Review: Thor: The Dark World

Directed by: Alan Taylor

Written by: Christopher L. Yost, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba

Rating: [2/5]

While movies centered on superheroes need to give room for the protagonists to grow, they can only be as good as the villains brought against them. The villains do not necessarily need to rock our world with what they accomplish, which we certainly do not receive in Thor: The Dark World where we get this very uninteresting plot with such bland adversaries. 

With the reconstruction of the Bifrost, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his warrior friends continue to keep the peace in the nine realms when an ancient enemy named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) of the Dark Elves gets awakened. When Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) gets infected by this powerful Aether, Thor must take her to Asgard to save her life with Malekith in his search for them all. 

Coming off of the relatively successful Thor and shortly after the release of the mega-hit The Avengers we have these characters all repositioned. Thor now sits with the opportunity to become King of Asgard while Loki (Tom Hiddleston) sits in prison because of his war crimes in New York. The filmmakers behind this entire universe thus thought they should do the prudent task of creating or bringing a villain that could introduce some universe-threatening stakes into the picture and of all things they chose the Dark Elves. 

Never has a superhero film had such a dull villain as Malekith and these Dark Elves. Creatures who have a history with Asgardians and they enact this plot to take them all out and after watching the feature the first time I could not tell you one thing about them. They have such a generic motivation and execute them in such bland tiresome ways that leave absolutely no impact. When comparing this feature to the first film, this one definitely wanted to raise the stakes but in the process proved much more dull in its efforts not only on a visual level but in the way it executes it all. 

Having these Dark Elves attack Asgard and then Earth through the portal opening makes the entire feature the search for this Maguffin, which is ultimately Jane who has this Aether thing inside of her that needs to be drawn out. These Elves now want to seek her out to extract it and use it for their own gains. Something that should carry some level of intrigue but never gets quite close because of how seriously it takes itself. I understand the need to want to create some interesting story, but in the end, we have characters like Thor in the silliest costume imaginable unironically wielding a hammer and wrecking people, there was no need to use such a dour tone throughout the feature. 

We receive glimpses of the potential this feature had with the interactions between Thor and Loki, which has continually proved to be the best source of enjoyment from these films focused on Norse Gods. Moving away from the tragic brothers of the first feature, in this one we get much more banter between them and the moments they share make the film somewhat bearable. Now with Loki’s evilness out in the open, they can have a healthy mix of disdain and love for each other in a manner that makes for some fun laughs to be had overall. It allows Hiddleston to continue to be a gem with this character in bringing his trickster ways into the story as opposed to the honorable doofus of a brother her has in Thor. Incredible chemistry once again between them, which made me wish the feature simply existed as the two of them irritating each other but we had to return to more Malekith being all broody bringing the mood down and not bringing even the tiniest morsel of intrigue to the story. 

Despite some bright spots that can be fully enjoyed, Thor: The Dark World stands as one of the most forgettable Marvel Cinematic Universe films to ever get released. This occurs because of its very bland plot and a villain whose name I need to be reminded of every time I think of him because of how he vehemently lacks in making any sort of an impressionable mark on this narrative. While giving us a fun final battle between him and Thor, nothing works with these Dark Elves and it brings the whole thing down bordering on enjoyable, which these films try their very best to hang their hat on.