Thor: The Dark World (2013) Reviews

• All style, no substance

  ff90002013-11-10

  The acting was solid. The production value was superb. Everything else was really poor. The back story and character motivations are laughably sparse. Most of the characters are completely one-dimensional, with the possible exception of Loki. The plot is the most boring and typical of all action plots - some "bad dudes who happen to be really ugly" decide to "destroy the world for no reason other than being evil" and "only our hero can save us all", etc. Moreover, it was lazy writing - whenever an absolute miracle needed to happen, it conveniently did, every time. Of course this is a mindless blockbuster Marvel movie so we shouldn't expect much. But the thing is that these kinds of films CAN be made with a reasonable plot, pacing, and character development. The writers were obviously just going through the motions to cash in on the surefire moneymaker sequel, and from a business perspective it is hard to fault them. But it says a lot about the sad state of Hollywood in 2013 that this film currently has a 7.7 on IMDb.

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• Even more shallow than the first.

  redpandarevolution2013-12-06

  The plot barely exists for this film. Generic evil people try to take over universe, Thor stops them, the end. Which might have been alright but there was very little action in this mindless action film. What little fighting we got was poorly orchestrated and repetitive. The dialogue is wooden and adds nothing. The characters with the exception of Loki have no depth and only exist as an assortment of clichés. Hiddleston makes for a great Loki but that is literally the only good or interesting thing in the entire film. Thor continues to be the worst Marvel movie franchise and Hemsworth is possibly the worst actor to ever star in multiple major movies.

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• Completely on autopilot...

  DarthVoorhees2013-12-08

  Let me start by saying that I don't hate superhero films. I like them very much when they are done well. I hate laziness in films and superficiality. The problem is that pretty much every superhero film made is very lazy and most of them are entirely superficial. Marvel's initial idea of an Avengers universe was inspired from a marketing stand point but I am beginning to question whether or not it has been a failure from a creative stand point. 'Thor the Dark World' is a terrible movie. It does absolutely nothing to add to the mythos of the character or this Marvel universe. The only reason it exists is to draw up excitement for the next Avengers film. There are no stakes to this film and there are a lot of places to direct blame. The acting aside from Tom Hiddleston is next to unwatchable. The thing is that this is a very talented cast we are working with here. Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman have both won Academy Awards. Stellan Skarsgard is one of the most fascinating character actors in Hollywood. I like Hemsworth a lot too and thought he was great in the first 'Thor' film. But none of them invest anything in the material. Hopkins looks bored and emotes nothing in his delivery. Portman's performance is terrible too and in the process of it being terrible it makes a terrible script look even worse. Jane Foster is a horrible character here. She is by far the stupidest damsel in distress portrayed in comic books recently. Portman is too lazy to give her any sort of character. She punctuates every cheap joke and many of them are just about how ditsy the character is. This kind of writing and performance make me almost agree that comic books offer a flawed and stereotypical depiction of women. Stellan Skarsgard, an actor I think has great depth, is played as a complete fool here. I hated every time he appeared on screen and I am a Stellan Skarsgard fan. I don't place the blame all on him but yeah everyone here did something very wrong in bringing these stupidly conceived characters to life. In actuality though they are not the biggest problem with the film. The problem is that there is no threat to anything or anyone. The villain here is so completely forgettable and has a plan for evil so half assed that they movie really had no chance of working. This is the ultimate example of a conflict for the sake of having a conflict. If actor Christopher Eccleston is not rewarded a Razzie for his portrayal here than that award show has lost all credibility. Villains even poorly written ones with no motivation like this Maleketh should at least offer the actor the chance to try to ham it up with the tropes of goofy villainy. Eccleston doesn't do that. He has a boring calm delivery that evokes no response but laughter. And since Eccleston's performance is such an overwhelming failure I was drawn to how stupid his make-up looked too. I wish I could give this a bomb rating, I really do. To be honest though Tom Hiddleston is too damn good in the Loki role to say the film is completely without merit. They don't do anything new with his character here but he's so entertaining and in every Marvel film he adds new layers and nuances to a very interesting character. A whole movie could have been made about this stage of Loki's life and it would have been so much more entertaining and compelling than this load of work. Hiddleston portrays Loki as unchained with no loyalty to anyone. This is the first film where we see him as a trickster and Hiddleston delivers suffice to say. The problem is he isn't really in the film long enough. Jane Foster, Darcy, and Dr Selvig all get more screen time than Loki. Here's my brilliant business proposition to Marvel. Don't make any movies but Avengers films. Give your golden boy Joss Whedon the four hundred or so million you spent on 'Iron Man 3' and 'Thor the Dark World' and see what he does with it. In watching 'Iron Man 3' and this film it is clear that is where the mindset and passion are. I hope the Marvel cinematic universe can be saved but I have to say that their track record is looking really bad right now. Kevin Feige and Disney should look back at Favareu's first 'Iron Man' film. It was gutsy and took risks and there was no guarantee of immediate endless sequels.

