Thortal: The Movie

Rating: 4/10 (9 November 2013)

When the character I was looking forward to seeing the least becomes the best of the bunch, I'm pleasantly surprised. And the second Loki was on the screen, I fell in love with him all over again.
Thor: The Dark World also jumped leaps and bounds over its predecessor in regards to CGI and overall look. I actually laughed and shook my head a lot – at the original for its terrible CGI. During this one, I barely noticed a thing wrong with the presentation on screen and that's a good thing, since the first film's disastrous graphics were an incredible distraction.
But, getting back to Loki, or who I like to refer to as: Loki Luthor, since he's in every Thor-appearance movie to date, and Lex Luthor was in 4 of 6 (if you don't count "Lex Corp" in the background of Man of Steel.) It was just overkill and lacked originality. Even though, he was one of the few bright spots here, in this Thor sequel, I might change my mind if he's, once again, in a third Thor movie, or heavens, The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Thor's sorta cleaning up the mess left by his brother in chains, Loki, when the incredibly long intro back-story kicks in, i.e. Thor's long-distance girlfriend, Jane, gets attacked by a "Spawn from Hell." Then, he sorta has to clean up that mess with the help from, yep, Loki and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Leo and Jemma. Oh, wait, make that some characters from the original Thor and one failed comic relief dude.
The story's a mess, barely coherent at times and hardly original, pacing and length had me squirming at times, the dialogue's barely acceptable – and the subtitles did nothing to cover up the bad script, the editing's way off and Chris Hemsworth all-but phoned in this Thor. But, dang, that all said, I had a much better time here than the first movie which was way more a mess. Here, in part two, while Anthony Hopkins, Renee Russ and even Natalie Portman did what they could and were entertaining, it was really Hiddleston's Loki that stole every scene and you could sense he was both the glue to the film and the most enthusiastic person to be in this movie.
For the some parts, it was a fun and funny ride – I did laugh out loud a few times, only not at the movie, this time around, and it's entertaining for probably one viewing. Noting huge, but definitely a make-up for part one.
* * * Final thoughts: I was told there were two "extra, Marvel-sig" endings during/following the end credits. Come on guys; the movie was long enough as it was and after the second of three endings, pending you're counting the real ending, was actually pretty lousy and not worth the 2 minute wait for that one. I did leave at that point since I knew there was a minimum of 10 more credit minutes. Lucky I did take off; I found out later that thee final ending was actually worse than the first two. Bah!