THOR: THE DARK WORLD - Grading & Discussion

Wondering if SHIELD's absence in all but name here isn't part of the set-up for the months leading up to Winter Soldier. Something - one more thing? - for Fury's bosses to scold him for not catching in time, rightly or wrongly...?

Anyway, digression over.

 

These are likely the "key" worlds for Asgardian historical, political and strategic purposes. Everything else is there, just not as important to Asgard.

 

Another alien invasion and we must rely on Thor's big dumb hammer. Meanwhile Tony Stark is at home having a panic attack

 

Maybe, for the Special Edition, they can CGI Iron Man arriving after it's all wrapped up.

 

They likely knew that he was an asshole.

Did you see the girl under glass?

But a powerful asshole who once he got hold of the Infinity Stone was not going to let any other bugger get it off him.

His evil ####ish behaviour is the vault, not his vault.

No fucker is getting that stone off the collector unless it's over his dead body, and then because of intense spite the solar system is bound to blow up because this S.O.B. can take "it" with him when he goes.

As long as the 6 stones are separated it doesn't matter who has them.

Actually if the bastards of the universe kill each other trying to get the same 3 or 4 Infinity Stones off each other, over and over again, if you can forgive the collateral damage, that's pretty sweet.

Besides, the collector collects. That's his end game. A perfect collection. Even if he gets all 6, his master plan is to put them under mylar and marvel at them on a pedestal.

Besides in comparison what is Thanos' plan?

Too open doors for his armies to walk through?

Weak.

Or is that just the Mad Titan killing time till he has an Infinity Gauntlet, which is when shit gets real.

 

Yeah, I thought the whole Selvig thing was odd and not exactly explained well. Though I laughed as his "Thank God" when he heard Loki was dead.

I remember The Collector from a six-part Avengers storyline about 20 years ago called The Collection Obsession.

 

Historically before Thanos made his gauntlet, the mid 80s Silver Surfer, the Elders of the Universe had "the Soul Gems" ...Okay so Thanos took the Soul gems even before that and voltroned 6 components into a big synthetic gem first in the Marvel two in One annual of Annual in '82 when prune chin tried to turn off the Stars.

In the miniseries Thanos Quest, that came out immediately before the Infinity gauntlet, it showed how Thnos beat up all the Elders and too their Infinity gems.

It wasn't the tesseract energy mind control that drove Selvig loopy, Loki jumped into him as a life raft at the end of Thor 1 and he hid there inside his brain for long enough to do some considerable damage.

 

Another solid and enjoyable movie. My only complaint is that the villain wasn't terribly interesting or memorable even if he was played by Eccelson. He was just a new character with no real connection to the characters who wanted to destroy the universe... a little too cookie cutter.

I was glad to see so much Loki in the movie. I expected him to be off-screen until the final act or something. I was actually fooled by his death for a second. Oh and when Thor got his hand cut off? That totally floored me! I actually froze with my hand full of popcorn in mid-air! Then a second later I realized it was a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake.

The big invasion of Asgard in the middle of the movie was a really well done sequence. I was worried the final battle wouldn't be able to hold a torch to it, but I really liked the way Thor and Malekith kept falling through different worlds with every hit. That was a really cool idea.

During the big ending... was I the only one who was horribly distracted by Natalie Portman's ginormous bright red boots?

I really liked the Selvig stuff. It was nice to have some dumb gags in addition to showing the aftermath of The Avengers.

Absolutely loved the Captain America cameo!!! I was totally unspoilt on that!!!

I was not terribly impressed by the Collector/Liberace thing. What a bizarre choice. Also, I really don't understand the scene either. Why would they trust this character with one of the Infinity Gems? Is he supposed to be the Swiss bank of the cosmos or something?

Also, if the Aether and the Tesseract are Infinity Gems... does that mean the blue gem in Loki's staff from The Avengers was NOT the Soul Gem? Which Infinity Gem is the Tesseract supposed to be, then?

And I was a little confused by the sci-fi technological aspect of the Asgardians and Dark Elves. I've only read a few Thor comics but I don't remember them having technology just magic things.

 

I was surprised. I spent the time trying to figure out how he was going to get his hand back.

I can't even remember what he looks like. I have this image stuck in my head…

In the movies, I think the idea is that their technology is so advanced that it looks like magic to us. I like how Jane called their soul forge a quantum field generator because that's what it is to her.

 

Kevin Feige had this to say...

 

I can't wait to watch it.

 

ITS BEEN STATED BY ALL INVOLVED THAT THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT. I get that many of the differing scenes after the Marvel films have been in tone of the movie before it. BUT THEY ARE ALL GROUNDED, EARTH BOUND marvel movies. this is guardians of the galaxy. its space bound. and not in the way that Thor is, just in case you cough up that argument, because Thor involves plenty of Earth. and the next one could arguably involve only earth. and Asgard has its own vibe as well. maybe vibe isnt the word but you catch my drift. if it were on par with thor it wouldn't feel right. the comic and its characters are not of the same "vibe" that we have been accustomed to thus far. Marvel intentionally separated the tone of this scene from the movie to tease what GUARDIANS would be like next year. please, TRY to wrap your head around this. its really not as difficult to grasp as you are making it.

 

LOL. now this made me laugh. the panic attack subplot was just god awful.

 

That would have been a hilarious button to the end of the big finale. They finally defeat the enemy and they're sitting on the ground panting and exhausted... and then Nick Fury shows up with the reinforcements where's the bad guy?! where's the bad guy?!

The best gag would have been Iron Man flying in right afterwards and cracking a joke about missing the fight but I guess Tony won't get in the suit again until Avengers 2.

One thing I'm noticing about these Phase Two movies... they're not setting up plot elements for Avengers 2 the way Phase One movies did. Apparently the whole Infinity Gauntlet / Thanos thing is being held for Avengers 3 so where's the Ultron buildup? I'm guessing the post-credits scene of Guardians is going to be Tony in a computer lab creating Ultron...

 

I saw it last night and loved it, probably a bit more than the first one. With the involvement of the other realms, it all felt more epic. It was tense, exciting, sad and funny throughout, and me and my friends had very big smiles on our faces after it finished.

Christopher Ecclestone's character (whose name I've already forgotten) was a big disappointment, as he was just a generic bad guy. Luckily we had plenty of Loki, which really saves the film. It was sad to see him 'die,' after he'd 'redeemed' himself, but then when he revealed himself at the end, it was absolutely perfect. I'm so glad that slimy bastard will still be around in future movies.

I was pretty shocked to see Thor's mother's die, but then the funeral afterwards elevated it to heartbreaking. It was just done so well.

The final battle was also good. I really appreciated having the action set in London, as it was nice to recognise places and brands in a film. Everything had gone completely barmy by this point, with all of the falling through realities, disappearing/reappearing people, and of course Thor catching the tube back to the action. And whatever that huge creature was that was still running amok by the post-credits scene was hilarious.

Four and a half hammers out of five.

 

You seem dead set on not only completely misunderstanding my point, but calling me an idiot as well. If you can't be civil, then get the hell out of here.

I know full well that Guardians of the Galaxy will have a different tone than the rest. It's a movie with a talking gun-toting raccoon, for crying out loud. How could it not? If the intent of this scene was to set people up for that, it fails. Regardless of whether or not it captures that tone, it's just an odd and awkward scene. Del Toro is speaking in an odd pattern dressed like Mugatu from Zoolander.

I've been to Marvel movies with my non-comic book friends before. Their reactions to the previous stingers has often been along the lines of "I don't know exactly what that is, but it's interesting." Their reaction to this one was "the fuck was that?"

Tony suffering from PTSD after fighting an alien invasion alongside a god, a supersoldier, and a giant green monster makes perfect sense. He was struggling to find his place after that. He's seen these amazing things, and here he is just a man in tin can. It was handled very well, and was a natural place for the character to go. He had to be at his weakest and most vulnerable first in order to find out who he truly was.

 

Let us also not forget Tony sacrificed himself and resigned himself to death and actually DID die! I think his PTSD can be understood and forgiven.

 

Ahem, getting back to the movie that the thread is supposed to be about…

I saw it yesterday. I enjoyed it. I thought it was better than the first.

Whereas the first one was more earthbound, and had to spend a fair amount of time explaining Thor's origins, this film started right out (after the prologue) with Asgardian battle scenes of Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three kicking troll ass and taking giants' names.

Also, the production design ditched a fair amount of the "plastic disco" look for something more naturalistic and norse derived. You could still see hints of Kirby and Simonson designs in the film but it didn't look like quite as fake.

Overall the cast was very good. Obviously, Hiddleston as Loki is the standout but there really wasn't a bad acting job in the bunch.

Oh, and--again-- WB is insane if they don't throw vast sums of money at Jamie Alexander to get her to play Wonder Woman.

Kat Dennings annoyed the hell out of me in the first movie. At first she annoyed me in this one was well. However, giving her the other intern to play off of early in the film made her character much more palatable. In the first film she was basically just "the sarcastic friend of the lead female" as if she'd stepped out of a bad rom-com. Once she had Ian to interact with she became less of that and more of part of a comedy relief team.

And speaking of Dennings, maybe I'm cynical, but I can't help but wonder if Natalie Portman and/or her agent wasn't behind the decision to have Dennings wear an extremely baggy and ill fitting wool overcoat for the entire movie.

The only thing that kind of, sort of, didn't work for me was the ending:

• The scene with Thor and Odin in the throne room created too many questions with the big reveal.
  
  The post credits scene (the one on earth, not the one with Sif and Volstagg) really had no business being post credits. It was basically the end of the movie.

Quibbles about the ending aside, highly enjoyable.

 

Given the small number of people who actually stick around for the last scene, they obviously wanted the advertisement for Guardians to be before that... but they still needed the post-credits scene cause its their tradition now...

 

I thought it was decently entertaining as a whole.... but much like with the first movie it just felt a little too slapped-together somehow. As before, the change in tone between the Asgard and Earth scenes felt really jarring and odd, and watching Thor in our world turns out to be MUCH more fun and compelling than watching him in his world. And I had a hard time caring about yet another villain's plan to conquer/destroy the universe with some dark energy weapon.

And the entire end battle-- constantly jumping around between different "realms"-- only contributed more to the slightly random feel of the whole story.

But the humor (as cheesy as some of it was) DID help quite a bit in keeping things fun, so it was hard not to at least enjoy it on that level.