So, having finally caught up with Thor 2 I thought I’d give a few comments. Not many mind, because there’s not much to say.

I’ve maintained that the problem with the Marvel films is that they are never trying for greatness. They’re very safe. So you’ll rarely get something amazing (I think Avengers was close) but you’ll also never get a total car crash. Well, for me Thor 2 was as close to a car crash as they’ve gotten. The first film wasn’t great but it had it’s charms. Thor being the fish out of water was silly but a lot of fun. In the sequel Jane takes on that role and…let’s just say it doesn’t work as well as the first film.

Jane and Natalie’s performance is a real problem here. At one point she literally falls asleep in the middle of the action, and the drop off in presence from wake to asleep was barely negligible. Natalie looks so so bored, the kind of blankness of performance that reminds me of Star Wars. And when she’s not bored she’s acting like a 16 year old. I happened to see a scene of Natalie as a 13 year old Marty in Beautiful Girls on the same day and that little girl character feels more mature and 3 dimensional in just a couple minutes than all the Jane Foster scenes put together. I know the Thor films are these huge scale “epic” adventures, but just a handful of scenes like that would really raise the stakes in the big moments. Instead we get an important character dying but we’ve never had even half a real moment with them in either film, so it feels empty. All sizzle, no steak.

There were a couple decent action beats and the final action set piece has a creative angle that helped make it feel a little bit more fresh than the stock standard city devastation.