Film Review - Thor the Dark World (2013)

A continuation of the Thor film series, this story sees him deal with the Dark Elves lead by Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) who vow to take back the universe and cover all the stars in a 2nd darkness but not if the son of Odin can stop him first.

I went into Thor the Dark World with very mixed expectations as I was not a fan of the original Thor film that Kenneth Branagh made and the previews for this new film looked particularly average, did this new film deliver?

Frankly, it did not, there is nothing in this film that I found in any way engaging or interesting, so much of it is just a borefest to watch and I sat there and at times almost fell asleep during it, now I like Chris Hemsworth and I think he's great in Rush but here he just seems to be phoning it in at times, Natalie Portman I didn't really care for nor did I really care for Tom Hiddelston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Jaimie Alexander or Rene Russo as all of those people as well just didn't pop on screen this time.

Not surprise given that the director of the film Alan Taylor is a TV director from Game of Thrones and is pretty much infusing that style here and it doesn't work, I was also very sad to see Idris Elba be wasted in the manner he was in this movie, it feels like a crime to do this.

But the real sin of this movie is one that I have said before and will say again, it is the villains, the Dark Elves here are weak, probably the weakest villains Marvel have ever put into one of their films and Eccleston is a crushing bore as Malekith, I can't help but wonder if Mads Mikkelsen had been able to do something with this role if he had been able to do it as originally planned though to be frank, I don't blame him at all for bowing out as there's nothing on the page to work with and the overall look of the Dark Elves just look like a cross between Transformers and Lord of the Rings and it too is boring to look at.

There was however one thing I did like and that was Kat Dennings, she seemed to have some fun in her role and it was the only time where I was interested in what was happening in the movie, hopefully she like Elba did with "Pacific Rim" goes onto much better roles in the future.

And so to wrap this up, I did not enjoy Thor the Dark World very much at all, it was for me the weakest of the Marvel films in the Avengers timeline to date, hopefully next year's Captain America follow up The Winter Soldier delivers the goods more than this one did, 1 out of 5.