Thor

Composer Patrick Doyle, who brought a new-found boldness to the Harry Potter franchise in 2005 with his Goblet of Fire score, treats director Kenneth Branagh’s big-screen adaptation of Marvel Comic’s iconic Norse superhero Thor with appropriate gravitas.The longtime Branagh collaborator (Henry V, Dead Again) sets the stage with “Chasing the Storm,” a tense and surging unveiling of the main theme, which sounds a bit like a cross between the James Newton Howard and Hanz Zimmer’s Batman Begins cue and Zimmer’s “CheValiers de Sangreal” theme from the Da Vinci Code, and like Zimmer, Doyle knows how to whip a circular melody into a frenzy. Elsewhere, the lovely and appropriately stoic “Sons of Odin” is awash in traditional fantasy elements, while the epic “Compound” unveils a more modern, sci-fi action approach, resulting in a score that’s wistful, heroic, and as grand as the fantastic realm of Asgard itself. – James Christopher Monger