Ride the Lightning: Regarding Thor - The Dark World

I'm just going let you guys know straight up that the sophomoric effort behind the Asgardian Avenger, Thor: The Dark World is my least favorite MCU movie. By a country mile. It's pretty clear that Marvel Studios didn't quite know what do with Thor having already played out the fish-out-water card with the character's introduction to the MCU in 2011 and as supporting character the year before. With a character like Thor do you go dark fantasy? Embrace the more science fiction elements of the character? Do you go for the comedy again because the whole premise of Norse gods in SPAAAACE is fucking ridiculous [see: Ragnarok]? Marvel actively took story pitches as they interviewed directors and actually hired future Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins at Natalie Portman's urging initially only to let her go after not agreeing with her approach to the central narrative as a love story with Thor and Jane Foster as star-crossed lovers and Portman got understandably PISSED.
"Chris, I'm leaving this franchise forever after this and never looking back."
The studio execs reasoned that romance should be obligatory, not the focus, and hired veteran Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor to ground the film with the same gravitas and scale he brought to the acclaimed HBO series. You can really see it in the set design with Asgard actually feeling lived in rather than the impossibly pristine Star Wars prequel-esque design from the previous film. Alien worlds are more harsh and less wondrous this time around. The action is less inconsequential swashbuckling and more hard-hitting (those singularity grenades look particularly painful).
Having bad guys that aren't entirely CGI helps too.
But at some point, the execs got their hands in the final mix again everything changed with Taylor later lamenting that he lost control of his film during post-production. Extensive rewrites and reshoots dogged the production with even Avengers director Joss Whedon stepping in to rework some scenes. Loki, who was originally going to be imprisoned for the whole film to give the new antagonist proper room to breathe, had his role drastically ramped up in reshoots after positive fan response to his role in The Avengers. It was reasoned that film didn't have that Marvel signature wit so they ramped up Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard's roles with increased comedic overtones but it doesn't work here. The humor in the original Thor was woven into that film's DNA from the beginning; here it all feels forced and tacked on because it was. But hey, if you ever wanted to see Stellan Skarsgard buck ass naked you can finally check that off the list.
My life is now complete.
You kind of get that with the action sequences too; they're all serviceable (better than the original Thor, if I'm to be honest) but it's still jarring to me to see Asgardians and inhabitants of the Nine Realms going from conventional weapons in the opening to all having laser guns halfway through the film. The Portal-esque climactic battle with Malekith is a nice change from CGI-rendered dudes just aimlessly punching each other but it's not necessarily show-stopping...kinda boring if I'm being honest. And Malekith himself is probably the most boring villain in the entire MCU: In the comics, Malekith is essentially Thor's Joker in terms of tone, always with a leering grin over the chaotic destruction and death he's causing; here, he's just a heavily made-up Christopher Eccleston visibly counting down the days until he can finally cash that check.
"I used to be on Doctor Who, you know."
Walking out of that theater in November 2013, I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing which is probably the last thing you want to be coming out of any movie for the first time. Hemsworth and Hiddleston did predictably good work but a lot of the cast seemed like they didn't want to be there. It was the first time walking out of a Marvel movie where I wasn't particularly excited for what would come next and, honestly, it's still the only time that's happened so far. Little did I know, after having seen how uninspired things could go, I would see its stratospheric heights next.

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