10 years later, it’s almost quaint to think of Thor: The Dark World as the MCU’s nadir
Neither a lost masterpiece nor poison garbage, the first Thor sequel now lies somewhere in the middle of the Marvel pack
Film Features Thor
In 2013, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was going through a transition. With the help of new owners at Disney, the studio had successfully pulled off The Avengers the year before, and two of the undeniably greatest entries in the long series were just ahead in 2014. But the two movies released in 2013 struggled under the increasing pressure of the MCU. Iron Man 3 was criticized for feeling a lot like an anti-Iron Man movie that made some of the actual superhero action feel weirdly tacked on (but that’s what makes it good, actually). And the much-derided Thor: The Dark World seemed like all of the still-young MCU’s worst impulses being brought to light for the first time: A forgettable villain, a largely pointless MacGuffin, and a tiring dependence on Infinity Stone mythology that wouldn’t pay off for several more years.
But the MCU has grown a lot creakier in the last decade. Those worst impulses are more noticeable than ever, even when there are still good movies coming out of Kevin Feige’s marvelous machine, so it’s the perfect time to consider reappraising Thor: The Dark World. Is it really worse than, say, Black Widow and Eternals and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love And Thunder and Avengers: Age Of Ultron? (Just to name a few random examples.) Or was it just one of the first MCU movies to feel like a real stinker, beyond even the general disappointment of Iron Man 2, and that feeling has stuck with everyone ever since?
It would be nice to think of Thor: The Dark World as a lost, hidden gem of the MCU; a great work of superhero art that nobody appreciated at the time and has become more special in retrospect. It’s not. What it is, is perfectly fine. The Dark World is no longer the low point of the MCU, and by comparison to some of the lesser films that followed, it is very watchable—almost annoyingly so.
The main plot, wherein a villain from another dimension is trying to steal some amorphous space blob that will allow him to whatever, is exceedingly dull, and it no longer has the relative uniqueness and fish-out-of-water comedy that buoyed the first movie. Even Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, who didn’t really come alive until Taika Waititi took over the series with its next movie, only shows the slightest spark of his generally abundant charisma (his best moment is just minutes into the movie, when he makes a joke at the expense of a monster and grins at the mocking laughter he gets in response).
And yet… every few minutes you know that Tom Hiddleston’s Loki will show up, and while Hemsworth has yet to really solidify what makes a good Thor performance, Hiddleston is significantly more dialed in than he was in the first movie or The Avengers. The movie temporarily wakes up the moment Thor breaks Loki out of prison so he can help fight the bad guys as vengeance for the murder of his and Thor’s mother, thanks to both the sequence where Loki keeps shape-shifting into people he thinks Thor would rather be teamed up with (including Captain America, giving Chris Evans a short cameo), and the subsequent scenes where Thor and Loki use their respective talents to try and outsmart the villain.
This Loki, much more than the weird misogynist Joss Whedon wrote in The Avengers, is more like the Loki who was so great in Ragnarok, and who gave his life to save Thor in Avengers: Infinity War, and who now has his own spin-off show on Disney+… though that’s technically a different Loki, what with the multiverse and all that.
But if it’s not Loki, then it’s Kat Dennings’ Darcy Lewis who quietly carries chunks of the movie. Returning from the first Thor, where she was sort of the “what’s Norse mythology?” audience surrogate, Darcy’s main role this time is livening up boring exposition scenes that would otherwise have to be carried by Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster—who, despite being a more active participant in the plot, doesn’t get to do anything fun or interesting here.
The movie’s best line, just a few minutes after Thor’s little grin, comes when Darcy and Thor are reunited and she asks him how “space” is, to which he responds: “Space is fine.” Is it laugh-out-loud funny? No, it’s just a cute little moment that feels at least a little real in a movie that is otherwise 90 percent magic portals. In a worse movie, perhaps one that truly is the undeniable lowest point out of almost three dozen films, Dennings’ self-aware “this thing we’re doing is weird” commentary would be deeply off-putting (and it’s something that pretenders to Marvel’s throne, and some Marvel movies, often screw up), but she’s so good at it that it balances the dumb plot beats.
