However, Thor is actually one of the most entertaining Phase 1 Avenger movies. It established him as the God of Thunder, a powerful being that would add miles to the Avengers. For some reason I didn't learn from my mistakes and went into Thor: The Dark World with the same mentality.
How wrong was I.
The Dark World basically picks up after the Avengers. Loki is returned to Asgard and Thor is cleaning up aftermath of the destruction of the Bifrost. The realms of the universe are in chaos and Thor and his gang of merry men (and Jaime Alexander) are fighting to restore peace.
Meanwhile, Natalie Portman is on Earth checking out unexplained an anomaly. While doing so, she unlocks an ancient power that infects her. This power is coveted by the Dark Elfs, an ancient race thought to be extinct that want to throw the universe back into darkness.
Don't get me wrong, I throughly enjoyed this movie.
But it was trying to correct everything "wrong" with the first movie that it went in an interesting direction.
But before I go into the things that stood out as obnoxious or border line bad in this movie (although nothing was incredibly bad) I want to say the thing that they fixed most in this movie and the aspect that basically made the movie phenomenal. You guessed it.
None other than Loki himself
I almost feel like they wanted to make a movie all about Loki but couldn't sell it to Marvel well enough so they called it Thor and instead had Loki steal the show. There is no exaggeration that. I was not among the insane amount of people who thought that Loki was the greatest thing ever to grace Marvel movies after Thor and The Avengers. I thought he was a good villain but I never understood the amount of teenage girls that loved the bad boy in green. But Marvel heard the yelps of fanboys (and girls) everywhere and really upped the awesomeness of Loki in this movie. Tom Hiddleston stole the show and just made the entire movie so much better. Without Loki this movie would lack so much which makes me wonder how they're going to do it if Loki doesn't come back.
In a recent interview, Tom Hiddleston stated he wouldn't be in Avengers 2. Which I am okay with. I think using Loki as the main villain in the Avengers made perfect sense, but to keep going with that wouldn't make sense and you're moving into James Cameron territory... but I digress. I just hope this isn't the last time we see Loki. I don't think it will but I just don't know how that is going to work.
With Loki, the movie had a very humorous element to it. I went to the movie with my girlfriend and we were the only ones laughing for some reason. The movie was hilarious. They put in a lot of humor... almost too much. I don't think they overdid it but there's a couple scenes where the humor was good but not quite the right time for it. It's not a big complaint, its even mostly something I'm praising of the movie, just a little strange at some times.
Other elements of the movie. The main villain, Malekith, played by the 9th Doctor Christopher Eccelston, was a pretty good villain I guess. Its hard because the Dark Elves weren't that complex of bad guys. There wasn't much of an explanation as to why they're evil, they're just evil.
Throughout the movie they are searching for the Aether, an ancient power that is just that... an ancient power, not much else to explain about it. And from the beginning when its explained, you know its going to come into play in future movies.
I could go into spoiler territory but since the movie is only a week old, I'll wait. Without giving anything away, it was set up similar to how the Tesseract was set up in the pre Avengers movies.
Other parts, Natalie Portman, always hot, still a great actress. The other humans like Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgard, and the new guy Jonathan Howard were fun. Now that I think about it, besides the team, there were little to no humans in this movie. It was very much a story that took place mostly in Asgard instead of Earth... I don't know how I feel about that.
As for the part that does take place on Earth... there is a problem.
These guys weren't there. I'm not saying the Avengers need to assemble every time Earth is in peril, but at least explain why not. Malekith has this evil plot to storm on into Greenwich and plunge the universe into darkness... and SHIELD doesn't give a flying shit.
Iron Man 3 suffered from this same problem. The President of the United States gets kidnapped, terrorists are blowing up all over Los Angeles and SHIELD doesn't really respond. Isn't this kind of their area?
That's the one problem with this new Agents of Shield TV show. I haven't watched it yet and although I plan to, I'm kind of seeing the Marvel universe through the eyes of people who haven't been watching the show. The movies are the most recognized form of this universe and I just hope they're not doing anything really important in this show that movie goers will be lost next time something happens in one of the movies and unless you've seen the show you're screwed.
But on another sad note. Where the hell is this guy?
He's alive! We get it! Have him actually doing SHIELD things. Have him explain to Thor why SHIELD isn't responding to the fact that an alien vessel sieged Greenwich. Was that not a big enough blip on their radar?
There was one point where a giant object (trying to stay out of spoilers) is crashing down towards an unconscious Thor. Suddenly it stops and doesn't hit him. We don't know why until its revealed that it was stopped by their PORTAL device (not actually from the game PORTAL but it seemed like it was) I thought for a brief moment that the Hulk had come out of no where and held the object up and saved Thor's life. Unfortunately, no.
C'mon Marvel, if Coulson can't be the guy explaining why Captain America is too busy to stop the universe from being plunged into darkness, have Robin Sherbatsky do it or have Nick Fury do it. I never get sick of seeing Sam Jackson on screen. Or have the guy who was playing Galaga do it, I don't care. You live in a universe that is connected, you can't just forget that.
One other problem I had with this movie was Odin.
In Thor, Odin is set up as a very wise leader and father. He is the voice of reason and analyzes the consequences of his actions before doing anything.
However in this movie, he kind of turns into an asshole. Something happens half way through the movie that makes him very bitter, I get that, but even before, Odin wasn't that great of a guy in this movie. He made Thor look like the incredibly reasonable one. Thor has done a lot of growing up since the first movie and he makes Odin look like an idiot frankly.
Which is one downfall of having Thor's arrogant stage go away after Thor 1. Now Thor is so wise, he runs the risk of being a kind of bland character. Think about the Avengers.
You've got Tony Stark - the billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, who's the arrogant show boating stud of the group. He loves the limelight and is a little arrogant
You've got Captain America - the law abiding, do gooder who leads the group by the book. He is a symbol of good and leads that way. Not bending the rules, the kind of lawful good.
Bruce Banner/ The Hulk - Who is the Quirky, introverted brilliant scientist. Putting aside the Hulk, he's mostly the analytical one. Doing the behind the scenes work and being the most thought provoking one.
And then you have Hawkeye and Black Widow... but who cares about them right?
Where does Thor fall in all of this? He can't really be a symbol of purity and justice cause that's what Captain America is. He's not going the arrogant way because he's learned the folly of that path and that's Iron Man's job. He's not the analytical one so where does he fit in? I'm not quite sure.
As you've seen from other blog posts, I love Cracked videos. Especially their After Hours. One of my favorites is when they explain the Four Temperaments. They don't exactly explain it totally correct but they do the best job I've seen.
If I've used this video before, I apologize but i think its a very interesting take on story telling. The Avengers don't have to fall perfectly into the 4 temperaments, not too many stories do. The point is, I'm worried that Thor will remain a kind of bland character. One that won't really find a place among the other memorable characters of the Avengers... but on the other hand he does kick some major ass in all three movies he's been in... he will probably be okay.
I hope I didn't forget anything by going off on that 4 temperaments rant. Thor: The Dark World was a really fun movie. Loki stole the show, a show I only had a couple little observations on. Overall, Thor the Dark World is a movie you should see. The post credit scene was odd but with all the research I've done about the path Marvel is going towards the next Avengers movie, it got me excited for future projects. Go see the movie to see what I'm talking about.
So who's your favorite Avenger? Why? Comment below and let me know what you thought of Thor the Dark World.
Lastly, I'll leave you with this. 100% relevant.
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