Movie Review: Thor - The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

When Jane Foster is possessed by a great power, Thor must protect her from a new threat of old times: the Dark Elves.  Short synopsis of Thor: The Dark World taken from IMDb.com

Thor: The Dark World.  Not bad.  Not bad at all. 

Now, having said that, some overly involved background.  I am admittedly not a comic book guy, but I do enjoy movies made about characters from comic books.  I know nothing about Thor beyond the Norse legend, and even there, I am not particularly well-versed.  I have heard it said that Thor is Marvel's answer to DC Comics' Superman franchise.  Well I can tell you right now, if I judged each franchise based solely on the most recent films made from them, I'd think Thor was cool and Superman was a moody weirdo.

The humor in Thor: The Dark World was nicely done.  Sure, a couple of gags could be seen coming, such as the one where Jane's intern (the always sarcastic Kat Dennings, who plays one of the titular characters on the TV show "Two Broke Girls" - yes, I do occasionally watch network TV, especially when I'm too tired to do anything else constructive), who has just had her life saved by her intern (that intern bit is a running joke in the film) is teleported from one place to another, appearing on the other side in a passionate embrace with her recent savior.  The joke could be seen coming, but it lost nothing of the chuckle factor for it.

There are lots of humorous one-liners interspersed with BIG action scenes.  On that note, thankfully none of the action sequences seemed overly tedious to me.  It was like the director knew when to show something exciting, and when to stop and be satisfied.  This was pleasing.

The comic version of Thor looks so much more...  clean cut, to me. / Source: fun.com

Now I must admit something.  I fell asleep half-way through the movie for a short while, and missed some things.  Did it affect the quality of the film?  No.  And was it due to the film itself that I fell asleep?  No, not that either.  I was simply very tired, and got comfortable.  My point is, I don't know why our heroes were running from their own people, half-way through.  But as I said, this did not diminish the enjoyment of the movie for me. 

Oh, and bravo on making London the target of the alien invasion, for once.  A nice change of scene.  Though I had to smirk at one scene in the middle of the film where a bad guy's space ship flies into the palace, crashing through columns (my wife quipped "they sure like destroying columns in this film - it was a repeated motif) and walls.  When the ship comes to a grinding stop, the bad guys leap out and begin to attack the palace defenders.  This scene could have been torn almost part-for-part from the trailer for the most recent Star Wars video game that was released not too long ago (and didn't do too well, as I understand it - but that's a whole different story).  Anyway, the scene was pretty cool, just the same, despite the lifting of it from that other source.  Dark World seemed to lift things from other films in a few other instances.  At one point we'd think Natalie Portman is back on Naboo as Princess Amidala, given the scenery in the background.  But it doesn't detract, but rather amuse the watchful viewer.  At least that is my take on it.

Who watches the watchers?
 

Thor: The Dark World doesn't sport a highly complex script.  But there is more to it than "bad guy does bad things and so good guy must fix his wagon."  Especially when we bring in Loki, the ever-present antithesis of Thor.  In fact, the film threw me for a loop at one point near the climax.  Thor and Loki square off in the presence of our big Dark Elf baddie, and Loki cuts off Thor's hands.  For a hero who wields a magic hammer (talk about your carpenter's friend), this could be a serious problem.  I was left wondering for a moment, "how are they gonna get out of this one?"  After all, Loki is a BAD guy.  But then things change rapidly. 

In fact, you think for a minute or two near the movie's climax that one of the principal characters is dead!  I wondered to myself how they could get away with killing off a main character like that.  But did they?  Of course not.  The way they tied up this loose end in the final moments of the film actually pleased me.  Nicely done.  If my crypticness is bugging you and this film sounds good, but you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you stop reading and go rent it.  Well worth the DVD Redbox price.  Better than the first one, in my opinion, though sadly, that isn't saying much.

The parting comment:



Source: LOLSnaps.com

Video games: 1.  Girlfriend: Zero.

A two-for on parting comments:

Here is that trailer that has the scene that Dark World seems to have lifted.  The part I spoke of in the review (lifted part) starts at about the one minute twenty-two second mark.