That does sound unfair and like a joke, but actually this is meant in all seriousness. There is no personal prejudice against low-budget movies, there are some entertaining ones out there and it's always something I take into account as someone who strives to see good things in something that's overall bad.
However with Thunderstorm: Return of Thor the problem is that it looks like little effort was put into making it. From the synopsis it could have had some potential to be a little bit of guilty-pleasure fun and the DVD cover was cool. From watching the movie though, things were disastrous right away with the almost endless Star Wars-esque opening title sequence that consists of inappropriately cheesy music that is so intrusive it practically drowns out everything else and stiltedly written narration that sounds like it was recorded from the world's deepest well with the most reverberant acoustic. Saying that the movie looks cheap is being kind because it takes the phrase total ineptitude to insulting heights, with laughable special effects(with a supposed dragon that looked anything but one), drab lighting, costume-party-leftover costumes, pointless overuse shots of buildings and simplistic sets that don't resemble at all what they were meant to be(i.e. the hospital). Apparently most of the money went into the Thunderstorm suit, that didn't really show because the suit wouldn't even pass for a suit for anything let alone a superhero one.
The music is very ill-fitting and grates on the ears. The way it's recorded also plays a large part, because the sound quality is very hollow and sometimes has an echoey, slow-motion ambiance effect that came over as uncomfortably weird than effective. Thunderstorm: Return of Thor's writing is truly horrendous, Evans's lines and the line delivery have to be heard to be believed, some might say it'll bring unintentional humour for me actually it verged on embarrassment. Any "heartfelt" moments like the eulogy looked and sounded so improvisatory judging from the start-stop-start flow of it. The story is barely there and leaves one's brain in a muddle thinking about it, also padded with confusedly choreographed, sloppily edited and half-heartedly performed fight scenes(i.e. the kung fu battle between Glenda and Evan), flabby pacing and scenes reeking of mind-numbing stupidity that are impossible to be taken at face value.
Its direction borders on incompetent, the lead has no charisma or personality and the villains are so hammy they are more obnoxious than sinister. The acting is dreadful, with the emotionless Ray Besharah and embarrassingly over-the-top Jody Hauke faring the worst, though an out-of-her-depth Celine Filion and a forced Gabrielle MacKenzie fare little better if thankfully not as bad. To conclude, cool DVD cover but the movie itself an abomination with no redeeming merits. 0/10 Bethany Cox
