Certainly far from a Marvel

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2014)

This movie sucks. It's a shame as I quite like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and they've been consistent, but now the cracks are starting to show. There are only so many times we can see the same formula over and over again. This time, Thor deals with an alien invasion of earth and various other bland things happen. Thor The Dark World is a sequel to Thor, which wasn't a terrible film with its humour and character development, but it was a blockbuster built from anti-climaxes which devolved as it went along. This one is definitely worse and its contending with Iron Man 2 for the worst Marvel film to date. This is well acted up to a point, as Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Anthony Hopkins remain excellent. As usual, as an obscene amount of money is spent on these Marvel films, the special effects are excellent and you get the usual Marvel thrills and laughs, although in a more subdued way than normal. In a nutshell, TTDW is the Marvel formula done with far less effort.
Another thing this suffers from are annoying human characters. Why on earth is an Oscar winner like Natalie Portman playing such a bland comic book girlfriend? None of the other characters are much fun either. It has a laughably bad villain who is some dark elf alien who not even Christopher Eccleston to make interesting. The action sequences are cardboard and lack any real dimension. They're just the same old stuff; plus haven't we seen enough of London getting destroyed in 2013 movies? In general, you don't feel most of the thrills and jokes and the story just goes the motions by half heartedly dumping crowd pleasing stuff such as jokes, fight scenes and special effects in there. When on earth, we get loads of annoying humans and when in space the film feels like a video game. TTDW isn't even a movie. It's a manufactured factory product coming off an assembly line, made purely for Marvel fanboys and Marvel fanboys alone. Lifeless and lacklustre, this effortless sequel takes the MCU to dark new places.
4/10