Bland Hammer

Rating: 3/10 (8 November 2013)

The first THOR was a hard sell A demigod with long blond hair and an ancient hammer isn't your typical brooding comic book hero And so the earthlings, including Natalie Portman's Jane, a beautifully brainy love interest and her colleagues, including sarcastic hipster chick Darcy, who, using a snarky monotone, second-guesses the bizarre situation, helped make the audience believe this was all really happening
But after THE AVENGERS, we don't need further confirmation. Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, is very real and his home-world Asgard is in danger because of a monolithic structure Jane discovers between worlds Part of which enters her body And when she quickly travels with Thor to Asgard, the stranger in a strange land concept doesn't quite work like when Thor came to earth
Although a worthy actress, Portman's tone/voice sounds more like a valley girl in a local arcade. Meanwhile, back on earth, as the scientists gather to figure things out, Darcy's forced comic relief is annoying, distracting, and downright unfunny
Thankfully there's Thor's "brother", that instigative menace from THE AVENGERS who, locked into a permanent glass structure, is freed to help destroy the big bad (and completely uninteresting) villain
Thankfully, the dependable Loki, like Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor in SUPERMAN 2 after being replaced as the central villain keeps the dry humor flowing – some lines hit, other miss, but that's the best thing DARK WORLD has going for it: the camaraderie between two polar opposite brothers in a colorful world where dazzling special effects have an old school matte painting aesthetic, while space ships zoom around like in the STAR WARS (or current STAR TREK) universe
It's when Thor joins the small band of earthlings to thwart the city-ravaging beast, while strategically jumping from various wormholes into either dimension, that things gets convoluted, ponderous, and with a second AVENGERS already planned, somewhat pointless too