'You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.'
This sequel is the continuation of Thor’s story after the
events of The Avengers and his
previous solo outing. The film follows Thor, trying to repair the damage that
Loki has done to the nine realms, Jane Foster, who’s trying her utmost to reunite
herself with Thor, and Loki, who has now been imprisoned in Asgard’s prison for
the destruction he caused in New York. Chis Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom
Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Idris Elba and Stellan Skarsgard return with a new
face in the form of Christopher Eccleston as the film’s primary villain.
The main goal for this film is to make us care about Thor
again. Similarly to how Iron Man 3
had to make us remember why we like seeing these characters on their solo
adventures because it would be so easy for us to be uninterested in these
smaller films after seeing all these characters collide in The Avengers. Thankfully Thor:
The Dark World is successful in making us want to continue Thor’s personal
story, which is ultimately still the same. His lost love for Jane, step brother
issues with Loki and whether or not he feels he is ready to be king of Asgard. The
film triumphs in making us interested in Thor as his own character again. However,
while we still like Thor and his motives, this is truly Loki’s film for me.
Every time Tom Hiddleston was on screen, I found myself more interested in his
character than I did for Thor. But I can’t say that’s a criticism because for
Loki’s character to work, he needs Thor and vice versa.
The cast of the film is great and works well together, with
great chemistry between Hemsworth and Hiddleston and equally good chemistry
between Hemsworth and Natalie Portman, whose character is far more relevant to
the overall story than she ever was in Thor.
Anthony Hopkins is of course fantastic as Odin and that statement can go
without saying since he is one of the greatest actors of his time. The side
characters from the likes of Chris O’Dowd, Jane’s intern and Jane’s intern’s
intern were fine but slightly distracting. I do have to stress however that Christopher Eccelston’s villain
is nothing we haven’t seen before and his performance unfortunately comes off
as generic.
This is not a criticism on Eccelston’s behalf because with
the material he had he did a perfectly fine job. I have just come to the
conclusion that the bar for villains is raised so high these days that nothing
can truly satisfy me. I felt the same for Michael Shannon in Man of Steel and I suppose a villain
like this would have needed to have done something very special to impress me. For
me, this is Loki’s film and Eccelston’s dark elf character Malekith is more of
a plot device than an actual character.
The special effects in the film were fairly impressive with
plenty of huge money shots that take place in Asgard, The overall look of those
scenes in particular are an improvement on what was given to us in Thor. There were certain scenes (one
scene in particular) that were reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings and even Star
Wars and I appreciated that. The director: Alan Taylor, clearly had a good
vision for this film and did well with the fight sequences and CGI, as they
were both very well shot and handled. The film’s pacing was slightly dreary to
start off with however but I attribute that to the writing and not Taylor’s
direction. Thankfully in the grand scheme of the story itself the scenes at the
beginning that dragged were ultimately necessary enough by the time the film
concluded.
I thoroughly enjoyed Thor:
The Dark World, I felt it was an improvement on the original and the story
was far more cohesive with a must better resolution at the end. I look forward
to seeing Thor in The Avengers: Age of
Ultron. 7.7/10.
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