I read a good deal of Marvel growing up but I was never into Thor. For whatever reason his trademark superhero angst© about getting exiled from Asgard didn't grab me in the same way as Spider-Man's, Luke Cage's, Wolverine's, etc . Like, Peter Parker was just a dude unlucky enough to get bit by a radioactive spider; Thor was a pretty-boy deity who didn't know how awesome he had it before daddy gave him the boot.

Or that's what I decided at twelve years old after reading, like, two Thor comics (including that one where he fights Fin Fang Foom, which was kind of awesome). I guess what I'm saying is I've spent my life disregarding Thor out of hand so I really have no good frame of reference to gauge whether the Thor trailer that premiered at Comic-Con this week looks like an unholy mess or ridiculously awesome. There's Anthony Hopkins playing the king from Beowulf again minus the motion capture and plus clothes and an eyepatch. There's a lot of screaming and stuff exploding and shots of Thor's hammer (but no shots of stuff exploding while Thor hits it with a hammer and screams). There's Rene Russo playing a character named Frigga. There's an Iron Man joke. There's Natalie Portman existing, still. See for yourselves:

I asked The Mercury's film editor and senior comic movie apologist Erik Henriksen for a counterpoint or a quote giving me a good argument why Thor was gonna be the next great Marvel movie franchise. He responded with "Don't ask me for a counterpoint or a quote, jackass. Obviously, this looks totally badass." Then he gripped the edge of his desk and became weirdly silent and serious for two minutes before excusing himself to the men's room.

I'm putting it to you, Blogtown nerds: Was the twelve-year-old me right that Thor is totally lame and this looks like a clusterfuck or is the twelve-year-old Erik (read. the current Erik) right that Thor's awesomeness cannot be denied by puny mortals like me?

THE NEW THOR MOVIE: CONDEMN OR ALLOW?