See, Thor: The Dark World isn’t a terribly bad Marvel movie, and it’s definitely not the worst Marvel movie, it’s just a Marvel movie that happens to be on the poorer end of the spectrum. It’s one of the first entries in the canon that really clearly defined what a Marvel movie is, in a bad way, which was more jarring at the time than it is now. But here, in 2023, we’re all older and wiser than we were at the time, and it’s clearer than ever that Thor: The Dark World is fine.
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“Is it really worse than, say, Black Widow and Eternals and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love And Thunder and Avengers: Age Of Ultron?”Yes, yes it is. The dark world is awful. I did a rewatch after endgame… It was absolutely putrid. Still bottom five, easily.
It’s still the worst for me. Remember them turning Stellan Skarsgard’s regular scientist character into a weird joke character who forgets to wear pants, because he’s some absent minded professor cartoon character? Just an absolutely miserable attempt at humor. And then they tried to retcon it as being PTSD in one of the follow up movies.
What are you talking about? His mental troubles are explicitly stated to be an effect of Loki scrambling his metaphorical cognitive eggs.
Yeah, I’m confused that people wouldn’t get this. He was mind-controlled by an Infinity Stone. If anything, it’s surprising he isn’t more messed up.
Weird, I never disliked it as much as the memes in 2013-2015, and also did a rewatch just last weekend. And still don’t dislike it. Not in the top 20 either though.
100%…this movie was dreadful, Iron Man 2 and 3 are subpar at best, the MCU is catching a lot of flack these days and some is well deserved, but a lot of it is just prisoner of the moment piling on, I’d put quite a few of these supposed bad phase 4 movies above some earlier entries…
i loathe iron man 3
Yeah this is like saying the Star Wars prequels are fine, actually.No, no they’re not, they still suck and so does The Dark World.
The Prequels are amazing.
See, revisionism of the highest order!
The emergence of social media 2.0 (especially reddit) about 6 years later breathed new life into the Prequels in the form of great memes. Also, a fondness for the good parts like the worldbuilding and Space Jesus Ewan McGregor overshadowed the mechanical failures of the films.
That doesn’t make them actually good though: The worldbuilding is lame, the writing, directing and acting are all awful. The best thing about it is Darth Maul and the fact that it spawned the Clone Wars series. If anything, the Clone Wars series redeemed Obi-Wan, it really dug into his ‘smarmy as fuck, lousy Jedi’ character and did a lot of heavy lifting on the worldbuilding end of things.
No, they’re still very bad.
No.
While I wil defend Revenge of the Sith to the death (and my god, that novelisation by Matthew Stover is so, so good), in what world do memes make something bad suddenly good? No world. That’s not how it works.
I think it is fair to give the prequels credit for advancing certain technolgies and techniques and to point out they are better then some of the slop we are currentyl getting.But yeah, they ain’t great and the latter two veer into outright bad.
Oh yeah they definitely advanced special effects, but the originals did that while also managing to have decent stories, acting and directing.
I tried to go back and watch the prequels a couple of years ago, after seeing so much revisionism from younger generations that grew up with them as their first Star Wars movies they saw in theaters. I thought I had to have been missing something and maybe needed to go back with fresh eyes. I was actually shocked at how bad they were from just a formal perspective; the lighting, composition of the shots, everything is so flat and lifeless in those films, not to mention the mostly horrendous acting. The only redeeming qualities being the scores and McGregor’s performances. I could only make it part way through Attack Of The Clones before I had to turn it off. Say what you will about the sequels, but at least they look interesting and well-directed.
Yep, at least the sequel trilogy is competently directed and well acted, even if the scripts are garbage. Lucas is a great concept man but his writing and direction skills are not great.
