Kenneth Branagh fans will be glad to know the actor-director brought his Shakespearean sensibilities to Marvel Studios’ latest superhero picture, THOR. But mild-mannered moviegoers will be happy Branagh didn’t forget to have fun while shooting it.

THOR—featuring svelte 27-year old Australian soaps actor Chris Hemsworth as the Norse thunder god—is the next chapter leading up to Marvel’s motion picture superhero summit that will be next year’s AVENGERS. Both IRON MAN and its sequel had clips and cameos that referenced the “Avengers Initiative” and started putting together the puzzle pieces. Agent Coulson works for SHIELD—a top-secret defense organization overseen (oddly enough) by Samuel Jackson’s one-eyed Fed, Nick Fury. IRON MAN 2 practically tripped over itself injecting more Avengers allusions into the script, what with Black Widow’s debut, a glimpse at Captain America’s shield, and references to both a Hulk rampage and (post-credits) discovery of Thor’s hammer in the desert. So between this Thunder God adventure and June’s CAPTAIN AMERICA: FIRST AVENGER, we’ll have all our Marvel ducks in a row.

And while previous Marvel movies established that yes, life “out there” does exist (see FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF SILVER SURFER and SPIDER-MAN 3), THOR is first to introduce the concept of other realms in the Marvel Universe. And perhaps that was Branagh’s biggest hurdle when making THOR. Suspending disbelief for the sake of enjoying Alfred Molina’s multi-limbed Doc Ock is one thing; buying into the existence of wormholes that act as celestial shortcuts for the travel convenience of space Vikings is quite another.

All things considered, Branagh succeeds.

Wise King Odin is quite literally about to pass his crown to eldest son, Thor, when Asgard is burglarized by a couple rogue Frost Giants. Asgard was enjoying a long—if precarious—peace with the Jotenheim home of these cold-weathered cretins, so the break-in comes as a bit of surprise. Odin’s Destroyer sentinel dispatches the invaders, whom Odin writes off as having acted independently, and the kindly king gives no further thought to the incident.  But impetuous Thor secretly spearheads (okay, hammerheads) an offensive on Jotenheim to destroy the Frost Giants, lest any of them breach Asgard again and make off with the source of their ice-cold powers—the Casket of Winters. To that end, Thor summons stepbrother Loki and his friends in the “Warriors Three” for a time-portal traipse across Bifrost Bridge into the heart of Frost Giant country.

This opening battle gives us a preview of the thunder god’s abilities: Thor’s mighty sledgehammer, Mjolnir, can be hurled at enemies and will return to its master’s hand like a boomerang. Thor also uses the oversized gavel to trigger earthquakes and windstorms by either slamming the weapon to the ground or spinning it by its leather handle strap. He and his colleagues do their noble best against the towering blue Giants but are sent home with their tails between their legs. Odin chastises Thor for upsetting the peace and—instead of crowning the brash boy —strips him of power and banishes him from Asgard.

The second half of the film follows the fallen god on his protracted lesson in humility, which sets him square in the middle of the New Mexico desert. His hammer is flung to Earth along with him—but Mjolnir is now enchanted so only a worthy master might ever wield it again. As chance would have it, astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her colleagues Erik (Stellan Skarsgaard) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) just happen to be out in the middle of said wilderness with an Econoline full of scientific equipment. They’re researching the phenomenon of Einstein-Rosen bridges—precisely of the kind that drops Thor in their vehicle’s path. Convenient!

Branagh does the right thing by emphasizing just how misplaced and moribund Thor feels—and how fascinated his three scientist friends are by his arrival. Oblivious to traffic laws, the headstrong Asgardian exile is struck by cars, tased, and turned away by a pet store clerk after he demands a horse. Thor “requests” a second cup of Joe at a local diner by shattering his mug on the floor, but Jane is taken with the handsome (if uncouth) hunk—even if her initial interest is purely scientific in nature. Branagh leaves it to Jane’s assistant, Darcy, to say the things Jane (and everyone else) is feeling or thinking.

