Worldly Thoughts

I haven't yet been able to watch this week's new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, but I did manage to get out to see Thor: The Dark World this past weekend. It was a tremendous improvement over the first Thor movie. But then, if you've read my review of the first Thor movie, you know that's not a particularly high bar to clear.

In the plus column, Thor: The Dark World is actually a rather funny movie. Perhaps more so than any of the previous Marvel movies, it does a great job of sprinkling moments of light humor in amongst the action. Think of a classic 80s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but less corny. There's solid patter throughout, and a handful of good sight gags as well.

In the enormous plus column, there's Loki. In this, his third film in the role, Tom Hiddleston has come to perfectly embody the character. His dry sarcasm is the perfect skewer for the self-importance of the plot surrounding him. His bold swagger actually makes him more likable than the title character. He's something of a classic Disney animated villain, actually, but it works completely given the rather cartoonish nature of the film's Asgard setting. Or, to sum up, while I wouldn't line up to see a third Thor movie, I'd probably be there on opening night for a Loki movie.

What's less effective? Well, most everything that doesn't have Loki in it. Rene Russo does score some points as Frigga, the one truly relatable Asgardian character in the film. But so many other excellent actors (including multiple Oscar winners!) are simply wasted in one-dimensional parts. Anthony Hopkins bellows as Odin, Idris Elba is blandly stoic as Heimdall, Christopher Eccleston's villain Malekith is simply bitter and evil for no clearly articulated reason, and so on down the list. Worst of all is the treatment of Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, who manages somehow to be the movie's Macguffin while simultaneously contributing almost nothing to the progression of the plot.

The film also seems to borrow too much from The Avengers. The climax is a rather similar conceit that involves Earth being threatened by a portal from elsewhere in the universe (but in a far more jumbled way that prompted a lady to ask us as we walked out of the theater: "did you follow any of that?"). Even some of the humor is a retread, such as an early "big guy knocks someone out of frame" moment that fails to recapture the hilarity of the "Hulk punches Thor" moment from The Avengers.

As I said, a big improvement over the original, but Thor: The Dark World still fails at making all these immortal aliens relatable, nor does it make the "all of Earth is threatened" storyline feel as important as the more personal stakes of other Marvel movies. I give this one a C.

(Seriously, I can't be the only one who wants a Loki movie.)