Film Review | Thor: The Dark World

Who would have thought that superhero films would begin to serve as respite from boredom and crass cinematic obscenity? That we would start to depend on big American comic book conglomerates like Marvel and DC Comics, and their high-powered Hollywood enablers, to provide us with lowest-common-denominator entertainment that's both easy enough to swallow and largely satisfying is a curious state of affairs, to say the least.

But, here we are. Here we are: eagerly anticipating the next piece of Marvel's Avengers jigsaw puzzle to reveal itself, as we look forward to the next super hero dream-team mash-up feature film.

In this case, the next Marvel superhero showcase out of the door is Thor: The Dark World, the sequel to Thor (2011), with the titular thunder god - culled from Norse mythology and passed through the Marvel Comics wringer by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in the '60s - also having appeared in last year's Avengers Assemble.

Having helped to secure our own planet earth from certain destruction during 'Avengers', we now meet Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on home turf - the far-flung, interdimensional plane of Asgard (for the record, and some perspective, our own earth is given the slightly less impressive moniker of 'Midgard' in this universe).

With Thor's father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), the all-father of Asgard and effectively the 'Zeus' of this band of god-like aliens, getting on in years (that's a handful of millennia, fellow mortals), Thor, shorn of his adolescent overzealousness by his recent adventures, is a shoo-in for the throne.

This piece of news arrives as another nail on the celestial coffin for Loki (Tom Hiddelston), Thor's trickster brother and the architect of all the chaos behind the events depicted in 'Avengers'.

Now languishing in a forcefield-barred cell tucked away under the family home, Loki's hopes of ruling Asgard are most definitely dashed. But when an old - by old we mean really, really old - enemy rears his head, tragedy gives Loki a way out.

Grudgingly accepting that he can't save their world from certain destruction without Loki's help, Thor frees his treacherous brother and sets off on a mission to stop the Dark Elf leader Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) from plunging the universe into darkness.

But the true solution to the chaos may lie back on earth, as Thor's human love interest Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) discovers a portal between worlds...

Perhaps the most commendable thing about this new instalment out of the many superhero romps released by Marvel in the recent past is that it isn't much of a superhero film at all. Instead - and Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige is probably to be credited for marshalling this creative direction into being - what we get is a high fantasy epic of the Lord of the Rings variety.

All the generic elements in Thor: The Dark World point towards this direction: there's a prologue that aligns almost too perfectly with how The One Ring was (not) disposed of in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001); there's a dark overlord who's even featured in - gorgeously animated - ancient tomes thumbed through by Odin for exposition, and there's doom-mongering and prophecy-fulfilling aplenty.

It's also mostly set in the fantastical world of Asgard and its surrounding environs - if Asgard itself is Space Dubai via LOTR's Rivendell, Malektih's barren stomping ground is a near mirror image of Mordor.

But don't get me wrong - I don't mean to accuse the film of being derivative. If anything, shifting the genre completely feels strangely refreshing, given that we've been bombarded with films - and, if you count the affiliated Agents of SHIELD, now even a TV series - set in the same universe, it's actually kind of bold for Feige to take us to another realm entirely.

But earth does feature in the film here and there, and this constant split-screen not only gets jarring, but also means that character moments - an endearing quality of previous Marvel films which has won over even non-geeky viewers - are sorely lacking. Kat Dennings - who once again plays Jane's 'science intern' Darcy - draws the shortest straw of all: her every line is a facetious gag, so we aren't even allowed to imagine her as being anything other than easy comic relief (the British actor Chris O'Dowd, known for being a genuinely funny presence, is similarly underused).

The most painful of all is the glimpse we get of a squabbling - as opposed to brawling-to-the-death - brotherly duo of Thor and Loki. Their unlikely partnership was always touted to be the crux of this sequel's drama, so that fact that two or three hilariously prickly - and, to all those who have siblings, endearingly familiar - scenes is positively painful.

It's these uneven edges that make you doubt director Alan Taylor's ability to tame this beast of a film. The Lord of the Rings was a trilogy, and this is something else entirely: a film that's part of a dizzying web of prequels, sequels and side-by-side spinoffs, but which also has to stand alone and deliver a satisfying narrative.

It's a balancing act that Thor: The Dark World never quite achieves, though individual sequences provide more than enough of the requisite 'bang for your buck'.

One of these sequences is, thankfully, the climactic, world-hopping smackdown between Thor and Malekith - which operates on equal parts epic combat and intergalactic slapstick to remain memorable.

It's exciting enough to keep you in your seat for not one, but two post-credits sequences. Which is also a reminder that this film is, when we get down to it, this is all little more than a warm-up for the Avengers sequel ('Age of Ultron').

But, here we are.