Other than a lovingly lingering shot of a shirtless Thor getting dressed (as well as all other shots of his clothes clinging to his body for dear life), the best part of the movie happened within the first three minutes.
By way of explaining how the Norse gods came to be, a narrator recounted a time years ago when Norway was attacked by frost giants, harbingers of icy destruction. Though the people fought back, they would have completely fallen to the giants' ruthlessness had it not been for the intervention of Odin, a warrior-king from another world, and his clan. They stepped in, drove the giants back, and then returned to their own land several galaxies away. The legacy of Odin's actions lived on as history, then as legend, and eventually, the people grew to worship him as a god.
Though I rarely go to church and would never consider myself religious by any means, I do think of the subject often--not religion in any denominational sense, but more from an overarching, spiritual one. (Sidenote: I actually hate saying 'spiritual' as it is so commonly used nowadays to describe one's belief system that I wonder if it means anything more than just a convenient way to seem enlightened, but simultaneously allowing license to not have to go to church on Sundays or actually take a stance on anything.)
So anyway, I'm spiritual, and Thor gave me a new way to think about religion and gods of worship: What if God (and for simplicity's sake, in the Christian sense) was nothing more than an advanced being from a distant planet who came to Earth, helped humanity in some way, then left and returned home, leaving us to marvel (See what I did there? Thor belongs to the Marvel universe, so I was being clever, which I can be with nine-and-a-half hours of sleep. . . or not.) at his powers, his kindness, and eventually to deify him in the same way the Vikings did with Odin.
Thinking of God in this way alleviates any onus, any possibility of divine retribution should we misbehave. Why would God care? He belongs to a different world altogether, with a different family, with responsibilities and struggles all his own. We are no more (or less) than a people he cared enough about to assist in some way once upon a time. Whether we live happily ever after is not up to him and is likely not a burden he wishes to carry.
And who can say that this theory is wrong? Just like I can't say that the idea of an all-powerful, benevolent God (at least in the New Testament) who sits in heaven and waits for our souls to return to him is wrong. Nobody knows, but I will say this: I feel closer to God, in whatever incarnation of 'God' you choose to apply, after thinking about him in this ironically more human way, which I have been since last night.
And really, were it not for this nugget of wisdom at the onset of Thor, I would have had very little else to think about for the rest of the movie.
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