Thor

Some blockbusters are manufactured so competently that they defy being criticised as works of cinematic art. They are simply crowd-pleasing products, good of their kind, like a banquet prepared by a kitchen of professionals or a premier league football match. As is Thor, a live-action cartoon saga in which the Norse god lands up, i.e. down, on Earth, in Roswell's New Mexico of course.

The Marvel Comics production introduces a large fledgling actor with a well-honed physique and twinkling eyes (Australian TV's Chris Hemsworth, previously a supporting role in the Star Trek update) as the superhero. He's self-effacingly supported by Anthony Hopkins as Odin, his omnipotent father. Thor, cast out of the Norse heavens, bumps into a stellar space researcher (Natalie Portman) who has a father-figure mentor (Stellan Skarsgard) and a dizzy female assistant. Her faintly comic and dramatically pointless presence serves to make Portman's dizziness, and eye-fluttering love at first sighting of Thor's abs, comparatively less silly. Instead, it looks more like a channeling of Julia Roberts with a silly script.

Thor has an adopted brother, Loki (UK TV's Tom Hiddleston, channeling a lite-camp Alan Cumming) who's actually the abandoned son of an evil king (Colm Feore) in one of the Nine Realms. The rest of the storyboard is a totally predictable barrage of SFX featuring interstellar bridges, a quintet of assorted godly good-guy assistants (including a black, east Asian, woman, comic over-eater and female, naturally), an indestructible automaton killer, and touches of humour.

Remarkably, the production was entrusted to an experienced director, Kenneth Branagh, whose employment may have been inspired by the mildly Shakespearean tone adopted for the dialogue of the gods. His last direction was Sleuth in 2007; he's done his reputation and his bank account no harm by making a truly commercial blockbuster.

One loose end or red herring awaits resolution. When dizzy Ms Portman realises that Thor is going to enter her trailer, she flusters frantically, twice, with a packet of what may be breakfast cereals, clearly called "Golem" (a major bogeyman figure in Jewish folklore). Product placement? If it is, Google hadn't yet registered it. An in-joke? A subtle snub to the breakfast products that refused to pay for a placement?

How many blockbusters have that gripping level of detail?