Thor: Tales of Asgard

Really enjoyable movie covering the early years of Thor and Loki. This enhances the theatrical movie, without kissing it's ass. For example, it still takes many designs from the original source material, even if it conflicts with the more popular movie. Seeing the realms of Asgard in animation is wonderful, as there is less of a restraint. The character arcs of Thor and Loki are also very impressive. Their relationship is shown as one of true love, but we see their reactions to taking life. This isn't Thor Jr. and though the animation is kind of childish, there are many great themes here that would be welcome in The Avengers or any Thor sequels.

Thor: Tales of Asgard (2011) is a movie I recently rewatched on Tubi. The storyline follows a young Thor and Loki as they're coming of age and starting to earn the opportunity to go on adventures. They stowed away on their first journey to recover a sacred sword and quickly learn the importance of following the rules, respecting others and how things can go terribly wrong if you act before you think.

This movie is directed by Sam Liu (Batman: The Killing Joke) and contains the voices of Matthew Wolf (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Rick Gomez (Sin City), Tara Strong (Fairly Odd Parent) and John Novak (War).

The animation in this is excellent, as are the settings, universe and characters. Seeing Loki and Thor young, getting along and working together was fun to see. The storyline has some good twists and turns and the conclusion is very good.

Overall this is a very enjoyable, fun and a great depiction of the Asgard universe. I'd score this a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.

It's titled Thor but it's really not the Thor we know. It's the young Thor before he had his mighty hammer Mjölnir. So Thor doesn't behave the typical way you like him to behave, here he is more of a spoiled teenager. And he doesn't drink any beer or mead. The plot is lame in my opinion, quite stereotypical for a fantasy movie but with a worse plot structure. The dialogs were childish, same for the characters behaviors. And because its set when Thor was young there is nothing happening on earth so it just feels like any kind of fantasy-animation. I liked the real Thor Movie with Chris Hemsworth way better than this one. And I also liked Thor and the depiction of Asgard in Hulk VS. Thor much better. It's just so much about action that it bored me... it is really nothing special but you can watch it if you don't have any better plans for your evening. The character development was also quite lame I think this movie could be much better if they did character introductions so that you know who is who and they could have used a smaller amount of characters. A friend of mine who saw this as well was quite confused about all those characters, for someone who doesn't know the relations between the people of Asgard and those Frost Giants and the hirarchy system in Asgard it's just all too much. And because of this each character loses it's individuality and also it's importance, in this storyline, which also leads to a loss of tension... And that's why this movie is just mediocre in my opinion.

This film was much better than I expected. True, it does have some anime influence (like slim bodies and expressive eyes) but most contemporary cartoons have that anyway.

In short, this movie is about a teenage Thor embarking on a quest to prove his manhood to his father, who still considers him immature. With the aid of his brother Loki and the Warriors Three he travels through different realms to complete his quest.

What I liked in this film was that it showed a different, refreshing perspective on Thor and Loki's relationship. In this film we actually see Loki as a caring brother who is a loyal Asgardian. He and Thor share a special bond, trust each other and, when times get tough, provide each other with support. Seeing this just makes it even more heartbreaking as the viewers know that in the future these two would become mortal enemies.

Some dialogues were actually funny without relying on simple humor - even giving room to a bit adult humor when it came to Fandral. There is romance (concerning both brothers), and there are notable number of dark scenes and dialogues which concentrate on the topics of genocide (yes, genocide!) and character death. Unlike most children's cartoons nowadays, it has quite a few mature themes which adults may like.

All in all, it was a pleasant surprise and more mature than I expected. I warmly recommend this film.

PS - the music was epic!

Interesting plot, but not my favorite Marvel animation!