"Darling, keep me safe from the floating people with no legs!"
And so onwards rolls the Marvel juggernaut (uh, not the Marvel character Juggernaut, although that dude does roll on quite a bit) as, after Iron Man 3 basically killed summer for every other movie this year, the coming of winter brings with it the return of the mighty Odinson, he of magic hammer, enviable hair and crazy popular evil sibling. While there's only been one prior Thor movie, the use of Loki as the main villain in The Avengers made that film quite organically the 'step 2' of the brothers' story, and leaves The Dark World with a very different starting point. Even so, it still has to tie things up neatly from its predecessor and succeed in being a superior film, so, how did it do? Read on, mortals.
Spoiler: the first hour is just Thor and Jane having a
quiet night at the opera. ALL THE FEELS.
The Plot: Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been a busy lad of late; in the time since the destruction of the Bifrost bridge countless marauders have raided Asgard's neighbouring realms, and with the bridge now fixed it's fallen to him and his friends to deal out some space-medieval justice. Unfortunately Thor's resolve is shaky, his thoughts forever drifting to earthly scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and it's starting to tick off big daddy Odin (Anthony Hopkins), who needs Thor's eye on the Asgardian ball since his other kid Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been locked up for life on account of attacking our planet with a horde of alien jetbike enthusiasts. Meanwhile, Jane's work brings her into contact with an ancient relic called the Aether, and its activation wakes the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim and their leader Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), long thought dead and desirous of the Aether and its potentially universe-ending power. As unprepared Asgard burns by Malekith's hand, Thor takes desperate action to save his love and, well, everything else...maybe even burying the hatchet with Loki for the greater good?
Tom Hiddleston IS Tumblr-Man, the World's Most Rebloggable Hero!
The Good: This film is a production/art design banquet, I swear. Now, I loved the look of Asgard in Thor already, so returning to that place is like revisiting the best bed & breakfast I ever stayed at (if any given B&B featured 20-foot golden thrones and bridges made of solid rainbow...) and really, the concept artists and craftsmen could've just phoned in the rest of it after that. But instead they've expanded the Nine Realms and broadened their styling; while there's still a lot that's the superhero cousin of Lord of the Rings, there's a very definite shift into crazy sci-fi territory, with Asgard's capital city now featuring laser defense turrets and flying longboat skiffs that wouldn't look out of place tailing Jabba the Hutt's sail barge, and the Dark Elves' arsenal combines elegant sculptures of bleached bone with very high-tech mechanisms sporting twisted organic styling reminiscent of H.R. Giger. And somehow, it all sticks together too; even the scenes in miserable old London don't seem out of place.
In much the same way, the film balances its duelling tones perfectly. If there was one thing in particular I really loved about the first Thor it was the melding of the operatic, high-volume stage performances delivered by everyone on Asgard and the quieter but very nudge-wink comedic takes amongst the humans, which managed to both make clear why these oddly-dressed immortals are thought of as gods, while also skewering itself whenever things got a bit too weighty, which neatly avoided any pretentiousness souring the mood. The Dark World repeats this feat even as events take a turn for the gloomy, as you'd expect from a sequel; Thor's earnest bragging, Loki's snark and a willingness to embrace physical comedy sits hand in hand with some genuinely chilling villains and one of my favourite funeral scenes ever. (look, it's not a spoiler to say someone dies so long as I don't say who) Both director Alan Taylor (who never misses a beat in either the heights of emotion or the thrill of battle) and screenwriters Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely deserve a big round of applause for pulling off the magic.
Malekith wonders if he should look for a trigger or just try
blowing in the other end.
Aiding the smart script is a magnificent cast. With each taking their 3rd turn at their respective roles, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston settle back into the honest versus treacherous / straightforward versus convoluted sibling dynamic with comfortable ease, and it's still startling to remember that these two were unknowns not even 3 years ago - both hold the screen like true stars. Hemsworth's greatest gift remains his light touch for comedy, and the way he undercuts the more ponderous nature of Thor is basically synonymous with the character at this point. And Hiddleston gets to take Loki to even greater depths of slippery-minded trickery than ever before, to the point where even after the full credits rolled I couldn't tell if anything he did or said in this movie was the real truth. Hell, I don't know if even Loki himself knows what the hell he wants anymore. Other than making fun of people in a snobbish way. He pretty clearly enjoys that. And Natalie Portman still neatly walks the divide of making Jane Foster a smart and capable leading lady who also collapses into a girlish fawning state whenever Thor starts swishing his gorgeous hair around, and her very youthful chemistry with Hemsworth continues to make this the most romantic of all the Marvel couples.
Elsewhere, Anthony Hopkins plays himself...I mean, Odin, with practiced ease. He's often distant and unknowable, but then, that's what I'd expect from the super-ancient Allfather, and it makes Thor's frustrations with daddy's behaviour more believable. Rene Russo as Frigga is given more prominence after her rather blink-and-miss-it turn in the first film, which is very welcome, and the same goes for the always-fun Idris Elba as 'god of watching stuff' Heimdall. Thor's pals Sif (Jaimie Alexander), Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano) and Fandral (Zachary Levi, replacing Josh Dallas) are yet again so much fun I wish we could get a spin-off just based on them. Stellan Skarsgard, after his surprisingly pivotal role in Avengers, is on relatively light duty, with Dr. Selvig apparently suffering a nervous breakdown from his mind-control experiences and...well, I didn't expect to see him this way, but Skarsgard is game and makes it work. Kat Dennings as Jane's friend/nuisance Darcy is integrated much more smoothly into the proceedings this time, and she's also brought an intern (Jonathan Howard) so she's no longer bottom of the Team Science totem pole. As the main villain (Loki's kind of an anti-hero at this point, right?), Christopher Eccleston doesn't have a great deal to work with - Malekith is a very straightforward sort of evil, in the same vein as Captain America's Red Skull - but his well-practiced glower and glacially calm speech bring the role to life wonderfully, and he finds some smart touches of depth, like an oddly tender touching of foreheads with head flunky Algrim (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Speaking of Agbaje, he doesn't get a hell of a lot of character time, but major props for his time as the unstoppable Kurse, during which he's trapped within a monster costume that delightfully resembles the kind of thing Rita Repulsa would send to kill the Power Rangers.
The VFX boys and girls have pulled their weight again; given how much of Asgard and the other non-earthly realms were created digitally, it's impressive that I never once caught myself thinking I was watching a bunch of actors in front of a green-screen (something I did notice in the first film). Even the fully digital effects have some real thought put into their look - the Aether, for example, could've just been black smoke or light, but instead it's this cloudy, congealing murky red stuff that moves like blood spreading through water. I don't need anyone to stop and explain it's bad when it looks like that. Brian Tyler's score also back up the scenes very neatly, with all the dramatic battle pomp you'd expect and some genuine emotion too. Time will tell if I'll like it quite as much as I did Patrick Doyle's work on the first movie (a highlight for me) but whatever ongoing deal Marvel have with Tyler between this and Iron Man 3 was a smart move.
Bonus best: Extra stuff! There's 2 bonus scenes, one mid-credits and the other post, and they're both work sticking around for. There's also a fun cameo by...y'know, I'm not even gonna say. Find out for yourself.
Elsewhere, Anthony Hopkins plays himself...I mean, Odin, with practiced ease. He's often distant and unknowable, but then, that's what I'd expect from the super-ancient Allfather, and it makes Thor's frustrations with daddy's behaviour more believable. Rene Russo as Frigga is given more prominence after her rather blink-and-miss-it turn in the first film, which is very welcome, and the same goes for the always-fun Idris Elba as 'god of watching stuff' Heimdall. Thor's pals Sif (Jaimie Alexander), Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano) and Fandral (Zachary Levi, replacing Josh Dallas) are yet again so much fun I wish we could get a spin-off just based on them. Stellan Skarsgard, after his surprisingly pivotal role in Avengers, is on relatively light duty, with Dr. Selvig apparently suffering a nervous breakdown from his mind-control experiences and...well, I didn't expect to see him this way, but Skarsgard is game and makes it work. Kat Dennings as Jane's friend/nuisance Darcy is integrated much more smoothly into the proceedings this time, and she's also brought an intern (Jonathan Howard) so she's no longer bottom of the Team Science totem pole. As the main villain (Loki's kind of an anti-hero at this point, right?), Christopher Eccleston doesn't have a great deal to work with - Malekith is a very straightforward sort of evil, in the same vein as Captain America's Red Skull - but his well-practiced glower and glacially calm speech bring the role to life wonderfully, and he finds some smart touches of depth, like an oddly tender touching of foreheads with head flunky Algrim (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Speaking of Agbaje, he doesn't get a hell of a lot of character time, but major props for his time as the unstoppable Kurse, during which he's trapped within a monster costume that delightfully resembles the kind of thing Rita Repulsa would send to kill the Power Rangers.
The VFX boys and girls have pulled their weight again; given how much of Asgard and the other non-earthly realms were created digitally, it's impressive that I never once caught myself thinking I was watching a bunch of actors in front of a green-screen (something I did notice in the first film). Even the fully digital effects have some real thought put into their look - the Aether, for example, could've just been black smoke or light, but instead it's this cloudy, congealing murky red stuff that moves like blood spreading through water. I don't need anyone to stop and explain it's bad when it looks like that. Brian Tyler's score also back up the scenes very neatly, with all the dramatic battle pomp you'd expect and some genuine emotion too. Time will tell if I'll like it quite as much as I did Patrick Doyle's work on the first movie (a highlight for me) but whatever ongoing deal Marvel have with Tyler between this and Iron Man 3 was a smart move.
Bonus best: Extra stuff! There's 2 bonus scenes, one mid-credits and the other post, and they're both work sticking around for. There's also a fun cameo by...y'know, I'm not even gonna say. Find out for yourself.
Just because there's a battle afoot doesn't mean Thor
won't stop for a catalogue shoot.
The Bad: However much heavy lifting Eccleston does, Malekith and his Dark Elves still feel short-changed by the script. Maybe there's a longer cut or at least some deleted scenes awaiting the blu-ray release that better explain what these guys are all about (as far as I can tell their motivation is akin to Nekron from DC's Blackest Night comics: they lived and thrived before light and other life existed in the universe, and want to revert things back to that point) but as it stands they're just Evil Dudes. Of course, they're Evil Dudes with Scary Masks and Odd Looking Spaceships and honest-to-god Black Hole Grenades (!) so I can't really say I dislike having them, I just wish their narrative matched their visuals.
Seriously, BLACK HOLE GRENADES (!!).
Actually, it's not just Malekith - the film is so chock-full of stuff that a fair few of the cast get short thrift. And upsettingly, it's the same people who also got it in the neck in the last one - namely Sif and the Warriors Three - who suffer the most. Maybe it's a simple matter of these films introducing more characters than they could ever know what to do with, maybe it's the sudden popularity of Loki leading the filmmakers to lean more heavily on him at the expense of others, I don't know. It's just a shame to see so many fantastic actors not getting the chance to stretch as much as I'd like.
"What do you mean, 'I left the keys in mother's other drapes'?"
The Verdict: Thor: The Dark World is the movie I'd previously convinced myself Thor 1 was. Not that I disliked the first before (or do now) but I think I gave it more credit for being 'epic' when it was really quite small. The Dark World is vast and sprawling and drags you along at hurricane speeds without losing the human heart within its godly form, and is exactly the kind of crazy magic-scifi fusion I want to see from these characters. It might not be my favourite Marvel movie for a few reasons, and there's no big shock reveal to discuss a la Iron Man 3, but it's a defiant roar in the face of 'difficult second movie syndrome' and a welcome return for the craziest Avenger. 9.2 out of 10. Disagree, and we shall have words in the comments. Probably.
Ending on Sif's amazing Battle!Face because Jaimie Alexander
makes my day brighter. <3
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