You know the state of Natalie news is dire when Dazza asks one of his minions to post the unfocused forum mini-review she wrote on her lunch break on the main page. 😛 If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry about spoilers. It’s been almost two months since Thor: The Dark World was released in theaters, so that should probably give you an idea of how excited I was to go see it. Brace yourself for my enthusiasm.

I went in with fairly low expectations, and I hate to say I was still kind of unimpressed. The story was half-baked, the action scenes were generic and unremarkable, the camp was over the top, and the whole thing felt overly long despite the frentic pace. Belerofonte nailed what I was scratching my head over in his review: one of Thor: The Dark World‘s biggest problems is that it feels like a condensed version of a grander tale. The film also struggled to find a good balance between being silly and serious (the first Thor movie did this much more successfully). One of my big gripes with Thor is reversed in its sequel. This time, everything set on Earth really worked for me, but Asgard fell flat. I found myself losing interest when Thor and Loki weren’t onscreen, which was entirely too often. Mads Mikkelsen really dodged a bullet, because the villain was lame, lame, lame. And the lukewarm romance between Thor and Jane was still pretty lame, too. Maybe the romance would have worked if Natalie and Chris Hemsworth had any onscreen chemistry (they don’t), but I’m betting it would have still felt really awkward and forced. Unlike the other Marvel movies, there are too many characters on the canvas and just not enough time to focus on all of them. Characterization was either an afterthought or left on the cutting room floor. This is a superhero movie after all.

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