The thing about Thor, the Norse God son of Odin from Asgard in Marvel Comics, and really like so many of those Marvel Comic Superheroes, is that when he wasn’t Thor, Thor was Dr. Donald Blake with a pronounced limp and a walking stick that became a hammer when baddies needed to be dealt with. Except in the godawful Thor movie series starring Chris Helmsworth’s blonde surfer dude is just this extremely violent Abel to Loki’s cane and between them they strut about Asgard –a mix of ancient Rome and 2001: A Space Odyssey tussling together while some convergence is about to come together and bore everybody to death.
The Dark World may well be the worst superhero movie since “Daredevil”. A gormless Thor, a Shakespearian Odin, a Needlemeyer Loki, an underused Rene Russo as Mrs. Odin, and Natalie Portman who has now officially run out of every single inch of goodwill I’ve ever had with her as a weak as dishwater Jane Foster, the love interest.
The Universe will come to an end if Thor and friends don’t save us all by, well stopping it. Something to do with this thing called the “Aether”, ergo the usual meaningless plot function. The first 90 minutes are deadly and Loki, who was much of the fun in Thor 1 isn’t much of the fun in Thor 2. The only fun is intern Kat Denings, who actually appears to have something going on beyond plot points. Not much, but something.
The last 20 minutes or so, the big battle with the human scientist contingent zapping Thor and the supervillain contingent in and out of worlds willy nilly, is fun to some degree and the 3D works wonders as the hammer hurtles in and out of planets but none of that is enough to save this boring “B” movie 50s style Roman epic dressed up in CGI finery.
Grade: D