It’s one of the reasons I feel bad for Jake Lloyd. Everyone in ‘The Phantom Menace’ give a bad performance, to the extent that it feels like it has to be down to bad direction. But Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson et al are established actors who can give a bad performance and not have it overshadow their careers. Lloyd was a kid in his first major role, and he got torn to shreds. I can’t imagine how hard that was for him.
The movie’s best line, just a few minutes after Thor’s little grin,
comes when Darcy and Thor are reunited and she asks him how “space” is,
to which he responds: “Space is fine.”
Mew Mew!There’s also the Chris Evans cameo (and behind-the-scenes of Hiddleston wearing Cap’s costume, playing Cap as Loki so Evans has a guide)Also, I’d say Thor’s best moment is a blink-and-you-miss-it when he hangs up Mjolnir on a coat rack. That moment is basically proto-Ragnarok Thor. The character is clicking for Hemsworth, he just can’t do anything with it.
Thor 2 is little, but very great, moments, in dreck. Like panning for gold in sewage. Oh it’s there, but…
There’s a lot of fun little jokes throughout ‘Thor 2′: Selvig saying he’s glad Loki’s dead and then apologising to Thor, “Mew Mew!”, Thor asking Jane about her date with Chris O’Dowd’s character. The seeds for future Thor wackiness are already there.
Is it worse than Black Widow, Eternals, Multiverse of Madness, Quantumania, Love and Thunder, and Ultron? In order: Yes, No, Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. Other than Eternals, while all of those movies are flawed, I still enjoy them much more than Dark World.Dark World is … okay, but the main drag on it is Eccleston really doing NOTHING as the villain. He just flatly monotones his way through all his line readings, and is the absolute benchmark of unmemorable antagonists. Otherwise, the movie is just kind of a gray visual downer to watch. Hiddleston, Hemsworth, Portman, Dennings, and the rest all do their best, but there’s just not a lot to work with.
I mostly agree with your list, but I think Thor: The Dark World at least has a relatively straightforward story that compares favorably to some of Marvel’s convoluted recent outings. I’d put it ahead of both Quantumania and Love and Thunder, both of which are trying to do an awful lot, little of it well.
Quantumania and Love and Thunder were both messes, but I think they’re at least fun messes. Dark World was pretty messy itself, but (to me) is just less fun.
Quantumania is one of the most frustratingly predictable movies ever created. The obvious turn for MODOK, the rebels, the death of “blaster head” guy, the heroic speech, bringing the ants in to save the day. There was not one ounce of actual creativity in the movie. Then there’s characters holding back important information for absolutely no reason other than plot beats…
Eccleston was furious that a lot of his work got cut out and left the character as a flat nothing, and still calls it one of the worst times of his career.
That’s a shame, but given what is left in, I have to wonder what he was doing in those other scenes. Did he do different line readings, one with emotion and one completely flat for every delivery? Given that what IS left in is so monotone, it’d be jarring if he had parts where he’s actually showing any kind of inflection and emotion juxtaposed with the other scenes.
Its especially sad because Eccleston could have done a larger-than-life megalomaniac Malekith very well. They likely just didn’t want him to seem anything like Loki, but that would have been a much better arc for the movie was Loki getting a view of just how bad he will end up if he keeps going down his path, as Malekith is also usually more cruel and more vicious than Loki is.
I disagree that Portman did her best. She absolutely sleepwalks through that movie. She tried her best with Love & Thunder, which is a badly flawed movie, but at least gave her something to work with and she gave the impression that she actually wanted to be there.
Yeah, you’re not wrong about that.
Iirc, Patty Jenkins was supposed to direct The Dark World, but that fell through and she left Marvel, and so Portman wanted out. But she was contractually obligated to stay. It’s not a huge surprise she’s kind of phoning in her performance a bit.
Quantumania is one of the worst big budget movies ever created
It’s really not. I mean even if you’re in the camp that it’s objectively bad, saying it’s one of the worst big budget movies ever created is just hyperbole. Personally I found it to be a lot of fun.
Counterpoint: yes it is still truly the worst of the MCU. All those other movies mentioned are inherently rewatchable. Black Widow had solid performances, chemistry, and action, just a stupid third act. Ultron gets better the further removed it is from the first Avengers, of which it’s basically a copy of. But with that distance, it’s actually decent. Externals was bad, yeah, but shit, it looked lovely and had some solid performances. I know that its trendy to hate in MoM and Quantumania, but those movies are not terrible, just not great and clearly patchy at best.But rewatching Dark World is a fucking CHORE. I think some of the references is gotten in later movies make it FEEL more relevant and less bad, but you’re fooling yourself. It’s a terrible movie
Quantumania was a lot of fun but shoots itself in the foot with the last 5 minutes. A bad ending can make you forget that you were having fun earlier.
I don’t get the Ultron disdain, to be honest. I found the original Avengers to be a little overhyped. It’s great to get the band together, but some of it feels a bit bland in hindsight. Ultron is messy, but I find it more rewatchable? It doesn’t really do its villain justice (Ultron is a Thanos level villain, think he deserved more than one movie…), but I don’t know, something about it works for me. The bit with Thor’s hammer and emergence of Ultron, Vision and Ultrons scene at the end… could it be better, yes, but I think thats true of most Marvel movies.
Agreed. I think Ultron is a much more enjoyable rewatch than the original Avengers, even if there was less “Marvel bloat” in the original.
Ultron is just awful. They waste what could have been a phase villain, they reduce Black Widow to Hulk’s love interest (however, I do not get how many people misunderstood the line about her being a monster and not being able to have children as being the same thing), they wasted James Spader, they killed Quicksilver for no good reason, they ignored the character growth Tony Stark had in Iron Man 3, and it just is really really bad. It felt like Joss Whedon had given up.
People equated the monster and children things together because thats literally her entire characterization in that film. I mean, she’s an emotional downer the entire movie and it is all to justify her screwed up relationship with Banner. It was like the only reason they had any sort of chemistry was because both of them hated themselves and decided they should hook up because of it. Spader’s Ultron monologues pretty much carried his scenes. MCU Quicksilver was a gem and a good casting choice, his speed was handled well on screen and they even had a good ‘stop’ special effect for when he left his speed. I actually prefer that incarnation of Quicksilver to the musical set piece one Fox used. His death didn’t even really make sense given the speeds he was running at before while rescuing more people.
If it wasn’t for RDJ’s performance, MCU Tony Stark would probably come off as potentially villainous as comic Stark frequently does.
Counter counterpoint, Black Widow was complete and utter crap from start to finish and such a disappointment given all the potential a theoretical film could have been given the templates it had such as the Bourne films or even Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier where she was effectively the co-lead.
I think this is a fair and mostly accurate assessment. While I think “complete and utter crap” is a little (emphasis on little) but of an overstatement – the movie did absolutely whiff on so much potential… but that doesn’t take away from some genuinely solid action scenes and Florence Pugh being fucking awesome. I also think David Harbour was genuinely excellent
The film’s plot itself was crap.
The performances and character interaction between the ‘family’ was pretty solid. Yelena was fun.
That realization that the Widows were being treated like that pig hit hard on first viewing.
For me the real tell is that almost all Marvel movies are good enough to watch on a boring, rainy Sunday afternoon if you catch them on TV. There are plenty of movies that are flawed or messy or miss the landing, but are still perfectly adequate when it comes to killing time. It’s a low bar.Dark World is one of the only movies in the MCU I won’t watch if I just need to kill sometime and it’s on. I’d rather clean the kitchen than sit through that.
Nah. It’s actually surprisingly decent.
Black Widow is totally fine. The biggest issue I had with it (and this may be different the next time I watch it) but as the first new Marvel film in two years, it felt underwhelming because rather than go forward, essentially we were jumping back to earlier in the series narrative.Had it come out in 2017, or even 2020 I probably wouldn’t have felt that way.
Each of the first two Thor movies are among the very worst Marvel has created. We don’t have to pretend otherwise. Next subject!
As the second best Thor movie behind the first Thor movie, The Dark World is perfectly fine, and miles ahead of what was yet to come.
I like your moxie!
It’s a very boring movie. I’ve seen it twice and I remember so little about it that even this articles description of the better scenes drew a complete blank. I guess it’s a matter of taste whether being drab and mediocre is worse than being aggressively awful (Love and Thunder, ahem) but it’s not really a race I want to watch.
I never disliked Dark World as much as others, but then again, Thor and Loki have always been my favorites in the MCU (now joined by Dr. Strange and Shang-Chi). I also really enjoyed Multiverse of Madness.But Dark World ranks probably somewhere in the bottom middle of my MCU list. Very bottom belongs to Age of Ultron and Iron Man 2. Maybe Eternals next if I stop forgetting it exists.
it’s bottom middle for me too but i’ve never really understood the sustained vitriol it gets, i guess it just really struck a nerve with the vast majority of mcu fans.ant man 3 actively made me mad, i can’t say that about thor 2.
Multiverse of Madness killed any and all interest in seeing any more MCU for me, especially when they were ripping off jokes from a 1996 episode of Sliders.Then it was doubly killed off when I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once the very next day and after seeing what an actually good multiverse film could be like, that just reinforced my decision to as of yet, not come back.
Hm no it’s still the worst one. At least the Eternals was making big, wild swings, this was just crap out some grey sludge directed by a Game of Thrones director
Easily the most amusing moment in retrospect is how it couldn’t be more obvious that the rock monster in the opening scene is supposed to be Korg, but since his name is never actually spoken, Taika was able to retcon him as just a random rock monster and recreate Korg as a cool character for himself. Also, the writer has been very open that his intention with the final scene was that Loki had killed Odin, but of course that would wreck the redemption that Taika wanted to do, so that got retconned too. He’s actually really good at that, see also the offhand reveal that the Infinity Gauntlet in the Asgard vault is just a fake.
The movie is bland boring and I forget about it a lot. Eternals is bad but in a way I can’t forget. Its a philosophical question as to what’s worse. Personality I still say Eternals, why they thought it would be wise to have a Hiroshima scene is beyond me.
So, what we’re learning here is that the true heroes of the MCU, Sarah Halley Finn and the casting department, remained stellar. As disappointing as The Dark World was, the casting allowed for the movie to survive based on the quality of the performances.
Accurate!
I’d like to see Hiddleston’s Loki meet up with Morpheus/Sandman. The interaction would be a lot different than what was in the graphic novels, simply because Hiddleston’s Loki doesn’t have to be the Joker-esque version that they had there.
feels really weird we haven’t gotten any marvels reviews yet. they usually don’t hold them back until the wire like this do they?
They’re coming out on social media, and are mostly really good.
This movie, I think was the entryway to the path of me leaving the MCU fandom and stop watching the tv shows and movies.I kept up with all of it until Endgame and then tagged out. This and how this movie was merged into agents of shield was the beginning of the end of me consuming this content.
“Is it really worse than, say, Black Widow and Eternals and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love And Thunder and Avengers: Age Of Ultron?”Yes. 100%.
This movie is fun and zippy, it was a comedy Thor movie before Ragnarok (nowhere near as good but it’s still jokey) “How’s space?” “Space is fine.”
You’re really trying to make this whole “The Mutliverse of Madness was bad, actually” thing happen, aren’t you?The Dark World is fine. It’s a movie you can put on if it comes on cable during a weekend afternoon and you don’t have much going on. I can’t say that about either Iron Man sequel.
The Multiverse of Madness did that whole making itself bad thing all by itself. Everything Everywhere All at Once kicked its ass so thoroughly in every creative angle you want to mention (from acting to directing to editing to especially screenplay) that it was embarrassing and for a tenth of the budget or even less to add insult to injury.
I mean I guess both can be good in different ways.. I loved both of them. Multiverse of Madness was more a Army of Darkness movie.
They’re both in the middle of the pack.Dark World is just yeah, kinda drab. I didn’t find it to be aggressively bad like I did the first Thor movie. I squirmed and cringed all the way through that one and it almost put my wife off Marvel entirely. (She did see the first Guardians and Endgame with me and reviews were positive.)MoM is almost insufferably Disney, but Raimi at least brings enough flair to it to make it interesting. Especially in that ending stretch, he lets his freak flag fly. Is it at odds with Disney’s oppressive homogeny? Yes, but without Raimi it would have been a hell of a lot worse.
Sure, it was not as good as a completely unrelated film that also dealt with mutliversal travel. I will give you that.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a raging hot mess that inexplicably garnered praise.It’s ludicrous, poorly acted tripe that tries way, WAY too hard.
‘Multiverse of Madness’ is pretty bad. It’s a bunch of “hey, isn’t this cool?” moments strung together to disguise the fact that the plot boils down to “Wanda tries to read a book and other people try to stop her.”
So basically, how can we dunk on recent Marvel movies today? Listen, all of the Marvel movies are just fine. There are a couple of turds (Eternals) and a couple of really good comic book movies that aren’t as amazing as most people remember. They’re just all pretty fine.
This Loki, much more than the weird misogynist Joss Whedon wrote in The AvengersI’m sorry, what? Can someone explain what in the hell this person is referring to?
…tiring dependence on Infinity Stone mythology that wouldn’t pay off for several more years.I always assumed they tacked on the infinity stone thing at the last minute with that post credit scene. The Aether(?) is …not a stone. The fact that it’s the “reality” stone is also weird. Like it’s powers in Thor 2 and the Thanos movies just don’t line up.
Yeah, this movie was obviously already in production when they decided to make the Infinity Stones a plot point.
If you watch the scene where Odin talks about the Aether (and also makes oblique references to the Infinity Stones), it’s pretty clear that it was all added in ADR, because there’s surely no footage of Anthony Hopkins saying those words on set.
I know I’m in the minority, but I prefer Thor’s character pre-Waititi. I know Chris Hemsworth has a lot more fun with him, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a better presentation of the character. (It didn’t help that Love and Thunder kind of just had to repeat the same beats of supposed character growth.)What I remember about The Dark World was that they supposedly did reshoots to add in more Loki, but then Marvel was kind of coy as to whether or not it was due to his growing popularity (emboldened by that one Tom Hiddleston Comic Con appearance). It is nice that, all these years later, they finally have a tv show dedicated to the character, as Hiddleston has more than earned it.
The entire MCU needs more Darcy.
Nah, Dark World is still at the bottom. Its problem compared to all the listed examples (aside from Eternals, which is just underrated) is that it’s not just bad, it’s BORING. The others are bad in ways that make for interesting discussions or are unintentionally amusing. The way Dr. Strange 2 completely squanders Wanda as a character? The way Black Widow starts with an interesting theme about childhood indoctrination and then forgets about it in favor of a dumb raid on a flying bad guy fortress? Quantumania’s hideous CGI and what it says about Marvel’ labor conditions? These are all at least great topics for a conversation. After watching Dark World, there’s nothing to say because the movie is so dull that you’ve forgotten most of it before it’s even over.
Agreed. Its biggest sin is leaving the viewer basically indifferent once it’s over.
The Eternals really is underrated. idk if it hit at just the wrong time, or if it wasn’t what people wanted, or what, but it drives me crazy that people complain about the MCU not taking risks, but when they try to do something actually risky (and that did most of it’s filming on location!) people don’t know what to make of it.It’s not flawless, but it’s actually visually really interesting and engages with some ambitious comic book weirdness.
IMO it should have been a Disney plus show. There were too many characters and not enough time to flesh them out.
I feel like that’s a pretty common opinion and I can respect it. I think for my part, I worry they’d be tempted to bloat a series too much.
