“Thor: The Dark World” delivers in a generic superhero
fashion by offering a couple hours of diversion, but the overall experience is
a little stale. The movie is pretty to look at (that includes Chris Hemsworth
as Thor and all of the CGI) and it moves briskly along although the narrative
suffers. And since this is the sequel to Thor,
director Alan Taylor must have decided that characters were developed then and
didn’t need further development here. The enemy this time around is Malekith
(Christopher Eccleston), the King of the Dark Elves, who maybe the worst
developed villain in any Marvel movie. His goal is to use the power of the
indestructible Aether (pronounced ‘ether’) to blast the nine realms back into
primordial darkness. Having failed once in the time of Thor’s grandfather, he’s
back to try again. He has a henchman or two and drives around in a really big
ship.
As a character Malekith is as one-dimensional as a villain
can be. He’s not given much of a back story and he’s not given enough screen
time to be more than passably menacing. He does, however, get to go one-on-one
with Thor in a battle that has them popping through space from planet to
planet. While Hemsworth’s performance is solid and likable, the two characters
that standout are Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, who steals every scene he’s in as does
Kat Dennings’ sharp-tongued Darcy. The energy on-screen drops noticeably when
Hiddleston or Dennings are not the focus of the story. Natalie Portman, who
plays Thor’s love interest, Dr. Jane Foster, is disappointingly bland. Although
Portman is capable of delivering strong performances, this screenplay obviously
isn’t the right material and the chemistry between Thor and Jane is tepid at
best. Anthony Hopkins as Odin chews up the scenes he’s in, but he’s underused.
“Thor: The Dark World” has a story that’s overly complicated and not that
interesting, but the special effects are good. (Hmmmm. Faint praise?) 11/8/13
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