And By “Return of Thor”, What They Meant Was “Thor Appears As a Vague Dream Image But Isn’t Actually IN The Movie”
Main Cast: Ray Besharah and Celine Filion
Director: Brett Kelly
I’m a long time comic book reader, going back 25 years or so. Marvel comics were my first, and while it took a while to get into Thor, I did eventually, and I enjoyed the book for years. Admittedly he was never my favorite character. I didn’t even bother seeing the Hemsworth movie in theaters, eventually watching it on my phone, of all things. It was a good movie, though. But I’m always fascinated by these low-budget knock offs of popular characters, so when I saw Adventures of Thunderstorm: Return of Thor on Netflix, it was an immediate add to my queue.
That’s a decision I’ll regret for a long time.
Holy good Christ, this movie has no right existing at all. I’ve seen “America’s Funniest Home Video” entries with higher production value in them. This is a real piece of work.
First off, it’s Canadian. Not that that’s terrible. Canada gave us Tegan and Sara, so obviously great things CAN come out of Canada. But the acting in this movie was so bad, and that accent so thick, I couldn’t stop thinking of the hilarious Mystery Science Theatre “Final Sacrifice” episode. You wanna know what’s worse? That had better acting that this did. The villain in Final Sacrifice had nothing on the wretchedness of Jody Haucke (Planet Blood) who plays the villain in this movie. The villain named Evan.
Maybe it’s a Canadian thing? Maybe in Canada villains are named after the IT nerd in your office?
So in Adventures of Thunderstorm: Return of Thor, there’s a cult (another reminder of The Final Sacrifice) looking for the pieces of an amulet called The Dragon’s Cross. They find two pieces of it, then call on help from their goddess Hel who tells them where to find the third piece. Once all of the pieces are combined, Hel will unleash the Midgard Serpent and bring about Ragnarok.
Enter our hero, Grant (Ray Besharah, Planet Blood). Grant works at an R&D lab, developing a “battle suit” for the Canadian government. And by “battle suit” I mean a black body stocking with a rubber chest piece and a black Iron Man mask. The battle suit channels electricity which it unleashes through a conductor which looks, oddly, a lot like big foam hammer spray painted silver.
One day, after waking up from a disturbing nightmare, Grant goes outside for some fresh air, where he has a vision of Thor. See, the Asgardians can’t return to earth (Midgard) without the belief of the people, and since Canadians don’t believe in Thor anymore, he has to find an earthly vessel through which to work. Luckily, Grant is Thor’s last surviving relative. So he imbues Grant with his power. The problem is, Grant is unable to control the lightning power, so he must don the battle suit to keep it under control.
Thus is born the super hero Thunderstorm, who, with the aid of a plucky female cop named Glenda (Celine Filion, The Black Bat Rises), battles the cult before they can bring about the end of the world–Ragnarok!
Now, as stupid as that synopsis sounds, trust me–it’s nothing compared to the actual experience of watching this heap of shit.
Written and directed by Brett Kelly (who also doubles as Thor), with some help in the writing department from Trevor Payer (The Black Bat Rises), Adventures of Thunderstorm: Return of Thor looks like it was shot on whatever equipment they use to shoot local commercials for appliance rental stores. And I think the appliance stores have bigger budgets. In fact, it’s quite clear the producers here spent the bulk of their money on that stupid chest piece/battle suit. On the bright side, it doesn’t have bat-nipples.
While I’ve never seen any other Brett Kelly movies, they have titles like She-Rex and Jurassic Shark, so you know they have to be full of awesome from start to finish. I’ll never know because after this one I’m never willingly watching another Brett Kelly film. In fact, I’m not going to watch anything anyone who appeared in this movie is in. Better yet, I think I just need to take a break from Canadian movies altogether now. At least for a while. This movie was THAT bad.
I can’t even narrow it down to one or two things that would have made it better; it’s just terrible throughout. The acting, obviously, but the “effects” (when Grant’s lab partner is shot, the effect is pulled off by painting a little blood on the guy’s shirt–it’s not even made to look like a hole, just a little bright red spill) are laughable, and the fight choreography…Look, if you can’t be handsome, you might as well be handy. And if your movie looks like total shit, the least you can do is try to be entertaining.
I don’t know WHAT the hell Kelly is going for here, though. It’s not entertainment, I can tell you that! And don’t subtitle your movie “Return of Thor” unless Thor actually returns. All through the movie, I’m expecting the Norse god of thunder to appear and save the day. Instead I get Cheesy McDoofus as the sorriest super hero since Ralph Hinkley (hey, much love, yo, mad props to “Greatest American Hero”!)
The beauty of something like Netflix is that you can see a lot of movies you’d never otherwise be exposed to. The danger of something like Netflix is that, sometimes a really really shitty and inconsistent movie can be prettied up by an interesting poster and a misleading product description. The only upside is that I’ll watch so many movies on Netflix this month that it makes the percentage of my $8 membership fee come out to about thirty cents spent on Adventures of Thunderstorm: Return of Thor. Even then I feel I should like Netflix should discount me $0.30 when it charges me for April.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
Leave a Reply