Thor: The Dark World review

              I think it’s fair to say that Marvel’s “Thor”, released in 2011, was nobody’s favorite predecessor to Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers”. This isn’t to say that nobody loved it at all. In fact, despite the overall silliness and camp that comes with rainbow roads, frost giants, and Natalie Portman playing an astrophysicist, the first “Thor” is a totally digestible, zero-calorie, superhero meal. Also, if nothing else, we got Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston out it.

                With that said, I wish I could I share the same kind of tepid enthusiasm for the recently released sequel. “Thor: The Dark World” is a decidedly slower, longer, and darker follow-up, that mistakenly shrouds the first film’s bright-eyed simplicity within a cocoon of narrative padding.

                After the cataclysmic events of “The Avengers”, Thor’s deceitful brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is captured and imprisoned back from wince he came on Asgard. While there, a fleet of dark space elves—just go with me—come to attack Odin’s throne to reclaim the power of a mystical red goo called The Ether, that has recently taken shelter in the body of Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). In order to keep the nine realms of the universe from being overtaken by darkness, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must break his mischievous brother out of jail, and learn to trust him long enough fight together, side by side.

                Let me first say that, technically speaking, there isn’t anything ‘wrong’ with this movie. The special effects are big and expensive looking, the London location change is welcomed, the space-fantasy production design is inventive and imposing, and the action structure of the plot pays off in exactly the way it promises to from the opening prologue. My problems with this sequel lie within its vagueness, its self-seriousness, and its overall I-can’t-believe-we’re-getting-away-with-this-again safeness.

                The ruggedly handsome Hemsworth is half asleep in this reprise and even though this is supposedly his showcase, the film seems far more interested in Hiddleston’s sneering Loki character. The interplay between these two actors is occasionally engaging when the movie is remembers to be character-centric, but unfortunately the majority of the running time is devoted to red floating liquids, space battles, and overcomplicated conceits about intergalactic, warping car-keys.  There is some genuine fun to be had in the last half hour, but the cumbersome plot is so large and looming that whatever levity and charm saved the first film has now been shoved aside, in favor of the usual epic, action money-shots.

                I will commend the new screenwriters for finding a better way to integrate the human, non-super, characters (Portman, Kat Dennings, and Stellan Skarsgard) into the story, but even though they are given more to do, it doesn’t keep them from feeling any less like a mechanical writing device.

                I don’t know, this is all starting to feel like tired roadshow act on the last leg of a lengthy tour. I guess if you walk into this film wanting to like it you probably will. It’s been carefully designed to be placeholder until the Disney/Marvel factory spits out another one of these in five months.  However, when we’re living in a time with four or more superhero movies released every year, I refuse to simply excuse a film like this for being merely ‘fine’.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2013