Quite the disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (11 November 2013)

Thor the Dark World was quite the disappointment. Sure, it was fun to watch, but that was all, and the clichés were quite annoying. Frigga's death was perhaps the most glaring of them. And she dies for the only reason (if you can call that a reason) that they need Odin to loose control and prepare to go after Malekith like an enraged bull (which he never seems to get around to do, leaving everything to Thor once he and Loki get to leave Asgard. Also, Asgard's defenses and army were pathetic. Being caught unawares makes no sense, as Bor was supposed to know that Malekith was alive, and thus so should Odin. And even caught at unawares would not provide for such a ridiculously easy victory by the Dark Elves over Asgardian forces and such a horribly silly idea that Frigga could take care of herself (I mean, seriously, what is the good of having an army in the palace if they can't even guard the queen?). And all that so Thor could be shown as the only one that could fight the Dark Elves. And Odin only gets to kill one with Gungnir!! Of course the cliffhanger at the end was just silly. I believe we are to assume that Loki was disguised as the guard that came to announce the arrival of his "corpse" to Odin (considering the sidelong look the guard gave Odin), and thus managed to overpower him somehow (which should be very difficult indeed, but, hey, the movie is way less coherent than the comics, so...). Another thing that annoys me (that was somewhat present in the first movie, but not to this extent) is Odin's and Thor's insistence that Asgardians are not gods. They are! They are the Norse gods. Seriously, I can only think they were afraid of offending the sensibilities of Christians watching the movie, but, come one! Odin is called the All- Father because the is supposed to have created the Nine Worlds. And so on and so forth. Just boring. Ah, by the way, if Asgardians are mortal and not gods at all, why does Odin refer to Jane as "mortal"? He should have used a term like "short-lived" or something like that. Of course the magical day-saving device Erik and Jane put together is not a problem: Marvel does that all the time, like when Dr. Doom manages to create a device that steals the powers of the Beyonder, a being so powerful and alien he should be beyond the understanding of any human without centuries of studies and scientific progress. But Doom, like Reed Richards, is supposed to be a genius, which apparently means, in comic book parlance, he is wiser, more knowledgeable and more intelligent than anyone (except Reed Richards, of course. :) As a final comment, no, the film did not have the promised wider scope: the 9 reals are barely shown, Hogun's village is just as bad as any cheap Conan-like under financed TV production, Svartalfheim is just a desert filmed through darkened lenses, we just get to see enough of Asgard to, as I said, see how badly organized they are, and then we come back to Earth... again! My perfect Thor film would be if they compressed the old Colonizers of Rigel Saga into a movie. No saving the Universe (which is also a boring cliché, like, Thor will only show up on the big screen when he is saving the world), but just fighting an alien race waaaay away from Earth.