Have your say: Can superheroes get more ridiculous than Thor (yet be treated seriously)?

Now that a trailer has been released for Kenneth Branagh's screen version of Marvel's "Thor", rest assured that we here at ScreenAnarchy have been discussing the film amongst ourselves no end. And Kenneth Branagh. And Marvel. And captain America. And superheroes in general, for that matter.

Thing is, I've always dug Thor as a valid comic-book character. As a part of the Norse Mythology, in my youth he was as real to me as, say, figures from a famous fairytale or indeed comic-book superheroes. To see him BE a comic-book superhero was therefore not strange at all. Both Marvel and DC were throwing the weirdest storylines around with only the most tenuous links to reality anyway, so The Mighty Thor wasn't the oddest character out there.

But movies are a different story of course, especially those which treat such a character as a standalone story instead of as being a part of a gloriously eclectic universe.


And this begs the question: just how ridiculous can the concept of a superhero get before it's impossible to make a halfway serious movie about him / her?
Has "Thor" already crossed that line in your opinion?
Are there superheroes out there which have been treated seriously by Marvel or DC but you'd consider impossible to make a serious film about because the end-result would be inherently ludicrous?

Have Your Say!