Music Box Films
I have written rude things about Kenneth Branagh, but I never wished him a term in the Marvel salt mines. His name attached to "Thor" wasn't the year's biggest directorial surprise — that was Michel Gondry's credit on "The Green Hornet," which really did seem like crossed wires — but it proved that hiring a left-field director for the current wave of fantasy films is a bit pointless, since the chances of getting a left-field film out of it are about zero. The differences between the year's comic-book movies were well worth arguing about, as long as you didn't miss that it was their similarities which were actually the point, and that the same diminishing returns as any other drug hit was part of the equation. Since 2012 brings to the screen a comic for which my 12-year-old self would have mugged my own grandmother, the next whimper you hear may be mine.