The worst of the best

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2014)

After the release of "The Avengers" in 2012, Marvel entered what has been called the second wave of their films. The second wave contained sequels to films from the first wave, including "Iron Man 3", "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Thor: The Dark World". Critically, "Thor" from 2011 did better than "Thor: The Dark World", but when it comes to the general moviegoers, they seemed to prefer the sequel over the original. "Thor: The Dark World" is the film that I suspect most people wanted the first "Thor" to be, a fun superhero-fantasy adventure featuring the hammer-wielding god. In those terms, the film succeeds and is decent, but of all the good Marvel films, it is the worst one.
Taking place after "The Avengers", Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has returned to Asgard with Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Thor soon learns that the Convergence, an alignment of the Nine Realms which will create portals between all of the realms, is going to occur soon. On earth, the girl Thor formed a relationship with in the first film, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), is infected by a red mist called Aether. Thor brings Jane to Asgard to help her, resulting in an attack on Asgard by Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), a dark elf who wants the Aether for himself.
The film's plot is so overly complex with magical and scientific gobbledygook that even with the help of websites to remember exactly what happened, I'm sitting here wondering if I explained it correctly. While the portals between realms and all of the magical powers in this film give for some fun action sequences, the film is still left a complicated mess that will leave you wondering whether or not you just are not smart enough to understand or if the film was just not smart enough to pull off what it was trying. I'm going with the latter on this one.
Compared to the other Marvel movies, "Thor: The Dark World" had the least effect on the cinematic world that these films are based in or on the characters in them. The first wave of films led up to "The Avengers", which helped change Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in "Iron Man 3", and helped change the world the films are based in in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier". In this case, "Thor: The Dark World" is a film where Thor just goes around, fights some monsters and dark elves with his hammer, and saves the day. Granted, the Aether will probably do something in an upcoming Marvel movie, but that could be way down the line in "Thor 7: Filing Asgard's Taxes". In the case of this film, there are no immediate effects to either the characters or the world.
While "Iron Man 3" also relied on an overuse of humor, "Thor: The Dark World" takes it up to the Nth degree. It feels like there were two writers for the film, one who was told it was a superhero movie and the other was told it was a comedy movie. Then, both of them worked together and created a script that was half superhero and half comedy. The comic relief was welcomed every now and then, and some of the comedic elements were very humorous, but after a while, it started to get stale. A lot of the characters were made overly-witty and the expansion of Darcy (Kat Dennings) and the addition of her assistant Ian (Jonathan Howard) were comedic relief that went on too long and were sometimes given precedence over the story, sort of like the raccoon, hummingbird, and dog in "Pocahontas".
While there were a lot of problems with the film, there were still some good elements to it. It was nice to see many of the characters again, including the always changing Loki (and I don't mean in appearance). Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) is another character I was excited to see again, who I believe was criminally underused in this film. I was hoping they would explore the love triangle between her, Thor, and Jane, but that never occurred. It was nice getting to see the all-seeing Heimdall (Idris Elba) a larger role this time around and the performance from Anthony Hopkins of Odin was superb.
As I said before, the plot can be frustrating at times, but what it sets up makes for some fun action sequences and getting to see some cool worlds. The film also includes a good musical score.
"Thor: The Dark World" takes "The Avengers" spot in my opinion as the worst of the best Marvel movies. Its overly complex plot makes little sense and there is no immediate effect on the world or characters, but it is a fun ride with some occasional good humor and it does let us see some of our favorite characters from another realm.