Thor: The Dark World Movie Review

Of all the Marvel film characters, Thor has by far the hardest job story-wise. Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk, no matter how fantastical their stories may be, all of them take place on Earth. Even when we watched a tiny Steve Rogers become the hero we all knew he would be in the far-away years of the 1940s, it was still in a world we knew, were familiar with. Not so with Thor. Instead of New York skyscrapers our eyes are filled with gleaming Asgardian towers. The battles Thor and his brothers-in-arms fight are not on German fields, but instead on blasted worlds of darkness. We get very little of the familiar, the safe, the comfortable. So what then are we as viewers supposed to latch onto to carry us through these otherworldly adventures? What is our touchstone? Simply put – Chris Hemsworth.

Though he plays a God, Hemsworth does so with amazing humility. That’s not to say he doesn’t have more than his fair share of arrogance and bravado. He does, in spades. But that only adds to his charm. Thor is a being caught between worlds, his soul in Asgard but his heart on Earth. He wants nothing more than to secure the realms and bring peace to the place of his birth, but deep inside he knows he doesn’t fully belong there anymore. A duality like that is a difficult thing to portray, yet Hemsworth does so with surprising ease. Thor seems to be a role he was born to play, just as Downey was destined to play Tony Stark. He is a commanding presence on the screen, and I never once felt the specter of acting in his performance. He was great in the first Thor movie, and even better in The Avengers, but in The Dark World he truly comes into his own, and I cannot wait to see what he and Marvel do with the character next.

Even as good as Hemsworth is, the film wouldn’t hold up if everyone else wasn’t up the task. Fortunately, they are. Many actors from the first film returned to reprise their roles – Sir Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Natalie Portman as Jane, and Tom Hiddleston as Loki just to name a few, with some new faces joining the fray – Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and surprisingly Zachery Levi who took over the role of Fandral, and all of them do themselves proud. Honestly, there wasn’t a single person on screen who stumbled or missed the mark.

Mention must also be made of the director, Alan Taylor. Until now, Mr. Taylor was known as a television director, his most recent work being several episodes of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, but I think Thor: The Dark World proves he is just as capable on the big screen, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all of he didn’t start getting flooded with offers to do more. The movie constantly alternates between battle scenes and intimate character moments, and he handles each of them deftly, going big when big is needed, and close when it is not. I commend him on a job very well done.

It almost seems a given these days that the production values would be top notch. Marvel, not to mention its parent company Disney, have deep pockets, and they certainly don’t mind digging into them to make sure their movies look and sound spectacular. It’s almost impossible to tell these days what is real and what isn’t, and honestly I’ve stopped even trying. Asgard may not be like any place I’ve ever seen, but it looks as convincing as anything outside my window. It probably took half a dozen special effects companies to pull it off, but all that matters is they did.

If there’s on aspect of the movie that didn’t quite meet my total satisfaction, it was the story. To be more specific, I never quite understood exactly what the universe ending menace was, or how our Earthly heroes dealt with it. Granted, if I can go along with demigods on alien worlds, something like an inexplicable threat shouldn’t be a stumbling block, but I’m the kind of guy who likes to dig into those sorts of things. Here I never really got a chance to. Macguffins have never been entirely okay with me, especially when the plot revolves around stopping one before it destroys everything. Was that enough to push me out of the film and stand in the way of my enjoyment? Absolutely not. It is a minor complaint at best, but still a complaint.

All in all, Thor: The Dark World is an incredibly entertaining movie, and it accomplishes what all good sequels should – it tops the first in every imaginable way. It has danger, excitement, adventure, and genuine heart. At 112 minutes it also didn’t outstay its welcome, which is nice given how long so many modern movies have become. All of the actors came with their ‘A’ games, and director Alan Taylor made perfect use of them. I give a hearty ‘well-done’ to all the cast and crew. You all deserve a vacation.

Thor will return, I know, but don’t make me wait too long. It’ll make me angry, and you won’t like me when I’m angry.

 

If $10 is the full price of admission, this one is worth $9.00

 

Justin R. Macumber
The Hollywood Outsider