“He’s pretty ripped for a homeless guy,” she notes.

Thor indulges Darcy with a prize-winning smile for a cellphone photo she says she’ll upload to Facebook. But said image appears later on a fake ID Jane and Erik produce for their strange friend. Thor’s human alias momentarily becomes Dr. Donald Blake—as in the comics. A bunch of hillbillies try their best to wrest Mjolnir from its stone pedestal with amusing results (the parallels with would-be King Arthur’s sword-in-stone, Excalibur, are inescapable). But Agent Coulson and his team of chase off the townsfolk and establish a fortified perimeter around the peculiar object. The top SHIELD agent isn’t so much angry as is intrigued when Thor turns up to reclaim his prize. It’s here we also get a glance of Jeremy Renner as future Avenger Hawkeye—the uncanny archer who acts as Coulson’s eye-in-the-sky.

Meanwhile back on Asgard, opportunistic Loki strikes a Machiavellian deal with the Frost Giant king after Odin falls into a comatose-like sleep. In Thor’s absence, the half-brother plans to seize the throne and make a hero of himself by defeating the Frost Giants he knows will “invade” (since he invited them; Loki promises the blue beings he’ll return the Casket of Winters in return for their part in his deception). But Thor’s pals in the Warrior’s Three catch on quick and convince gatekeeper Heimdell (Idris Elba) to grant them passage to Earth to collect Thor and set things right. Loki deploys his father’s Destroyer robot after the Three with orders to kill them—along with Thor.

The hick little town replet with  flimsy shops looks as if it were specifically constructed for the express purpose of being stormed by a pyromaniacal probot from another dimension. “Is that one of Stark’s?” a SHIELD agent asks while pondering the metal menace. Thor is finally given a chance at redemption—a chance to prove himself worthy of his mighty mantel, and of a place in Odin’s house.

“It’s a good look,” Jane muses after Thor dons his armor once again.

Yes—it is a good look, even if Thor’s pants look more like leather motorcycle chaps than the spandex we know from the old comics. Brown hair and beard notwithstanding, Hemsworth resembles the Viking visitor from afar (Thor was blonde and beardless in the early cartoons) and adopts his anachronistic dialect. While the 3-D probably isn’t necessary, guys will appreciate the film’s burly action sequences, while their dates will simply admire Hemsworth’s Olympian physique and sparkling, winsome eyes. Alas, Branagh’s peripheral characters aren’t as memorable. Skarsgaard provides some comic relief after a night out drinking with the high-tolerance thunder god—but Portman and Dennings seem flat. Both women are attractive and satisfy their parts in the threadbare plot, but either could have been played as well by countless others (though it goes without saying that it pays to have an Academy Award-winner in one’s cast). No stranger to Marvel, Ray Stevenson is a pleasure as portly Volstagg—one of the Warriors Three (he played the Punisher in WAR ZONE and enjoyed critical success more recently in KILL THE IRISHMAN).

This writer counts IRON MAN, SPIDER-MAN 2, and THE DARK KNIGHT as the super-powered cinema standards to go by. THOR doesn’t quite soar to those heights, but it’s a mirthful and exciting romp that successfully reconciles magic with science and makes one believe a thunder god, web-slinger, and iron-suited billionaire can (and do) exist in the same world. The action pieces are brisk and eye-catching, if not jaw-droppingly original in their execution. Which is perhaps why so many relate better to heroes like Peter Parker and Tony Stark who are more…well, human—and therefore vulnerable, if not completely beset by problems familiar to us all. Even in his disgrace, Thor carries himself with an air of confidence. It isn’t until the end he even begins to comprehend that his father was “punishing” him only to teach him a lesson. And Thor’s self-imposed penance—that of assuming responsibility for the protection of his human hosts—comes almost immediately after said epiphany.