Eternals as a concept just struggles to connect with anyone much. There’s a good reason why they’re such an obscurity in Marvel’s history. They’ve had a bunch of short runs which got cancelled because nobody was reading them.If nothing else, it’s case in point as rebuttal against the idea that popped up in recent years that everything Kirby did was gold in his career (which I fully get is an overcorrection over Lee claiming sole credit for so much).
“Is it really worse than, say, Black Widow and Eternals and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love And Thunder and Avengers: Age Of Ultron?” It is exactly worse then Black Widow, Doctor Strange 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. I would give it a tie with Thor: Love and Thunder and its better then Eternals
The boat scene between Thor & Loki is a top 3 favorite MCU scene of mine. Legitimately. “Hemsworth’s first great bit of acting in the franchise is how much sorrow and hurt he put into “I wish I could trust you.”
I never understood people’s hate for Thor: The Dark World. It’s not spectacular, but it isn’t awful. Age of Ultron is the only MCU movie that I can legit call bad. However, Secret Invasion makes Age of Ultron look like Endgame in how bad it is. It is the absolute worst thing I’ve seen with the Marvel name on it since Ben Affleck’s Daredevil.
I’m glad I saw Thor 2 before I heard the seeming pop culture collective opinion because I always thought it was *fine* and have said so for years now.
It’s the not worst, but it was the low point early and for a while, so it got lodged into that slot and it’s hard to move once it’s settled in. Other MCU movies have been worst, but didn’t have first-mover advantage.
Is it the worst MCU movie? Arguable, but I’d say probably not. I don’t love it, but for my money it’s way more watchable than Quantumania.Does it have the worst MCU villain? Yes.
The Dark World so needlessly undermines itself by 1) giving so much of the movie the color filter of a burned coffee pot, and 2) somehow giving Malekith and the Dark Elves the emotional energy of a burned coffee pot.Meanwhile in Jason Aron’s comics Svartalfheim is a glowy night vale and Malekith a preening purple vamp who delights in his own wickedness. His ultimate punishment is not death but irrelevance.This is one case where I’d go for using AI to redo the movie with an ebullient color palette for the Realms (England can stay gray for contrast) and Chris Eccleston can smolder with the passion of his “everybody lives” Doctor.
Why is it cool now to hate on Multiverse of Madness, that movie was a ton of fun.
Looking forward to the 2029 article arguing that “Rise of Skywalker — not actually that bad!”“The Dark World” is a shapeless mess that should have been massively rewritten and reshot, or just scrapped entirely.
Thor is turning into the opposite of Star Trek. His odd numbered movies are good and his even numbered movies are stinkers. Here’s hoping they go one last time and end on a good note.
I’ve never disliked ‘The Dark World’ as much as some people. Is the villain entirely forgettable? Is Natalie Portman wasted here? Is the plot inconsequential? Yes to all of that. But there are some striking visuals, Hiddleston continues to kill it as Loki, and that final sequence with the portals is quite a bit of fun. Also, I’m in many ways a simple guy; I hear Kate Dennings say “Mew Mew!”, I laugh. I’ll take this over ‘Age of Ultron’, ‘The Incredible Hulk’, ‘Multiverse of Madness’ or ‘Iron Man 2/3′ any day.
The Dark World has the only set piece in all Marvel movies that I find memorable just because it was so hilarious – when Mjolnir is trying to reach Thor while he’s hurtling through different worlds. The scene of it shooting to outer space only to rush back down to Earth a moment later cracks me up every time.
To be fair I can’t quite recall whom Thor was actually fighting right then, though…
I liked that movie better than the first Thor movie.And I liked that version of Loki a whole bunch more than the anxiety-dweeb in the Loki television show.
While it’s definitely a lower tier movie, I certainly don’t look at it as the least watchable of the Infinity Saga. (That prize goes to Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, which I straight up skipped when I did a pandemic rewatch of the entire MCU.) It’s highly flawed, but Hiddleston’s Loki makes the thing actually watchable.