Thor decides to build his very own Mjolnir (aka meow-meow) by punching lava in Hell with his bare hands. 
• Thor can wield Mjolnir without gloves
• There's a Christian Knight of Templar guarding Yggdrasil somehow, maybe he's lost?  None of the 4 stags, or the dragon, sparrow, etc.  Maybe he killed 'em all?
• A short-sword can defeat a hell-hound but a sparrow-missile from a USAF YF-23 cannot.
• Thor is not immune to Uzi weapon fire.  Loki is.

I strongly recommend this movie for folks that love horrible B-Movies


Enjoy the trailer: