"Thor: The Dark World" Movie Review

            This movie has two after-credits scenes. Speaking of after-credits scenes, what is the point of them? It is not like the studio is making more money off of the scene. They are not benefitting off of editing the scenes after the credits at all. All they are doing is making us sit through the credits… Maybe that is their goal!

            Thor: The Dark Work is directed by Alan Taylor and stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, and Anthony Hopkins. It is about Thor (Chris Hemsworth) after the events of The Avengers when now he is helping keeping Asgard alive. But Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) gets injected with this power possessed by these elves that went to war with Asgard and got wiped out thousands of years. While Foster is dealing with this virus, basically, inside her, the elves are rising back up to obtain the power through portals to other places while also trying to get it out of Foster so they can inflict pain on Asgard for what they did.

 

            The acting of this film is the first thing I will talk about. Chris Hemsworth (Thor) was really good. His performance very much improved from his performance in The Avengers. Tom Hiddleston (Loki) was, as usual, great. Natalie Portman (Jane Foster) was good in this movie. Anthony Hopkins (Odin) was good in this film. The acting overall was very good.

            I will now get to the writing of the film. I did not think that this film was great. The screenplay if mostly why I do not think that it is great. Marvel has somewhat learned from their mistakes of having many unrealistic, physics-breaking things that transpire in their movies, even this definitely has some of them, but not as many as the past few Avengers superhero movies have had. For example as one of the unrealistic moments, in one scene, a big object comes and wrecks many things. But it only shows a small number of people running, and then the whole area is apparently cleared. That was a problem in Thor, also. There are also many times when a character or characters is/are forced to be stupid and make a very stupid decision. There are also many times when a character or characters randomly know something with anyone telling them. There are times a character or characters do things that do not make any sense. There are also some conveniences. There were also scenes written into the movie that did not need to be in the movie, and sometimes they were not placed in the film well. There was a large side story with a character called Darcy Lewis (Cat Dennings) and another character that was annoying and the movie could have dealt without it. There was also many moments in the movie that attempted at being funny, but were not funny. It came off silly and stupid and misplaced. Most of it was with this side story. Though, most, if not all, humor with the character Loki was humorous to me. Overall, about half of the humor was funny and the other half was not. There were also some one-liners that did not work. They were not horrible, but they did not need to be written into the film. There is another flaw I have with script. I know that almost all superhero movies have this, but someone should have stepped up and stopped this. When there are about six villains against a protagonist, the villains are polite and take turns fighting the hero, one at a time, so that the protagonist is able to kill all of them, one at a time, without getting killed. One last flaw I had with the script is that it had some superhero movie clichés. There was not a large number of them, but if I was writing a movie, I would try my best to have no clichés at all. Also, even when the writing is not bad, it is not necessarily good either. This is a thin, not-very-good at all and slightly bad  screenplay.

            I will now briefly mention the cinematography (by Kramer Morgenthau) and direction (by Alan Taylor) of the film. I am glad that not all of the shots turned at an angle in this movie as a big plus for the direction. Though, the direction of this film was nothing special. It was just a usual directing style with many cuts and close-ups of faces. There was no shaky cam, or in-your-face shots, as a plus, but the direction is really just fine. For the cinematography, it is great. All Marvel movies look great, as does this one. The cinematographers they bring into their movies are great at what they do. The director does use this great cinematography to his advantage, but does not really improve it that much. Anyway, the film has fine direction and great cinematography.

            Now I will get to the story/events of the film. I also have flaws with this. I will start with the conclusion. I am not talking about the scene right before the credits (and the after-credits scenes), but the resolution of the film. It somewhat makes struggles and attempts earlier in the film look stupid. The way it concludes does not work for superhero movies and does not live up to a good ending in a superhero movie. It is just a cheap way of ending the film that did not work for events earlier in the film. It did not live up to expectations and should have been explored in a different direction. Another flaw is that sometimes the villain(s) motivations and desires are to do bad things. Even though I did buy most of the main villain, Malekith (Christopher Eccleston)’s primary motivation, sometimes it just seemed like he wanted to be bad. Though, one thing going for the story is that I barely predicted any of it. Another thing going for the story is that it is a fairly original and well-told story that had a good premise. There were some things that I thought I had figured out, but the film would change direction on me. The events of this movie were handled well, though. My last flaw is the villain. This is not a very big flaw, but for the first half the villain was annoying and did not do much. He had clichéd elements about him and he was a weak villain. With this film’s high budget they were able to express the events in a good way in which they were told and executed well. This film, overall, has an alright story and well-handled events.

            I will now talk about how much I did or did not enjoy the film. This section is the film’s strength because the two hours of this film, for me, flew by. There was not one boring moment in this movie. I at least enjoyed all of it. Even though some side stories got on my nerves, I will still enjoying the movie. I will get the action sequences now. One or two of them were just as enjoyable as conversation scenes, but the rest were fun, or really fun, to watch. There were times when I was really enjoying the movie. Even though there were some action sequences that failed at being intense, I was still having fun with them. Even though I cannot quite say that I really enjoyed this film, I can say that I enjoyed it a lot.

            I will briefly bring up the surprisingly very good score. The score made this movie better. The movie even rode on the score in some scenes. Also, most of the emotion in this movie lies in the hands of the score. It is also edited into the movie well. The score is not fantastic, but it is very, very good.

            Lastly, I will talk about the unfortunately strange and slightly bad editing. Some scenes were misplaced and some shots should have been shown in a different order. These factors would make the film seem strange. Some scenes should have been edited out of the movie. Some aspects of the film did not fit where they were placed. Though, when the editing was not strange, it was fine. Overall, the editing was strangely not-very-good. The only thing edited into the movie that was truly good was the score.

            Thor: The Dark World has very good acting, great cinematography, I enjoyed it a lot, it had well-handled events, it had a really good score, and an alright story and fine direction, but it also had a not-very-good at all and slightly bad screenplay and strangely not-very-good editing. Despite its flaws, Thor: The Dark World is a good film that I thought was better than the first.

            On my rating scale, I rate this movie “A Good Movie”. I did liked going to the theater to see the movie, but I would not rate it “Worth seeing at the Theater”. If I had the rating “Worth seeing at the Theater If You Don’t Watch It Seriously”, I would use that rating, because I had a good time with the movie at the theater.
            On the grading rating system, I give the film a B.
            On the out-of-ten system, I give Thor: The Dark World a 6.7/10.