Thor: Tales of Asgard – Review

Tales of Asgard takes place before Thor becomse the God of Thunder. hor wants to prove his mightiness to himself and others around him. He can’t find an opponent that will challenge him on Asgard so he goes on a quest to show off that he is as good as he thinks he is. That really is the jist of it. His lack of experiences causes a war between the Frost Giants and Asgard erupt. The fantasy tale has sharp animation and rollicking adventure, and should satisfy fans of the genre. The animation itself may not exactly be state of the art, but this isn’t a lazy direct to video adaptation.

While I’ve never been a big fan of the Thor franchise, it seems the live action movie is making waves and the Avengers movie is right around the corner. Just like all the live action movies are setting up for something bigger than itself, the point of this animated movie is to introduce neophytes to the realm of Asgard. At 77 minutes, it is a good running time to tell a story which is built on the strength of more than 40 years and 10 million copies of Thor comics. This isn’t the origin of Thor, but like I mentioned, this might be a good place to start if you choose to venture out to see Thor this summer.

I’ve seen other features that Marvel has created like Planet Hulk and Thor Tales of Asgard feels like it has a better story, characters, and action.  It’s family-friendly without pandering to the kids, and that’s appreciated as well. After all, he isn’t the kind of hero where blood is shed every five seconds. Even though Tales of Asgard builds to a climax where an army of Frost Giants lay siege on Asgard, I don’t have an extreme interest don’t have a strong interest in learning how Thor and Loki became Gods. The animation however, is fluid and quite gorgeous to view on blu-ray video. Tales of Asgard looks nicely sharp and relatively well detailed, given the rather basic “look” of this enterprise.

To conclude, this is just the start of many direct to video comic book animated films to be released during the summer, so don’t feel pressured to scoop up this release. Director Sam Liu is no stranger to this territory, having worked on storyboards on Batman: Under the Red Hood, so I expected a lot more from him. He does redeem himself though by offering a good amount of DVD extras that shed light on the background of this project. It really is a comprehensive look at what it took to bring Thor: Tales of Asgard to life. In reality, I can’t really say that Thor: Tales of Asgard is a terrible film, moreso, I am just not interested so much in his character. That said, if you are a Thor fan, then you need to add this blu-ray to your high def collection. Even after viewing this, I can’t deny it has a certain charm.