Thor: The Decently Entertaining World
The initial trailers for this latest Marvel movie didn’t really do a whole lot to get me excited about it. Lots of flash, some new characters, a few old ones, and no real indication about just what the story was going to be about. “Yup. It’s a ‘Thor’ movie all right,” was the impression they left on me. Things did get better with the later trailers, but I still went into this movie mainly because I had seen all of the previous Marvel movies, enjoyed them, and was expecting the same baseline of entertainment to be upheld here as well. Fortunately, the majority of the cast helps to pull this off, along with the many genuinely funny moments in the script. This is in spite of the fact that the story is just a load of gibberish that fails to make any kind of impression.
Now I know that the Asgardians in the Marvel Movieverse aren’t the fantasy race of gods from the comics. However, in their re-casting as a group of science-fantasy beings with technology that so far outstrips our own that it may as well be magical, all of Thor’s rogues’ gallery has to be re-calibrated to account for this. So in “The Dark World” we get the Dark Elves who are revealed to have inhabited the universe before there was light and seek to return it to darkness under their leader Malekith. They’ve also got laser guns, black hole bombs, and a dark energy device which turns ordinary soldiers into berserking monsters.
Their most fearsome weapon is called the Aether which can grant its wielder such power as to destroy the Nine Realms. Malekith tried to do this five thousand years ago when the realms aligned in convergence and was stopped by Thor’s grandfather Bor. The Aether was hidden away, never to be found again until Jane Foster stumbles upon it while physics start to break down now that the latest convergence is upon us.
As MacGuffins go, the Aether is certainly one and it at least provides a reason for Thor to bring Jane to Asgard. Regrettably, the Dark Elves are some of the most personality-free antagonists I’ve seen in any superhero movie as their most distinguishing features are their weapons and attack craft. The same holds true of Malekith too, even though he’s played by the usually great Christopher Eccleston. Sometimes an actor can make an underwritten role memorable, but everything is stacked against Eccleston here. Aside from the fact that he’s buried under makeup and having his voice distorted for “intimidating” effect, calling the role of Malekith “underwritten” really feels too generous. He’s given no personality beyond “generic evilness” and winds up being less interesting than the special effects and set design around him at just about every turn. Really, the Ninth Doctor deserved better than this!
The good news is that he’s the only real casualty of this production as everyone else not only have properly written roles, but are also given the space to do some proper acting as well. Chris Hemsworth continues to show that he has world-class charisma as the title character, and that he can hit the script’s dramatic beats as well as its comedic ones. The same goes for Natalie Portman, who also manages to find a normal center for her in the midst of all of the craziness popping up around her while Kat Dennings once again provides ace comic support as Jane’s friend Darcy. There’s also Tom “I’m clearly having the time of my life here” Hiddleston as Loki who livens up every scene that he’s in, and also manages to convey a certain amount of pathos regarding one particular death in the film. He makes you believe that Loki would be genuinely distraught over this and that Thor can actually trust his rage over it, which is no small feat.
Really, the whole cast here acquits themselves quite well and I look forward to seeing more of them in the next sequel. The only real issue is that the Fandral, Volstagg and Hogun — The Warriors Three — are effectively broken up here with Sif effectively completing the triumvirate. This isn’t going to be an issue to anyone who hasn’t read the comics, and they do work quite well in this configuration. Even so, as someone who has read them this arrangement just feels off.
Even if the script renders the main conflict between the Asgardians and Dark Elves to be a somewhat uninvolving mess, we still get some very nice visual effects out of it. Asgard looks as stunning as you’d imagine and we get lots of wide-angle shots to show this off. There are also some nifty small-scale effects on Earth at the beginning to show off how physics is breaking down that are effectively transmuted into larger-scale ones in the climactic battle. The fighting between the two cultures is handled competently, though one has to wonder why in the five thousand years since the last battle with the Dark elves that the Asgardians haven’t bothered to develop laser technology to counter their opponents’. You can chalk that up to being another issue with re-casting these beings from fantasy to science-fantasy.
Those issues do make me worried for what will happen when Surtur finally makes it to the big screen. As the main villain in the definitive “Thor” story, it’s only a matter of time before they try to do it, and after the treatment Malekith got here… well, I’d like to think they can only improve on things from here. Even so, the movie does end on a note that indicates the status quo for the next film will be quite interesting. Given that it hinges on the characters themselves, it has me looking forward to “Thor 3” in a way that most of the trailers for this one failed to do. “The Dark World” is a decent movie on balance, and I hope that the people involved with the next one take some real time to think about how to give that film a proper antagonist.