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• The Worst Film Of The Year. Loud, Obnoxious and All Over The Place.

  michaelhirakida2013-11-08

  Go ahead and find this review not useful. But listen to me. I love Marvel films. The Original Spider-man Trilogy was amazing and The Avengers was awesome. But when I saw Iron Man 3 I was bored out of my mind and I felt it was not good. So I lowered my expectations for this movie and hoped it would be better right? Because from what I learned, the lower the expectations, the better the movie. Big Mistake. Thor The Dark World is all over the map with scenes of badly choreographed action scenes to bad comedy to laughable acting. I really wanted to like this film because I liked the original Thor. It was really good and it was directed by Kenneth B. who is the man who made The best adaptation of Hamlet Ever. But the movie suffers from production troubles to a bad script. The Film begins with this super magic thing called the Ether... I think which causes destruction. They find it and this one guy says "Lets Destroy it." but this other guy says "ITS TOO POWERFUL! We must put it in a place where it is easily touchable!" I knew this was going to be a bad film because the beginning suffers from cliché after cliché. Thor returns to Earth because Jane gets the Ether in her and they must heal her. The Dark Elves who are the bad guys for the film attack Thor's planet and the main baddie tries to line up the main 9 planets and cause darkness everywhere. Thor gets Loki from Prison and they go stop the evil baddie. The script and direction are extremely weak. The script sucks because the dialogue is horrendous. The acting is hilarious from Anthony Hopkins as Odin as he overacts a lot in this movie. The action scenes are poorly choreographed and make no sense. Also, Heroes should have weaknesses. Thor nearly throughout the whole Has none. Why should we care if they are unstoppable without any weaknesses, that takes away the credibility of the character. Also, this teleporting plot line makes no sense. They go nearly everywhere in this movie. In the final fight scene fall everywhere going back from place to place. They never explain why these teleports are randomly put all over the map but it really annoys me. The jokes... oh my god. They are so unfunny. Who cares if the Professor guy's pants are not on? Bad comedy has to be understood and this movie doesn't understand comedy. The character of Darcy is obnoxious. She was alright in the first but she always has to say HOLY SH*T 500 times a scene. The special effects are alright but its not always about the effects. One effect actually hurt my eyes and I didn't know if it was the 3D or if my eyes just hurt. There are very few good things about this movie. The guy who plays Loki is one of the only redeeming qualities of this movie and he is very convincing. The Stan Lee Cameo is also great and funny like always. There is a awesome twist I wont spoil. But that's about it. This movie is just super loud in its bad action scenes are poor acting and ear bleeding sound effects. Thor The Dark World is the worst movie of the year without a doubt. I was disappointed severely. Marvel can be much better then this and I hope Captain America The Winter Soldier does a better job at being a better superhero movie. 25/100 D

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• It's time that comic book fans started to demand more from these films before the entire genre evaporates into a disposable, commercialised heap like it does here

  Likes_Ninjas902013-10-30

  Thor: The Dark World left me wondering why for all its popularity and box office hype the superhero genre so regularly fails to ignite the faintest trace of excitement and imagination in its narrative and storytelling. This sequel, following Kenneth Branagh's reasonably funny 2011 film, was written by no less than five writers, who between them have only mustered another dull, achingly generic story about saving the world. Aside from less than a handful of funny self-referencing points, this is a hugely disappointing by the numbers blockbuster that under services its embarrassingly rich cast and offers its enormous fanbase too little that is challenging, inspired or even surprising. What's confusing about the deliberate complacency in the script is that it's entirely unnecessary. There is no financial risk to comic book adaptations anymore to justify this kind of dumbing down. Earlier this year, Iron Man 3 became one of the top five highest grossing films of all time. While Christopher Nolan's Batman films have achieved financial success without succumbing to simplified narrative lines. Some even complained The Dark Knight Rises had too many story threads. How many filmmakers today would crawl over broken glass for a cast featuring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston, Chris O'Dowd and Stellan Skarsgard? With such talent it's not unreasonable then to ask for more than obligatory special effects and indistinguishable villains, who are included only to prop up pseudo- scientific plot points. Little effort has been exhausted into humanising these characters. Thor (Hemsworth) is a blank slate who swings his hammer and growls at people. It makes Chris Hemsworth look like a boring actor when we've seen how charismatic he can be, like he was in Rush, with the right material and director. There are fewer fish out of water jokes that I enjoyed in the first film. Natalie Portman, normally a delightful, charming actress, is embarrassed here as Thor's girlfriend, playing a character devoid of plausible emotional responses and desires. Her first reaction after being warped from London to Asgard is to say "Hi!" and "Let's do that again!" Never mind that her skin is now infected with the Aether, a weapon of mass destruction from an ancient group called the Dark Elves (who speak perfect English no less). She's more impressed that Thor told his dad about her! The Dark Elves are led by Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), who wants to use the Aether to destroy the world. Comic book films rise and fall on the quality of their villains. The Dark World has two, both of whom are substandard. The Dark Elves, branding swords and laser weapons, aren't very interesting. Though Thor's brother Loki (Hiddleston) sometimes brings comic relief to the film's dry, seriousness (I did enjoy one clever shape shifting moment) he still doesn't possess the physicality of Tom Hardy's Bane to be a truly menacing physical threat. Locked up in a cell for nearly half the film, there's not a lot for Loki to do. What should also be a haunting surprise at the end of the film is badly telegraphed. When Thor and Loki inevitably team up, the brothers take a few more punches than you might expect, but still recover very quickly, even after a severed hand. Marvel is a subsidiary company belonging to Disney so this is largely bloodless action. This is the first comic book feature film by Alan Taylor, who replaced Patty Jenkins under controversial circumstances. Taylor has worked on television shows like Game of Thrones, and he brings little distinction to the action and the way the story is told. The camera isn't particularly mobile and significant plot lines like the Aether are lazily signposted through the film's prologue. He opts to intercut Thor's main story with a subplot involving Jane's scientist friends back on Earth, including an overly excitable Kat Dennings, who are discovering the alignments of Asgard's nine realms, if that matters. Sometimes they lighten the mood but they're still cornball stereotypes (the wacky sidekick, the crazy scientist and the dorky intern) that don't instill any visible subtext to the plot. The two narrative threads collide with Taylor's most elaborate set piece, as Thor fights simultaneously between universes, a battle that is undone by Thor's own indestructibility. Over the closing credits are shots of the film's concept art, which could be totally interchangeable with most of the plotting. It's time that comic book fans started to demand more from these films before the entire genre evaporates into a disposable, commercialised heap like it does here.

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