A brief take on Thor is all you need.  It's good not great but fun to watch and a point for Kenneth Branagh.  The guy's not so highbrow that he can't come down from his Shakespearean tower and have a good time with us comic fans.

This movie is a standalone film, but in tone and quality, it feels like an entry into a broader series.  And that it is.  The Avengers will hit theaters next year featuring Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and a couple of others.  Thor is just the latest link in what is rapidly becoming a network of decent-to-good comic films.  I say, this is just what comic films need.  Comics are, on average, kind of good these days and don't deserve to be polarized into the either 'really terrible' or 'really great' camps.  By now, superhero films are a genre and it could use some good middle-of-the-road fare.  Critics hate it when movies are this vanilla, but as a comic fan, it's nice to not to have to either dissect the Great American Novel (with Batman!) or have a caterwauling poop-stick slung at you.  There are some genuinely affecting moments in Thor.  There are also some genuinely silly moments, but all in all, it's a good ride and a decent episode in a widening story.

A few things though:  Natalie Portman, WTF are you doing in this movie?  Get out of it.  Now.  Why couldn't you just make the nerdy girl the love interest?  It'd have been a lot more interesting and un-cliche.  Also, do scientists just study 'science' these days?  What exactly did you do your thesis on, Scientist Natalie Portman?  Were you on the Wormhole/Meteorology Interdisciplinary track or something?  In movies, scientists just...do science!  How do they do it?  With research!  Also, research can be stolen.  Apparently scientist Natalie Portman doesn't retain much.