Comic Book Movie Review – Thor: The Dark World

Marvel Studios continues its trek to Avengers 2 with Thor:  The Dark World.  Here’s a reminder of what has happened heading into this movie.  Thor had to destroy the Bifrost in order to stop Loki.  Loki went hurtling through space, or something, only to end up with an alien army, and attacking Earth with the power of the Tesseract.  But, he’s defeated, and Thor returns him to Asgard.  Spoilers below the break.

Thor:  The Dark World

Directed by Alan Taylor

Written by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Don Payne, Robert Rodat & Mr. Met

Starring
Chris Hemsworth as Thor
Natalie Portman as Jane Foster
Tom Hiddleston as Loki
Anthony Hopkins as Odin
Christopher Eccleston as Malekith

A really long time ago, as in before time, the Dark Elves led by Malekith tried to take over all of existence using a substance named Aether.  When the Asgardians defeated Malekith, they could only hide the Aether.  Fast forward to today.  Thor, Sif, and the Warriors 3 are working on returning order to all of the realms after the repair of the Bifrost, and conveniently, they just finished the last world.  Thor and Odin argue over Jane Foster.  On Earth, she’s  trying to move on, but Darcy drags her into investigating some findings similar to what led them to finding Thor.  It turns out that all of the realms are aligning, and this results in some weird transportations.  She gets transported to where the Aether is being hidden.  It posses her.  Thor, conveniently talking to Heimdall at that exact moment is worried because Heimdall can’t see her.  But she returns to Earth, as does Thor, and he takes her back to Asgard.  Odin is not happy about that.  But either way, Jane can’t live with the Aether for long, and it is going to kill her eventually.

Around this time, Malekith wakes up from his stasis.  The Dark Elves attack Asgard.  Malekith has come to get the Aether, but Frigga keeps him from getting to Jane.  Unfortunately, Malekith kills Frigga.  Thor hatches his own plan, going against Odin.  He’s going to essentially take Jane to Malekith, with Loki’s help, let him get the Aether, and then defeat Malekith.  I know, it sounds foolproof.  Let’s just say that things don’t go according to plan, and Malekith attacks Earth.  In the end, Thor wins, and everything is good.  Well, there’s a little thing at very end, but I’m not going to spoil that.  The after credits scene that matters has  Sif and Volstagg taking the recovered Aether to The Collector for safe keeping.  They tell him that they already have the Tesseract, and it’s not safe to keep two Infinity Stones together.

It may not seem like it, but I actually enjoyed this movie more than the first one.  This is what I want in a Thor movie.  I want to see magical elements.  I want to see the other realms.  If I want to see a big guy with a cape running around Earth, I can watch other things.  Thor has a chance to be unique, and I believe it should embrace its uniqueness.  Embrace unique things like Loki.

Loki is a commodity that not many other series have.  Sure, you have things where two old friends are at odds with each other, like Professor X and Magneto.  But here, we have two brothers fighting.  And one of those brothers happens to be the god of mischief.  It can make for some interesting scenarios.  And all of this is helped by the acting of Tom Hiddleston.  His acting ability and charm make you want to like Loki, despite the terrible things he’s done.  With each good deed, you want to believe that maybe he is capable of changing.  Which makes the inevitable betrayal all the more painful.  It really is a love/hate relationship.  Or hate/love.  You decide.

My problem with this movie has to really deal with the behavior of Erik Selvig.  After having a god inside his mind, he’s gone a bit crazy.  As in, running around Stonehenge naked, trying to set up equipment crazy.  Sure, everything he says is correct, but I don’t understand why this had to happen.  You can’t use the justification that Loki’s influence did this because otherwise Hawkeye should have gone a little crazy at the end of Avengers.  I’m all for some light-hearted moments to break up the tension, but those came from Darcy.  And they worked in the context of the movie.  Darcy works as the comedic sidekick to Jane.  Erik is just kind of there.

In the end, I do recommend that you see this movie.  There’s also a wonderful cameo that I’m not going to spoil.  And no, it’s not Stan Lee.  Yes, he does make his usual cameo.