Thor: The Dark World: A Passable Marvel Sequel

The one on the left should have had his name in the title.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

After returning from seeing Thor: The Dark World, I’m still trying to form my opinion of it.  I felt the same way after seeing Iron Man 3.  While I didn’t dislike the movie, I definitely didn’t love it either.  Post-The Avengers, it’s proving to be very difficult to tell exciting individual stories about these super heroes on the big screen.

From the trailers, we learned that before the universe existed, there was darkness.  In this darkness, a race of dark elves lived, with their leader being a man named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston).  Malekith is our main villain for the movie, being the force behind all the attacks and battles seen in trailers.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has made it his duty to stop Malekith from destroying Asgard and all the nine realms, which is our main plot of the movie.  Overall, it falls a bit flat though.  Malekith has very little interaction with other characters, unlike the extremely charismatic Loki (Tom Hiddleston), our main villain in both the first Thor, as well as The Avengers.  Loki ends up being the best part of this movie as well.  If rumors are true, from what I’ve read, they actually went back to add more scenes with Loki after initial filming because it’s clear how much he adds to the film, and steals the show.  Loki has so much more of a story line in this movie, it almost would have made more sense to put his name in the title instead of Thor.

All the main Earth/Midgard characters from the original return for the sequel, including Darcy Lewis (Kat Denning), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), and once again Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) as Thor’s love interest.  While Jane had a clear role in the movie, if you would have removed the characters of Darcy and Erik, the movie wouldn’t have turned out much different, if at all.  Both were there mostly for comic relief, which they absolutely nailed, but at the same time felt unnecessary.

There’s a couple of very clever moments, including a very brutal battle scene, and the the end of the movie (before the credits rolled, that is).  I didn’t see either of them coming, and the way they played out were definitely highlights of the movie for me.

Post-credits, we get two scenes.  The first one, I did not understand until I looked up the characters online after the movie.  As is always the case, it’s a setup for a future Marvel movie.  Which Marvel, movie, you’ll have to find out for yourself  🙂  The second post-credits scene was a bit disappointing, though it did inject one last bit of humor into the film for something that I had completely forgotten about.

As the title of the review states, I’d call this a passable Marvel sequel.  Previews for both Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and X-Men: Days of Future Past played before the movie, and looked substantially more exciting than Thor: The Dark World ended up being.  If you can catch a matinee, or a showing at a second run theater, I say go for it.  If not, and you haven’t seen it yet, wait for it on Netflix or redbox.