Thor: The Dark World
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
The low point of the first two phases, a movie that feels assembled by committee in a hallway. Thor: The Dark World sends the God of Thunder after Malekith, a dark elf who wants to plunge the universe into darkness using a red goo MacGuffin, and Christopher Eccleston spends the entire run buried under latex and gravelvoiced dialogue delivering one of the least memorable villain performances ever put in a franchise picture.
What keeps it watchable is the Loki of it all. Every scene with Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth together has a charge the rest of the movie cannot manufacture, and the shapeshifting escape sequence, where Loki keeps dropping his brother’s face mid firefight, is the one stretch anyone quotes. The tragic turn that follows it remains one of the emotional high notes of the era, immediately undermined by the film’s own end credits.
The London climax has its moments, mostly thanks to a teleporting staff gag that turns the fight into a physics joke, and Natalie Portman gets saddled with an infection subplot that amounts to sitting around holding the glowy thing. Director Alan Taylor has publicly disowned the cut, and it shows.
For the Loki scenes only. Our score: 4/10.
Seasons
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