Thor 2 Hammers It Home

Today we take a journey across the Rainbow Bridge, back into Asgard, and we talk about:

This is Marvel’s second foray into the Norse god’s life, and right off the bat I’ll tell you, it was pretty damn good. Better than the first one, in my opinion. The issue the first movie ran in to was it needed to have more back story as non-comic book fans. It’s important to make sure that particular sect of fans knows who exactly the movie they just watched was about. Now that we have that knowledge out of the way, the writers were clear to take back about 20-30 minutes of movie and kick the action into gear. With The Dark World, they did not disappoint.

I’ll try to give the basic premise of the movie without giving away too many spoilers. If I fail, I apologize, but I’ll do my best. The main villain of the movie is an ancient dark elf named Malekith, played by Doctor #9, Christopher Eccleston. Malekith has obtained a weapon known as the Aether that he intends to use to destroy the entire universe. He is initially stopped by Odin’s father, Bor, and an army of Asguardians. The weapon is taken and hidden away, and Malekith is forced into hiding. The Aether is rediscovered, Malekith is awakened, and away we go. I can’t say the entire movie is “go go go” action, because it’s not. There are some slow portions and some exposition type portions, but none of them are long enough to take you out of the movie. They are both necessary and well written to keep the movie moving. It does not feel at all feel close to two hours and has what I felt was a fantastic ending that I wish I could get in to.

So, what did I like best about this movie. First, Chris Hemsworth. He has really perfected how I always felt the Thor character should be. He is able to mix the cockiness of a young, powerful warrior with the maturity of a would be king. He may have been able to do this previously, but in the first movie it would not have been as appropriate as here. This is much later and is meant to show just how much Thor has grown. Hemsworth scores big with his performance. Even as good as he was, however, he pales in comparison to the man who stole both Thor and the Avengers, Tom Hiddleston. I can’t even begin to explain how much I enjoy his performance as Loki. You want to talk about stepping off the page onto the screen. Hiddleston is just magic. His ability to switch from hot to cold, calm to psycho, emotional to stoic…it’s incredible to watch. I can’t say enough to explain how much I enjoyed his performance. And thinking about it, if you had to cast the Joker again for a Batman movie, Hiddleston should get a look. I would LOVE to see what he would do with that character. If the rumor is true, I would be 150% behind a Loki movie. These are really the two main standout performances in this movie. The other characters are also well done, but to go into every performance would take waaaay too long. I will just say that Idris Alba, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Christopher Eccleston all give very good performances. The roles they play would not carry the same weight with different actors.

I also loved the effects and slight changes made to certain little things. For one, the imagery of Asguard is amazing. I loved it in the first movie, and they just exponentially expanded on it for this one. It shows a more vast, larger Asguard and it’s just beautiful. They even kept the same effects for the Rainbow Bridge that I enjoyed so much. Another little addition was effects added to the voices of certain characters. Idris Alba’s character for example, Heimdall. In the first movie, it was just Idris’s voice, which by itself is just fine, but in this movie, they added a vocal effect that made his voice almost ethereal. For that character, it fit so perfectly and they didn’t do it for everyone, which made it that much more to me.

What did I not like? A few things, but not enough to change my feelings on the movie. One thing I did not like was too much Kat Dennings. I get that they try to get her in the movie as a “comedic foil” and because they think she’s eye candy, but when it comes down to it, her character is just annoying. I thought I read that they went back to add more scenes with her, and I found myself wishing they hadn’t. I also felt they went a little TOO campy with some of the comedic moments. I was ok with them for the most part, but some of it was unnecessary. Particularly, the treatment of poor Stellen Skarsgard. I won’t give it away, but he definitely deserved a better part than was given. The last thing that kind of bothers me as a fan of the comics is they leaned a little more towards the idea that Asguardian’s are aliens instead of gods. There was a lot of scientific feel type weapons or vehicles in this, which I understand, because it makes more sense, but I’m sort of a comic purist and would really rather then went more mythological then scientific.

So bottom line? I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I would absolutely recommend going to see it in the theater instead of waiting. I would honestly go see it again in the theater and might do just that. To me, this is one of the few times that a sequel outdid the original and has me looking forward to the third installment. If you do go to see it in the theater, there are two teasers during the credits. One will make almost no sense to anyone who has not read Marvel comics, just so you know.

Also, before the showing (which was IMAX because why go to any other showing) they showed an extended Captain America trailer for The Winter Soldier. Wow. It looks amazing. I can not wait for that one because if the movie lives up to the trailer for me, I’ll rank it number 1 in the Marvel super hero movies.

Until next time…

Class dismissed.