Thor: The Dark World

The sequel to the b-lister of Marvel's film franchise. How is it? Frankly disappointing. 


I wasn't too sure if I'd be catching this but on Saturday, my friend Brandon was telling me I'd love this movie. Yes, I'm calling him out here because apparently he has horrible taste. 

I watched the original Thor and I liked it well enough. It wasn't a great film but it was a decent film. A bit tropey but filled with enough decent laughs and a storyline that was passable. Thor2 however isn't quite like that. 

Thor 2 tries to be really epic in a way because you have all these factors thrown into the plot, from the prophecies, to the ancient battles between light and darkness and how the darkness wants to return while the original Thor film was really more about Thor and his dysfunctional relationship with his family. The problem is that Thor1 managed to do its job pretty well while Thor2 kind of failed in its own way. 

So what didn't I like about Thor2? Well, the entire feel of the series changed quite dramatically from the first one. In the first film, Asgard was this strange mix of sciencey magic or really advanced magic/science and you got where they were coming from. Although seriously, they could have just made the Asgardians actual gods. But the imagery just totally shifts for Thor2, where suddenly you have spaceships, laser cannons, laser turrets etc. Suddenly, it's no longer fantasy-magicscience, it's just very advanced technology which is disappointing for me. 

Especially since it's a PRETTY damn huge cognitive dissonance factor in the scenes where you see the dark elves are in high-tech spaceships and using blaster rifles while the Asgardians are STILL using swords and shields. It's like '...wtf' Basically the anachronism of the film is really jarring. Combine that with Natalie Portman as a love interest and you start having very bad flashbacks to the prequel trilogy, especially when they show spaceships invading Asgard. Also, not a fan of the dark elf look. It's basically just cheap latex masks. 

And speaking of Natalie Portman, I have no idea if it's the actress or the scriptwriter's fault, but I just could not stand Jane's relationship with Thor. It was pretty frigging bland, which is okay if it's just shunted off to the side and not talked about much. Unfortunately, it's featured very very very very heavily in this film. I'd say this relationship is about as healthy as Edward's relationship with Bella (yes, Twilight reference). Which makes sense. Thor's way older than Jane and Jane's pretty much useless the same way Bella is. I'm going to put it this way, I'm not a fan of yaoi, but I think the Loki and Thor relationship is a lot more interesting than Jane and Thor.  

I'm also pretty confused about what the Asgardians are actually supposed to be though. They seem to act as if it's their job to keep peace on the 9 realms, barring the time they accidentally killed off most of 1 race in the first film (the frost giants) or the time they accidentally killed off another race in the 2nd (the dark elves), so that's what...6 other worlds for them to keep peace on? Are they universal peace keepers or something? They obviously don't rule over the worlds they keep peace on, otherwise they would rule Earth since it's one of the 9 realms. Are they the Marvel Film-verse version of the Oans? (Green Lantern reference) They just keep peace because order is the way the universe needs to be? If so, why do they have such horribly trained troops? Or so few for that matter. 

Also, just what is the end-game plan for the dark elves? They're supposedly the first beings in all of creation, being born from the darkness before the light came and birthed other beings and they want to return everything to darkness. Which means what exactly? Snuffing out all the stars? Killing everything in the 9 realms? I mean overall, this was a pretty shitty plan considering at the end, Malekith was like the ONLY dark elf left alive so even if he had succeeded in killing everything in the 9 realms, he'd only have himself left. He couldn't even bring back the glory of the dark elven civilisation because again, single dude. Maybe if all his plans didn't involve sacrificing most of his people like they were cheap disposable pawns...Yes, Malekith is a dick to his people. That's not even mentioning there'd still be random races around like the Skrulls from Avengers and Thanos and what not. 

So things I liked about the film? Uh...Sif and the end set-up for Thor3 I guess. I mean Sif's pretty awesome and it's pity they show so little of her while they show SO MUCH of Natalie Portman. The set-up was so blatantly obvious though that it was a bit cringe worthy but it was still interesting to see. I did like the mid-credits scene though because it's foreshadowing the Infinity gems saga although I did wonder when that will occur. It seems likely it may be Avengers 3 but if so, that's an AWFULLY long way off and a huge time to set-up. Then it occurred to me that it might be Guardians of the Galaxy because the gems are a galactic thing. Obviously it would be changing the plot of the original comic a bit but Marvel's proven it's willing to do so in Iron Man3.