It’s a grim time for big-screen superheroes. Rebooted
versions of Superman and Spider-Man both have daddy issues. Tony Stark has
PTSD. Wolverine kinda wants to die. So it’s a relief to watch Thor: The Dark World, which is the
lightest, funniest superhero movie in ages. Let a thunder-god show you how to
make a joyful noise.
Minor spoilers ahead…
Actually, if you’re worried about being spoiled for Thor 2, the clips below (all released by
the studio) give away much, much more than this review will. I’m including them
because they give a flavor of what this film is like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Vw1Lzbh2I
Ostensibly, Thor: The
Dark World is about a Dark Elf named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) who
wants to extinguish all light in the universe because he’s still pissed about
the Big Bang or something. (This is the highest stakes of any Marvel film thus
far.) Thor’s grandfather stopped him back in the day, but now he’s back.
The relationships
that anchor Thor
But really, Thor 2
is about two relationships: Thor and his step-brother Loki, and Thor and his
physicist girlfriend Jane Foster. Pretty much the whole film revolves around
Thor’s interaction with those two people in his life.
Loki is locked up after his actions in The Avengers, and Thor
has to team up with him to try and stop Malekith, giving us lots of scenes of
the two working through some of their issues. Meanwhile, Jane Foster has been
waiting for Thor to come back after the first movie, and when she goes to
Asgard it’s not clear that the incredibly long-lived Thor can have a relationship
with a mere mortal, or whether she can play an important role in his world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHZu1ZfD72o
Both of these quandaries — whether Loki is just a monster,
whether Jane is just a damsel in distress — are handled with tons of humor.
The writing in Thor 2 is very
self-aware, full of characters commenting on their situations (but nobody ever
winks at the audience or seems less than committed to the reality of the world.)
A lot of this humor was there in the more down-to-earth Thor, too — but this time around, it’s combined with
seat-of-your-pants adventure, giving the whole thing a bit of an “80s
action movie” feel.
Thor: The Dark World
is super funny. It’s one of the funniest movies we’ve seen this year, and it’s
also pretty much non-stop zany action.
To some extent, Thor is the straight man surrounded by wry
jokers — but Chris Hemsworth brings his own understated sort of wisecracking,
as well. And this film doesn’t really need a straight man, as such — at this
point in the collective Marvel movie saga, they’re banking that you’re along
for the ride, even if it gets a bit silly.
Malekith’s plan to snuff out the universe depends on a
convergence of the nine realms, which include Asgard and Earth — and this
convergence weakens the walls of each reality, creating mini-wormholes. These
“anomalies” set up a lot of great sight gags, especially as the film
goes on, but they also help to cement the idea that Thor’s universe is unstable
and that he needs to be strong to hold it together — and that his
relationships with all the characters, not just Loki and Jane, are the fixed
points in Thor’s world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zExHbsYgz4
This movie does a pretty good job of making you feel the
weight of being Thor and having to protect nine realms from quasi-D&D
monstrosities, but also lets you see how the people in Thor’s life give him
strength.
Nope, it’s not
perfect
That said, Thor: The
Dark World isn’t quite my favorite recent movie — the plot really is
completely forgettable, and Christopher Eccleston is basically a non-entity as
Malekith. Anthony Hopkins, too, is barely showing up as Odin, Thor’s father, at
this point. The film might be a little too lightweight for its own good, since
I had to watch a bunch of clips to remind myself of crucial stuff that
happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ61yFJOH7s
And Thor: The Dark
World also feels a little bit meta, at times. Like, this movie knows it’s
the eighth movie in the interconnected Marvel saga, and at this point everybody
knows the drill. Random bystanders all know about Thor from The Avengers and the business of zipping
between different CG-enhanced fantasy worlds feels a little bit like a nod to
the artificiality of it all — as does Loki’s habit of playing with funny illusions,
which at times become allusions to other films.
Superheroes can be
fun without getting Schumacherized
But still, Thor: The
Dark World is the most fun we’ve had at a superhero film in ages. And at a
time when superhero films are gravitating towards Christopher Nolan-style
darkness, it’s really nice to see a movie go swinging into adventure with a
song in its heart. A lot of superhero movie-makers seem to struggle with the
gnawing fear that if they embrace the fun or the four-color brightness of
costumed heroes, the movie will immediately turn into Joel Schumacher’s Batman
and Robin. And Thor: the Dark World (along with bits of Raimi’s Spider-films)
ought to dispel that notion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADMQRLcmMEI
In fact, Thor: The
Dark World is witty, rather than campy. The humor is, if anything,
underplayed — but it’s so funny, it still carries the movie. The
larger-than-life costumes actually work amazingly well with the low-key but
good-natured performances. You don’t need to play big if you’re wearing a giant
helmet, it turns out.
A lot of credit for the movie’s successful embrace of humor
in the midst of larger-than-life
settings and costumes has to go to director Alan Taylor, who uses
his experience on Game of Thrones
to make places like Asgard and the Dark World feel as real as London in the
film. It feels as though Taylor is using CG and handheld cameras in a similar
way to Zack Snyder, but without the same monastic slowness.
https://gizmodo.com/how-game-of-thrones-changed-thor-2s-world-for-the-bett-1460187698
Instead, Thor: The
Dark World is light on its feet. It’s, in some sense, an old-school action
movie, bringing back the fun that’s been missing a lot lately — but it’s also
maybe the way forward for superheroes, showing the path out of darkness.
