Underwhelming, soulless.

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2013)

A weak entry into the Marvel lineup, this film has most of the right ingredients but lacks something vital.
I left the cinema disappointed - but without any great glaring crime to judge the film for.
The action sequences are filler, lacking exciting or creative choreography in favour of formulaic exchanges of gain and loss, the mechanics of drama laid bare. The plot is epic, but no-one seems to have any real grasp of what 'the end of the universe' would really mean. The villain is an excellent actor not given anything to work with - a character without a personality, without either strength or weakness, without any motivation except that issued bluntly in the prologue. He hasn't a single meaningful line. He has none of the layered darkness and intrigue of Iron Man 2's villain, or Thor's own Loki.
Loki excels in his tightly defined role, but as a side-story he only scores so much screen time. Thor remains well-played but has acclimatised to Earth standard remarkably quickly across his two brief holidays there, lacking any of his brusque viking charm or culture clash from the original.
Heimdall is a weak depiction this time around - very much the same character, but with none of the barely-contained, frightening power of his first outing.
Asgardians and Svartalfar alike are faceless, masked or helmeted mooks, serving only to die in battles with all the energy and realism of a children's play directed by a nine-year-old Michael Bay.
All in all, the film is simply... Dull Hollywood entertainment without any threat, drama, darkness, or intrigue, and all too much comic relief that costs the atmosphere rather than being part of it. The closest it gets to interesting is in its reality-bending gravitational anomalies between worlds, which remind one more of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise or the classic novel Roadside Picnic than anything else.
Odin has been tragically rewritten into an angry, elitist grump even before the plot gives him a reasonable excuse.
I'd say avoid this one, much like The Incredible Hulk, and perhaps Captain America. The three weakest entries in the Marvel movie lineup, barring the disputed Spider Man set.