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| Thor: The Dark World (2013) |
I don't want it to sound like I downright hate this movie, because there is a lot to like here. The visuals are still gorgeous. Asgard looks beautiful, and the multiple worlds of the movie provide a lot of nice variety. Speaking of variety, it's also refreshing to have an Earth setting that isn't America, and London is a nice backdrop for this story, especially considering the way they use Greenwich. I find the character of Thor much more bearable in this movie, and it's nice to see how much he's learned since Thor 1. It's also good to see that cocky warrior spirit isn't completely gone, as it is still under the surface. 'I've come to accept your surrender' is a good example of this, and overall this film does well keeping Thor likeable, especially since the first Thor kind of struggles with this. The action is also really nice, with one notable caveat that I'll come back to later. In general, the action scenes are great fun to watch, and I love how the final battle is structured, with the playing with alternate realities and jumping through portals. The battle on Asgard is probably my favourite sequence in the entire movie, as the attack is tense, shocking and really well paced. We even get a really powerful emotional scene afterwards, and that really hits home as well.
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| Chris Hemsworth as Thor |
But, let's get to the undisputed best aspect of this movie: the dynamic and relationship between Thor and Loki. Not only do Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston have fantastic chemistry with each other, but the relationship itself has really evolved since the first Thor, and even since The Avengers. Unlike some other movies that try this sort of thing, the two of them pairing up doesn't feel forced, and it doesn't come across as just a reason to keep Loki in these movies because he was so popular. The back-and-forth between them is also great to watch, and a lot of their minor squabbles they have feel so real, in that I've had a lot of these disputes with my own brother. The 'maybe don't push it so hard and it might work then' bicker is almost verbatim something that we've said to each other in the past. What's also great is how the fact that the two of them have to team up never compromises the individual characterisation of either one of them. Their relationship certainly ends in a different place than when it started, but Thor doesn't rub off on Loki too much as to completely change who Loki is, nor does the opposite happen. It's a nice balance, and I wish it had gotten just a little more focus than it did.
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| Tom Hiddleston as Loki |
Because now we get to the stuff that doesn't work quite as well, and we once again turn to Jane Foster. This can be extended to all the scientist / interns in this movie, but since Jane gets such a big focus, I'll talk about her specifically. I just don't find her interesting, and there's nothing about her that's all that unique, in that I legitimately don't see what Thor finds all that appealing about her. She also doesn't really do much of anything in this movie, apart from some science stuff that Selvig really could have done on his own. Yes, she gets infected by the Aether, but there's a really easy work-around that would have made this story so much more interesting: have Thor get infected. That way, Asgard actually gives a s*** about it, we get more of the Thor and Loki dynamic, and less of the scientists. It would take a rewrite or two, but it's doable. To be honest, the film could have used a rewrite as it is, since the pacing is really off. It's too fast in the beginning, too slow towards the middle, and too fast by the end. It's really only in the middle section of the film that everything feels natural. The backstory of the Dark Elves is rushed as anything, the way the Thor/Loki pairing wraps up is dealt with almost instantly, and the ending happens without a real denouement. There's also a lot of emphasis on things that really don't matter much to the overall story. I don't know why the movie tries to set up a Thor/Sif relationship at the beginning, since that goes absolutely nowhere. In fact, remove Jane from the movie, and these two might actually have more than just one scene together, and we can explore not only their relationship, but Sif in general.
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| Natalie Portman as Jane Foster |
And now we come to perhaps the most disappointing part of the movie: Malekith and the Dark Elves. I really don't like to throw around 'worst' a lot, but the Dark Elves really are the worst MCU villains. Christopher Eccleston brings a certain presence to his performance, but it's not enough to save the character, which is a shame, because Eccleston is such an amazing actor; he just wasn't given anything to do. We learn absolutely nothing about the character of Malekith in the entire movie, apart from the fact that he wants to destroy reality. That's it. That's all we get. Their motivations are so standard, and so are their abilities in general. Apart from the Kursed, it's never made clear what they can do that makes them so powerful, and this is what makes some of the action scenes a little weak, since without unique attributes, it essentially boils down to a fistfight. Anything done with Mjolnir is excellent, and it gets a little more interesting once Malekith gets the Aether, but that's really it. Especially after Loki in the first Thor, these villains are incredibly standard. In fact, that's the best word for this movie: standard. Apart from Loki and Thor, there's really nothing that makes this movie stand out. It's not even that it's cliched or uninteresting or even unentertaining, because it is. There are parts of this movie that are very entertaining. The rest is just forgettable, and that's the reason I held this movie to a higher standard back when I was doing my review for the first Thor movie. I was remembering all the good bits because I couldn't remember anything else.
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| Christopher Eccleston as Malekith |
Thor: The Dark World (2013) is without a doubt the worst MCU film, and the reason I don't really like using 'worst' a lot is because there's still a lot of really good stuff here. Nothing you can't see with a YouTube search, but probably not worth more than one full watch otherwise. 5/10.
Next: it's Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
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