Action-Packed Superhero Movie Hated For All The Wrong Reasons

Thor: The Dark World starts, like its predecessor, with a prologue about an ancient war—this time with the Dark Elves on Svartalfheim. Among other things, we witness the Asgardians’ theft of the Elves’ powerful artifact, the Aether.

Back in the present, Loki is in chains while Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three are busy quelling the violence that erupted in the wake of the Bifrost’s destruction. Thor is drawn back to Earth when his old flame Jane Foster disappears while studying some kind of strange anomalies.

We learn the Aether is using Jane as a vessel, and the awakened Dark Elves reignite their war with Asgard in order to recapture the Aether and use it to plunge the universe into darkness.

Most of the cast of 2011’s Thor returns for Thor: The Dark World, though Josh Dallas is replaced by Zachary Levi as the swashbuckling Fandral—sadly, Dallas was unable to return because of his commitments to the fantasy drama Once Upon a Time.

The cast is joined by Christopher Eccleston as Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Malekith’s righthand man, Algrim. The film also serves as the first and last MCU appearance of Jonathan Howard as Ian Boothby, the “intern’s intern.”

Thor: The Dark World does, admittedly, fail to reinvent the wheel. At no point does Alan Taylor’s direction suggest the Thor sequel will open up innovative new avenues of filmmaking, nor should any critics have felt the film had something new to say about the human condition.

But Thor: The Dark World is not a meditation on the absurdity of existence—it’s a Marvel superhero movie and as a Marvel superhero movie, it rocks!

Thor: The Dark World has more action than its predecessor and better visual effects. It’s also funnier than the first Thor, particularly with Stellan Skarsgård’s Erik Selvig rendered a bit nuttier after having his brain juggled around by the Mind Stone in Avengers.

And I will happily die on the hill that Thor quietly deciding to hang Mjolnir on Selvig’s coat rack is one of the funniest moments in the MCU.

The battle at the end of Thor: The Dark World between Thor and Malekith is fun and dynamic—certainly loads more fun that the one between Thor and Loki in the first film—with the combatants being transported all over the Nine Realms as they fight, and Mjolnir constantly needing to turn around to find its master.

We get to see more of Agard and the Nine Realms, along with getting more action from the Warriors Three, Sif, and Heimdall.

So why so much hate out there for Thor: The Dark World? I think it suffered what I could only call Post-Avengers Syndrome.

The first two films in the MCU to follow 2012’s Avengers were Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. Is it an accident that—before Eternals and many of the flops that followed—these two were on the bottom of many fans’ Marvel rankings?

Avengers gave birth to the big superhero crossover and I think it created an expectation that every Marvel movie after it would also feature crossovers. Ever watch the Honest Trailer send-up of Thor: The Dark World? Their entire beef with the flick is that no other Avengers showed up.

Look at all the films between Avengers and its sequel, 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. We’ve got the two not-so-well-regarded flicks, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, which have no substantial crossover characters.

Then you’ve got the absolutely over-the-moon beloved flicks: Guardians of the Galaxy which gave us our first look (and listen) at Josh Brolin as Thanos and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which heavily featured both Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

I’m not suggesting those crossovers made Guardians and Winter Soldier good movies, but including them gave the fans something they were ravenous for after Avengers—more signs in each Marvel film of how all the narratives were connected. Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World didn’t have that.

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Give Thor: The Dark World another shot. It’s streaming now on Disney+. If nothing else, you can marvel at the future head of House Harkonnen—and one of the founders of the Rebel Alliance—running around naked at Stonehenge.