This Movie Could Have Been Great But Sadly It's.....Low-Key

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2014)

To be truly honest there were a lot of neat elements and scenes in this movie, however they were bogged down by several other groan-worthy elements. First let me point out that I thought that Thor (2011) was one of the more impressive of the recent Marvel movies, mostly because of my liking of Norse mythology (no matter how Hollywood-ized it may be). Going into the theater I expected a great movie, though I had some small doubts deep within myself after seeing Avengers. Let me first start with what was good:

Tom Hiddleston once again steals the show with his top-notch performance as Loki. Thankfully I was glad to see that they once again made him an in-depth character instead of a one-dimensional cliché boring villain like he was in Avengers.

The scenes taking place in the Nine Realms were really breathtaking and unique, I commend the art department for their world design.

A lot of the action scenes (outside of Earth) were well choreographed and directed, with enough elements to keep things interesting.

The dynamic between Thor and Loki was particularly interesting in this movie, and I was glad that it went beyond "I hAtez yoi for-eva cause you waz da bad gui in Avengers".

The villains had an interesting dark ascetic too them, almost a strange medieval Gothic mixed with HR Giger and just a splash of Elder Scrolls daedra. At first their "Teletubbie" masks were a bit distracting to me, but over time I sort of ignored it for the sake of the movie.

Now then, we shall unfortunately go onto the elements that brought the movie down (at least for me):

The constant Avengers references got old really quickly, I mean REALLY quickly. Yes we get it, the Avengers happened, now can you please shut up about New York and focus on the current bad guys?

A majority of the Earth scenes were slow, boring, dull, and took away screen time from the rest of the film. Perhaps the English tourism council paid Marvel tons of money just to film a majority of the scenes at famous landmarks in England.

Jane and the scientists, to me, REALLY bogged this movie down and took away precious time that could be given to other more interesting characters. The constant cussing science assistant and goofy "were are my pants" jokes got old pretty quickly.

Not harp on Anthony Hopkins, but his portrayal of Odin felt somewhat "phoned in". Almost during the entire movie he looked bored and detached, perhaps it could just be the writing and script though.

The main dark-elf villain, Malekith the Accursed, seemed to have something lacking to his character. This however is true for most villains in Marvel movies, seems like DC movies get all the well developed villains....

The final battle and climax! Oh goodness, I could not take that seriously whatsoever. I mostly blame the lame "paradox" gimmicks and the fact that it was taking place *SPOILERS* in the middle of an English university where a bunch of uniformed British students are hanging out by the library windows saying "By golly! That's bloody daft right there!".

In conclusion I would say that if you want to watch this movie, give it a try, but don't expect a great movie.