Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Release Date: October 30, 2013

Thor is the second character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to get a sequel following Iron Man. Unfortunately, The Dark World is closer to Iron Man 2 quality-wise than Iron Man 3.

The prologue establishes that years ago, Odin’s father fought with the evil Dark Elf Malekith, who used a mystical artefact called the Aether to wage war in order to destroy the world and make everything fall into darkness, because he is evil and that sounds like a sufficiently evil thing to do. The Asgardians win and seal the Aether away, but Malekith, his lieutenant Kurse and a handful of mooks escape into space, ready to come back and do more evilness in the future, which is to say the present, or the present day events of the film. Whatever.

Portals to other realms are starting to appear, and Thor’s love interest Jane Foster ends up in Svartalfheim, the world of the Dark Elves, and finds the Aether, which goes into her after she touches it. After she goes back home, Jane finds that anyone who tries to touch her is thrown back by a shockwave, which is quite an effective way of saying “No means no.” Thor is able to return to Earth thanks to the Bifrost being rebuilt between films, and takes Jane to Asgard with him to get the Aether out. Unfortunately, this proves to be a no-go, and to make things worse, Malekith and Kurse arrive to get the Aether back from Jane, causing a prison riot that lets out everyone except Loki, who is in prison following the events of The Avengers, leaving poor Loki locked up.

Odin’s wife Frigga wrecks Malekith sideways, but is killed when he taps out and brings Kurse in to finish the fight. The grieving Odin refuses to let Jane go home because he wants Malekith to come back for round 2, which Thor recognises as suicidal and instead decides to take her to Svartalfheim, and battle Malekith on his home turf. Thor breaks Loki out of prison to help them get to Svartalfheim because leaving him locked up forever alone would upset the fangirls. Malekith takes the Aether out of Jane, but Thor is unable to destroy it before Malekith absorbs it himself, and a dying Kurse manages to take Loki with him.

Thor and Jane go back to Earth and go to Greenwich, which is where Malekith plans to do his evil plan to destroy everything because Greenwich is in the exact center of the universe, give or take 50 feet. Thor and Malekith fight in a creative battle that shows them thinking with portals to go to various other worlds, but eventually the Aether is taken out of Malekith, and Thor uses Jane’s scientific equipment to warp Malekith back to Svartalfheim, with Dr Selvig sending his ship back. Since there’s a chunk of the ship missing, and Malekith is lacking arms with which to construct additional pylons for holding up his ship, he gets crushed.

Thor declines the throne of Asgard and decides to stay on Earth with Jane because he is a Son of Man, look to the sky,lift your spirit, set it free… Anyway, it is revealed soon after that Odin is actually Loki in disguise, having faked his death and usurped Odin as king. Meanwhile, Sif and Volstagg take the Aether to the Collector for safe-keeping, reasoning that the Tesseract is already in Asgard and having two Infinity Stones there is too dangerous, yet giving one to a guy called the Collector who announces his intention of collecting the rest is a great idea that will totally not backfire. Nice going, you two.

Most of the first film’s characters return for the sequel, but most of them don’t get to do much, which is disappointing. Jane’s colleagues, Heimdall, Sif and the Warriors Three are all demoted to extra, although it is justified for the earthbound characters, since most of this film is set in Asgard and Svartalfheim, and they do get to the take part in the climax since that’s set on Earth. Hogun and Dr Selvig are hit worst, since Hogun essentially stays home after the opening scene and sits this one out, despite getting the least screen time of the Warriors Three in the first film. Meanwhile, Dr Selvig has had a nervous breakdown after Loki brainwashed him in The Avengers, and this is played for laughs, what with him getting up to antics such as streaking at Stonehenge and stealing Stan Lee’s shoes. Most of these aren’t terribly funny and is rather disrespectful to the character, which is all the more disappointing considering Tony Stark’s PTSD was taken seriously in Iron Man 3. On the plus side, Frigga has a bigger role this time around, after being a glorified cameo in the first one, and does a lot to stick out as one of the film’s bright spots. Her death scene, funeral scene and the grief of Loki and Odin to her death is actually surprisingly effective considering that she had been such a minor character until now. While some may take issue with the mother being killed off to act as a motivation, she does at least get to go down fighting and establish herself as a character in her own right, not just an extension of Odin or Loki.

While Loki is just as charismatic as ever, his presence unfortunately overshadows Malekith, who is a very dull villain. He has no motivation for returning everything to darkness besides the fact that it’s evil (then again, if Marvel ever got into Kingdom Hearts, Malekith would be very easy to adapt, considering the prominence of darkness there), and he has no personality other than being evil. It’s not even scenery-chewing hammy evil that’s gloriously entertaining, he’s just the bad guy who is there because there has to be a bad guy for Thor to fight. Malekith sticks out as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s weakest villain, which is particularly problematic for him since he’s the main antagonist and has to do all the villain work himself. At least Whiplash wasn’t the only villain in Iron Man 2, and the more entertaining Justin Hammer was there to alleviate some of the pressure from him. Malekith isn’t so lucky in that regard.

Thor: The Dark World does at least have Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as Thor and Loki to salvage it, but when the most memorable part of the film is the two sequel hooks, something somewhere didn’t really go to plan. After how the first one exceeded expectations, The Dark World is disappointing.

Stan Lee Spotter: As mentioned earlier, Stan Lee appears as a patient at the asylum, where Dr Selvig has stolen his shoes in the name of science! Did Stan ever get his shoes back? 

 

Bonus: A scene removed from the film involved Jane using the Aether to destroy Svartalfheim, which was cut for time and also because Dark Phoenix already did it in X-Men 3. What can I say? She doesn’t like sand. It’s all coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

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