''I Am Thor'' is a documentary about the life of bodybuilder and rock musician

Jon Mikl Thor Jon Mikl Thor (born 1953), better known as simply Thor, is a Canadian bodybuilding champion, actor, songwriter, screenwriter, historian, vocalist and musician. As a bodybuilder, he was the first Canadian to win both the Mr. Canada and Mr. USA ...

of the band

Thor Thor (from ) is a prominent list of thunder gods, god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred g ...

. The film was directed by Ryan Wise and produced by Ryan Wise and Alan Higbee and had its world premiere at the 2015

Slamdance Film Festival The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival is held in Los Angeles in late February and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization. The organization ...

Plot

''I am Thor'' is the story of

, a bodybuilding, steel bending, brick smashing rock star in the 1970s and 1980s whose theatrical band

hit the scene alongside Metallica and Kiss, but never achieved the gold record status of its contemporaries. After a brief but memorable film career saw him starring in the cult classics Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare, Thor all but disappeared from the entertainment map. But ten years into retirement, and incapable of living like a normal mortal human being, Thor attempts a comeback to achieve the level of success that had eluded him his entire career – a comeback that nearly kills him. Tracing the rise, fall, and rebirth of a determined performer over the course of a career that has seen more than its fair share of highs and lows, I AM THOR paints a fascinating and sometimes unbelievable portrait of this larger-than-life icon.

Release

After premiering at the

in January 2015 the film then went on to screen at film festivals including

Florida Film Festival The Florida Film Festival, produced by Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida, is an annual international film festival. Overview The Festival includes narrative and documentary features and shorts, animation, midnight movies, and educational fo ...

Calgary Underground Film Festival The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for seven days at the downtown Globe Cinema.Madelaine Lapointe"Stock up on popcorn, the Calgary Underground Film Festival is coming to a ...

Brooklyn Film Festival The Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF), prior to 2011 called the Brooklyn International Film Festival (BiFF) is an independent film festival held every June in New York City. Started by Marco Ursino, Susan Mackell, Abe Schrager, and Mario Pegoraro in ...

New Zealand International Film Festival The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) () is a film festival held annually across New Zealand. The festival is operated by the New Zealand Film Festival Trust. It programmes international and New Zealand films. History The festiva ...

, and the

Fantasia International Film Festival Fantasia International Film Festival, also known as Fantasia Fest or simply Fantasia, is a genre film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. It focuses on fantasy, horror, sci-fi and cult genre films. Regular ...

where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It was picked up for worldwide distribution by

MPI Media Group MPI Media Group is an American producer, distributor and licensor of theatrical film and home entertainment. MPI's subsidiaries include MPI Pictures, MPI Home Video, Gorgon Video, and the horror film distributor Dark Sky Films. The company is ...

where it was released in theaters and video-on-demand on November 20, 2015. To coincide with this release,

went on a US tour of major cities, screening the new film followed by a live concert. The film was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States on January 19, 2016. The film was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

, and VOD in Canada on March 11, 2016. The film was released on Netflix in USA, Canada, and Scandinavia in June, 2016.

Reception

The film received positive reviews from critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

it has an approval rating of 91% based on reviews from 11 critics.

Screen Anarchy ScreenAnarchy, previously known as Twitch Film or Twitch, is a Canadian English-language website featuring news and reviews of mainly international, independent and cult films. The website was founded in 2004 by Todd Brown. In addition to films, ...

called it "a very winning documentary." Audiences everywhere named I Am Thor one of the 10 Best Documentaries of 2015. Frank Scheck of

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

called it "an entertainingly eccentric doc".

References

External links

Official Website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160124145158/http://www.iamthormovie.com/ , date=2016-01-24 Documentary films about rock music and musicians Cultural depictions of Canadian people Cultural depictions of rock musicians Cultural depictions of bodybuilders 2015 films American documentary films