Thor: The Dark World (2013) - Review

Non-Avengers Marvel films tend to be not especially great.  There are some exceptions of course, but for the most part, it always seems like they’re just building up to that next huge tentpole movie.  For the most part, I’m okay with that.  Let Joss Whedon do his giant action movie with witty dialogue thing and leave the setup to the other guys.

Whereas Kenneth Branagh helmed the first installment in the Thor franchise, this one goes to Alan Taylor, a TV director who has done a lot of HBO work along with several Game of Thrones episodes.  That’s good enough for me!  It’s pretty.  I think.  I don’t really remember, to be honest.  Asgard is an interesting looking place in its inspirations, but there’s really no focus placed on the aesthetic or anything.

No, these are pumped out to the masses, so it’s gotta have enough of everything to keep even the dumbest people entertained.  It does that fairly well, I suppose, with a new villain race that at least is a cool concept: dark elves.  That’s all there really is to the story – evil guys want McGuffin, good guys don’t want them to have it, etc.

Whoa, he can smile!

The action sequences are so forgettable that I... well, I forgot about them.  I don’t remember anything cool happening, other than Zachary Levi looking awesome in the Asgard scenes.  The cast is fine.  Chris Hemsworth is Thor to a tee and a great actor to boot.  Same goes for Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddleston, minus the part where they’re Thor.  Everybody else is whatever, except for Kat Dennings.  She sucks.

This movie is fine, because it was structured to be fine.  It was made in such a way that everybody could enjoy it but nobody will love it.  There’s nothing wrong it with other than it is perfectly unambitious and content to do nothing interesting.