Review: Thor 2 - The Dark World

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I did not care much for the first Thor movie, at least initially. I felt that Marvel had made serious mistakes in somehow making a movie about a Viking God...well...boring. Upon repeated viewings (and mostly at the instance of my wife's desire to see Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his washboard abdomen) I have grown to like the first Thor movie. It is the near perfect, if extremely and overly simplified, example of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth (ie The Hero Journey).

The second Thor movie - The Dark World - I liked from the first watching, and is a much more sophisticated tale that often gets lost, if not swallowed whole, by the special effects. It too uses the Monomyth playbook, so much so that there is literally a dark world Thor must descend into before returning to light, and when he returns he is changed. He uses his compatriots as diversions to make his escape. He cannot explain the changes made to his being and character, so like the Buddha or Amaterasu, he chooses to retreat from his world to that of a (by comparison) cave/Earth. It is true that most movies (especially action movies which hew closely to myths and fairy tales of old) can be defined by the Monomyth, but some are more obvious than others.

The sophistication is largely brought by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who may have actually chewed the scenery in his prison cell. Without this character, the movie is otherwise fairly standard high-budget Hollywood fare. There is also a cameo of sorts that is amazing to behold and which helped elevate the movie by further solidifying the continuity with the Marvel movie universe. Christopher Eccleston and Adawale, playing Malekith and Algrim/Kurse respectively are completely wasted however. Since most of the time they are speaking in a fabricated foreign language their great ability to act is lost on us and are reduced mostly to glowering and gesturing for special effects.

In the end, it is my opinion that this movie is better than the first one.