Chris Hemsworth Jokingly Pushes Brother Liam at 'Thor' Premiere
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, Rene Russo and Stellan Skarsgard. Directed by Alan Taylor. Opens Nov. 8. See Star listings for theatres and show times. 112 minutes. PG
“At least pretend to enjoy yourself!” concerned father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) commands über-serious son Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in Thor: The Dark World.
Sage advice, if not very Norse or godly, and it also applies to viewers of this messy Marvel superhero sequel. Abundant laughter saves the picture from thudding like the Thunder God’s hammer.
When we last left our long-tressed champ, he was busily proving his worth to his eye-patched papa and winsome mama (Rene Russo), engaging in sibling rivalry with his jealous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and frustrating his Earthling lover Jane (Natalie Portman), a sexy but needy astrophysicist.
Thor wants love but he needs to save the universe, or rather the Norse Nine Realms, which includes adopted home Earth and his heavenly crib Asgard, a gaudy place resembling a giant church pipe organ.
Round Two ups the stakes, although they’ve been enlarged into incoherence by a committee-written script, sludgy CGI and flatlined 3D.
The main bad guys are the surly Dark Elves, led by withered cocoon dweller Malekith (Christopher Eccleston). They all reside in the hellhole Svartalfheim, a name that could win you triple Scrabble points, but it’s a good basement in which to get hammered.
The elves are bummed because their eternal dark was invaded by light, which has to be the weirdest grievance ever for anything other than a mushroom. They’ve been biding their time for eons, waiting for a Nine Realms alignment called the Convergence where they can cause mischief. They have access to an all-powerful red mojo called the Aether, which — wouldn’t you just know it? — gets loose and troublesome.
Got all that? Doesn’t matter if you do, because what saves The Dark World isn’t the blows-up-good plot but a wicked sense of fun, a series trait director Alan Taylor wisely continues from Kenneth Branagh’s original film.
Taylor and Hemsworth both know that Thor is the goofiest of all Marvel superheroes, so they play him for laughs while keeping the film just this side of parody. That leather strap on the bottom of Thor’s hammer? It’s just the thing for hanging it on a coat hook in Jane’s London apartment.
We also get more of delightfully bad Loki, this time with more sass and less smarm. He and Thor comically combine forces, clumsily confiscating an enemy jet that looks like a giant safety razor (Gillette really missed a product placement opportunity). Even gods need flying lessons.
Odin’s “enjoy yourself” decree proves infectious. Kat Dennings again summons a Miley Cyrus vibe as Jane’s cheeky intern, showing up this time with her own intern in tow. And Stellan Skarsgård’s brainy scientist Erik Selvig gamely goes in for a script absurdity that has him running naked through Stonehenge.
Alan Taylor is best known as a TV director, for such shows as Game of Thrones, Mad Men and The Sopranos. But he started as a filmmaker, and his 1995 first feature Palookaville starred Vincent Gallo, Adam Trese and William Forsythe as hapless thieves who think they’re breaking into a jewelry store but end up in a bakery instead.
So they make the best of it and just steal doughnuts. A lot of that kind of loopy spirit can be found in The Dark World.
And speaking of loopy, stick around for not one but two end-credit codas, one of which really should have been the movie’s proper ending.
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