For some unfathomable reason, the long-awaited sequel to “Thor”, “Thor: The Dark World”, has a mere 66 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes’ infamous Tomatometer. I was expecting it to be in the eighties, at least. “Thor: The Dark World” blows its predecessor out of the water. This movie easily has more catchy one-liners than “The Avengers”. Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth have an amazing chemistry and Alan Taylor may have done a better job portraying the Norse God of Thunder on the big screen than Ken Branagh.
This movie had a lot of shadows to live in, being the first movie with Thor and Loki after “The Avengers” and the first solo after “Iron Man 3”, which were both very successful in the box office. The writing in “Thor: The Dark World” was spot-on, though. There’s just enough sci-fi and outlandish plots to keep it interesting and there are plenty of hilarious scenes to spice things up, including a cameo by Chris Evans as Captain America. The pace is pretty good for a movie over two hours long. It only lags every once and while and mostly during the epic fight scenes.
The highlight of this film for me, though, was watching Hiddleston and Hemsworth bicker back and forth as Thor and Loki, the two princes of Asgard. Unfortunately, the two only shared the screen for a handful of scenes, but the duo did an excellent of job of portraying the tense relationship between their characters. They spat sarcastic remarks at each other in a way that every audience member with a sibling can relate to. Even when they were not interacting with one another the two stars of the film were very comfortable in their roles.
The other new and returning actors in the film also played their parts well. I have a soft spot for Jamie Alexander’s performance as Sif in particular. In the comics, Sif is Thor’s main love interest, but “Thor: The Dark World” focuses on the relationship between Thor and the human Jane Foster. Throughout the film, the camera awkwardly cuts to Sif during a lot of the scenes that have Jane in them. I think Director Taylor was trying to create a love triangle or at least some sort of romantic tension with this effect, but it really just comes off as weird and jarring. More than once, I found myself wondering why Sif was so heavily focused on.
My only other criticism of this film was the overuse of special effects. It’s very easy to fall into the CGI trap when making a superhero movie, but there are one too many scenes in “Thor: The Dark World” with only computer-generated action and absolutely no actors in them. Nobody wants to watch ten minutes of an alien ship attack Asgard. One minute is plenty. After that, I get the point, and you can move on to the characters on Asgard who are being attacked. The editing is just so disappointing. There are easily five scenes like this that should have been nixed.
Besides a couple lagging special effects scenes, “Thor: The Dark World” is a well-done superhero movie. Where the actors struggled to find their characters in “Thor”, they absolutely hit the mark in the highly anticipated sequel. It may be only barely “certified fresh” on the Tomatometer, but I don’t regret seeing it for a second.
