Movie Review: Thor: The Dark World

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Don’t expect to like or understand the story unless you’re a comic geek.  As with the first Thor movie, the scenes on Earth steal the show from the special effecty Asgard scenes.  Kat Dennings is hilarious.

So, you see, there are these Elves, right?  And they like Dark and stuff, ok?  And they once tried to bring Darkness back to the universe by harnessing this stuff called Ether which can, like, totally bring Darkness back.  But they were resisted by the Asgardians who fight with swords and axes against the Dark Elves who have these super destructive beam weapons and stuff and the Asgardians totally decimated the Dark Elves and hid the Ether in the deepest regions of the somethingorother where it could never be reached again.  And the Dark Elves?  The Asgardians totally made them extinct and stuff even though a bunch very clearly got away in a massive space ship right in front of a whole bunch of Asgardians.

Yeah, we’re talking real comic book setup here.  But it’s ok.  You’ll survive it.  The rest of the movie is quite fun.

Like the first Thor movie, the scenes on Earth are much more compelling than the Asgard scenes.  A lot of this can be attributed to Darcy Lewis played by Kat Dennings.  I don’t think there is a single scene that she was in that wasn’t at least wryly amusing.  Exiting the movie, I asked how Kat Dennings wasn’t in more stuff only to find that she’s been in quite a few things, most notably the comedy “Two Broke Girls”, of which I have seen about five minutes before I gave up on it.  Maybe I should give it another chance.

This movie is closer to what Thor is supposed to be like than the first.  The one thing you should know about Thor is that he is supposed to be a pompous ass and kind of a moron.  Wait, that was two things.  His pomp was solved in the first movie, but his sheer stupidity was really missing from it.  In “The Dark World” we get to see a bit of his lackwit nature with him coming up with the brilliant idea of taking his Ether-toting girlfriend, Jane, from the massive defenses of Asgard to a barren planet which will draw away the very limited Dark Elf army so that he can fight them all himself and defeat the Ether by…something.  Thor is the Underpants Gnome superhero:  1.) Fight the enemy.  2.) ???  3.) WIN!

But, of course, win is what Thor does.  And this win is quite entertaining.  With the worlds aligning and portals to other worlds appearing everywhere, Thor battles uber-Dark Elf, Malekith, and they batter each other through portals and across worlds.  If you’ve ever played the Portal video game, it’s kind of like that only without the orange and green glowing portals.

Marvel has quite a knack of making perfectly entertaining movies that I have absolutely no interest in seeing again.  This one is slightly better than those.  I probably will never want to see it again, but I would not complain too much if I happened to do so.

4 thoughts on “Movie Review: Thor: The Dark World

  1. Steven Scott

    I also loved the movie, and appreciated the moments of comic relief sprinkled throughout which kept everything light. However, I found Kat Dennings to be more annoying and abrasive than hilarious in both films. Different strokes I guess.

  2. Matt Bernhardt

    Kat Dennings thoughts (outside of two very large, very obvious ones…)

    – I literally see ‘2 Broke Girls’ for a minute and a half as it’s on my DVR after each episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’. It’s really bad hacky-sitcom stuff.

    – I just noticed during a TV replay over the weekend that she played the role of Katherine Keener’s daughter in ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’

    1. Jean-Paul Post author

      That’s how I saw it and what I thought of it as well. Respecting your television opinion, I will gladly ignore ‘2 Broke Girls’ forever.

  3. Jaime

    Two Broke Girls is some seriously Bad TV. Kat is the only shining light with her sarcastic wit, but it is wasted on this show. Unfortunately America is attracted to Bad TV and the show will likely survive for at least a few more seasons.

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