Adventures of Thunderstorm: Return of Thor (2011)

People are voting emotionally.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie must've been made on an absolute shoestring budget. Hilariously bad. Just a couple of examples:1. The voiceover in the beginning with the scrolling text and stars shooting in the background-- why the terrible, terrible audio quality? 2. The vision in the alleyway-- why isn't the Skyface's mouth moving? 3. And MUCH, MUCH MORE!Good times.

That does sound unfair and like a joke, but actually this is meant in all seriousness. There is no personal prejudice against low-budget movies, there are some entertaining ones out there and it's always something I take into account as someone who strives to see good things in something that's overall bad.However with Thunderstorm: Return of Thor the problem is that it looks like little effort was put into making it. From the synopsis it could have had some potential to be a little bit of guilty-pleasure fun and the DVD cover was cool. From watching the movie though, things were disastrous right away with the almost endless Star Wars-esque opening title sequence that consists of inappropriately cheesy music that is so intrusive it practically drowns out everything else and stiltedly written narration that sounds like it was recorded from the world's deepest well with the most reverberant acoustic. Saying that the movie looks cheap is being kind because it takes the phrase total ineptitude to insulting heights, with laughable special effects(with a supposed dragon that looked anything but one), drab lighting, costume-party-leftover costumes, pointless overuse shots of buildings and simplistic sets that don't resemble at all what they were meant to be(i.e. the hospital). Apparently most of the money went into the Thunderstorm suit, that didn't really show because the suit wouldn't even pass for a suit for anything let alone a superhero one.The music is very ill-fitting and grates on the ears. The way it's recorded also plays a large part, because the sound quality is very hollow and sometimes has an echoey, slow-motion ambiance effect that came over as uncomfortably weird than effective. Thunderstorm: Return of Thor's writing is truly horrendous, Evans's lines and the line delivery have to be heard to be believed, some might say it'll bring unintentional humour for me actually it verged on embarrassment. Any "heartfelt" moments like the eulogy looked and sounded so improvisatory judging from the start-stop-start flow of it. The story is barely there and leaves one's brain in a muddle thinking about it, also padded with confusedly choreographed, sloppily edited and half-heartedly performed fight scenes(i.e. the kung fu battle between Glenda and Evan), flabby pacing and scenes reeking of mind-numbing stupidity that are impossible to be taken at face value.Its direction borders on incompetent, the lead has no charisma or personality and the villains are so hammy they are more obnoxious than sinister. The acting is dreadful, with the emotionless Ray Besharah and embarrassingly over-the-top Jody Hauke faring the worst, though an out-of-her-depth Celine Filion and a forced Gabrielle MacKenzie fare little better if thankfully not as bad. To conclude, cool DVD cover but the movie itself an abomination with no redeeming merits. 0/10 Bethany Cox

I have a theory about movies by directors who wear too many hats, actor, writer, jack-of-all-trades; they are almost all micro budget and almost always suck. Either the director is trying to save money by cutting the size of the cast, or are deluded enough to think they can perform all roles better than others who have spent years honing their craft. After seeing that the director, also cast himself as Thor, it is likely the latter.The director and writer have a long list of credits. How? Why? In what universe was this allowed to happen? To be fair to the writer though, maybe the story started off good before it was "improved" by the director, producer or some other "executive" with power but not the skill.The movie begins with a Star Wars-like scrolling text which blabs on about Asgard, Midgard and other weakly veiled Tolkein rip-offs. Fine, whatever, get us into the story, but it drags on and on, precious minutes wasted, the same info could have been said in 1/4 the words. Strangely, music plays over a voice-over narration of the scrolling words, as a result of the music, we can't hear the narration.The opening shot of a car and gunmen posing by a car in a snowy parking lot, drags on as well. We see shots of gunmen cocking the weapons, a shot of a gun being cocked backlit by a car headlight; walking towards camera in slow-mo and then seemingly repeating the walk towards camera again. Also, this is shot in video, probably high definition but video just the same.There's some kind of scene between the Gods early on, with a multi-colored aurora borealis light effect don't know what they are saying and don't care.Acting is wooden and fake at worst, and hammy at best. The tall, manicured-bearded villain or main henchman of the piece is the most entertaining. Hammy in the extreme, but he is fun to watch. Even the ridiculous, extended fight scene with the female detective is fun. Watching him fake fight with the grunting gal is strangely painful but fun at the same time. The female detective looks like somebody's girlfriend or relative, cast as a favor. She is too young, too feminine to be believable as a tough homicide detective. Wide-eyed, and out-of-her-depth she stumbles through the movie doing the best she can. But is let down by the story, and cheapo production value.There is something about a "battle suit" being developed by scientists that gives the wearer amazing powers. How amazing? Well, he might look like a total Mighty Morphin Power Ranger spastic but he can conjure blue fire balls with his battle suit gloved hands and unleash said blue fire balls at 70s era-like Godzilla style flying dinosaur puppets.There are also some other characters, in rented Halloween-like costumes, witches, warlocks who gather here and there and chatter a lot. Not sure what that's about.Bottom lime, only worth watching for a laugh.P.S. Did I mention that the sound was added in post and dialogue is not synched to actors.

Evil enchantress Hell is planning to destroy the world. This will also have consequence in the godly kingdom of Asgard, namely bring Ragnarok (destruction of godly realm) upon them. But humans in Midgard (earth) no longer worships the gods, so gods themselves cannot intervene in their affairs. The solution is to give the great descendant of Thor Grant Farrel a Thor like power to battle the forces of darkness.If you watch this movie, you'll notice that it's not a high budget, but everything else is high production. The story, the screenplay, the acting are all above par. What's most surprising is that unlike most B movies that rely on shtik to keep the story going, this movie keeps excitement from start to finish without any.I have to say that I was pretty impressed, and was entertained. Keep up the good work guys, and 'hope you'll have opportunity to make bigger budget movie next time around.