The little girl who loved Thor in "Adventures in Babysitting" (1987)...

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2013)

My biggest complaint with that great British thespian/director Kenneth Branagh's take on "Thor" (2011) was that its titular character, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the God of Thunder in Norse mythology reinterpreted as a Marvel Comics superhero, seemed to adjust to life on Earth fairly quickly after being exiled here by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) as a lesson in humility.
That problem can be forgiven here (since in the grander scheme of things, my overall opinion is hardly consequential to anything), since two years have passed and Thor has spent that time on his home-world of Asgard, rather than on Earth, even though he still longs for his mortal would-be girlfriend Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and she for him.
And that's one of the things to take away from "Thor: The Dark World" - the resolutions of various relationships - with Alan Taylor replacing Kenneth Branagh (who brought some Shakespearean-styled drama to a superhero movie with the first "Thor") and he takes the series into much darker territory, even though there's still a variety of well-placed humor here to liven things up a little bit; imagine even a smidgen of humor in Christopher Nolan's ultra-serious "Dark Knight" movies - oh, the horror!
To be fair, I enjoyed this picture more than I did the first one, if because the changes in the director's chair also resulted in a change of direction into a darker one. So again, Earth is in danger from an other-worldly threat that is beyond human comprehension. The Mighty Thor is forced to not only save our planet, but his own as well, from the genocidal warlord Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), a Dark Elf who sacrificed his entire army to try to defeat Asgard in a thrilling a prologue, only to go into hibernation for 5,000 years so that he could once again try to wipe out Asgard, something that requires the life of the human Jane Foster for him to do.
So Thor is forced to do the unthinkable: he must team up with his traitorous adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, a "Thor" film's best performer, once again), who is now currently imprisoned for his crimes against humanity in "Thor" and "The Avengers" (2012), if they are to save both Earth and Asgard.
The focus in "Thor: The Dark World," aside from the various superhero battles, are the relationships - chiefly Thor's romance with the human Jane Foster, and his complicated familial relationships with his parents and of course, Loki, who still vies for the throne of Asgard. And it's also about how Thor must juggle all these if he is to save two worlds from a threat that not even he can defeat all on his own (hence the teaming up with Loki).
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I did "Thor." Here is one of those rare sequels that performed better than its predecessor.
9/10