The worst Marvel movie so far

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2015)

Thor: The Dark World is the worst film Marvel has done in their Cinematic Universe. So far. And it still means that, by any objective standard, it's a good film with plenty of great action, phenomenal visual effects and good actors.
It's just that the story is boring. We get to see Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) once again as she continues to unravel the mysteries of the universe with her band of plucky sidekicks. Meanwhile, an old threat awakens to cast a shadow over the peace of Asgard, the Realm Eternal. And thus Jane and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) meet once again to protect the Nine Realms. Sounds exciting? It could have been.
Unfortunately, whereas in the first Thor movie we had an extremely interesting and dynamic villain in Loki (Tom Hiddleston), here the villain is about as interesting as watching a cattle drive. It sounds and seems exciting at first, but the monotony settles in very quickly. Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) has no edge, and quite honestly no personality either. He wants to take over the world because... he wants to take over the world. All the Marvel villains before this film had been huge. They were individuals, larger than life, always scheming, plotting, usually with a smirk on their face. This... man... elf... emo band reject, on the other hand, is only distinguished from his troops by the fact that he speaks a bit more and has a snazzier uniform.
The rest of the movie is fine. It's not as good as the first Thor, or any of the other Marvel films, but the returning actors are on the top of their game, it's certainly nice to see Jane, Darcy and Erik once again, not to mention Loki - who still absolutely steals every scene he's in - and the visuals works splendidly. It's only that the story cannot be as captivating as it needs to be without an effective villain.
Thor: The Dark World is not the first bad Marvel film, the coming of which we fearfully still await and hope to avoid completely, but it is the first Marvel film that can only be described as average on the whole. Which makes it disappointing, but ultimately still worth a watch.