Predictable and imbecile

Rating: 4/10 (2 February 2014)

*contains spoilers* Comics movie adaptations should be viewed as marketing exercises aiming to expand the reader base of the particular brand, and to sell even more books and merchandise to them. As a result, these movies, in an attempt to win over more fans, always pretend to be more than what they truly are: power-fantasies, tales written for teenage boys. Even though Marvel's target audience has shifted in age, the original characters created by Stan Lee back in the sixties were intended for this group.
Now I don't mind a teen fantasy being transformed into a film, if it was marketed as such, like in the case of Narnia. It's a straightforward deal: you got what you ordered, French fries. But when it is puffed up with all the 'proper ingredients', it becomes a farce: techno babble and spaceships for science-fiction, over-the-top-acting and instantly predictable plot lines for family drama, bad guys chasing good guys in a dog fight for action, and even more miserable breaking-the-fourth-wall puns for comical relief than in the first part. I bet that no one from the management knew what this film was really supposed to be.
Consequently, the actors stumble across the scenes as if they didn't know what the heck is going on either. At some point, you will ask the burning question: why would I care for the protagonists in the first place? A third-grade character from Family Guy is more engaging and has better lines than any one of the staff of Thor 2. Nothing in this movie makes too much sense. All we see is a race of Übermensch people living in glittering CGI pipe organs with all the wealth and knowledge to rule several realms, yet dumb enough not to prepare for a sneak attack on their capital. And don't even get me started with the Convergence and the Nine Realms...
Truth be told, Portman was a refreshing experience, but after a while, even she was all over the place with her multiple roles of the affectionate Senator Padmé in love with the young, ambitious male leader-to-be, her being a super-smart astrophysicist and her being pretty much the plot device embodied.
I wasn't a fan of the first part, but it had least some memorable scenes, and the out-of-world super-hero-in-trouble in New Mexico thing going on. This movie is the prime example that you cannot make up for an uninspiring story and sloppy writing, not even with cobbling together CGI, Hollywood headline acts and a whole bunch of high-tech Uruk-hai Orcs.