Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World directed by Alan Taylor, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Rene Russo, Idris Elba, and Kat Dennings.

One thing I've liked about the Marvel movies (if you exclude the terrible Ed Norton Hulk movie) is that despite all of the action woven throughout the movies they always seem to focus on characters and actually let the actors and actresses actually act in the movies.  The Thor sequel is gladly living up to this as the action was fast paced, without being out of control, and weaved themselves through the movie without the story line being servant to the action.  This is a refreshing breath of fresh air from the summer movies that are more dependent on budget, action, and explosions than any form of interesting characters.

I liked how this movie actually let these actors act between themselves and didn't stay shackled to action scenes because the acting scenes were good and really helped to flesh out the characters.  I will say this though Tom Hiddleston's Loki is one of the best characters in the Marvel Movie Universe, hands down, even though he's technically a villain.  Hiddleston brings some very fascinating things to the character of Loki that helps to make him more than just a villain. 

There is a storyline to this movie but that story line is secondary to the expanding of the characters and the Marvel universe, which is fine by me as things are being explored and I'm not just getting a rehash of what had happened previously.  I felt this was the case with the two sequels to the Iron Man movies, which didn't seem to explore new ground and relied way to much of Downey's charisma to get by instead of fully investing in his persona of Tony Stark or exploring that character.  The character of Thor has grown from his experiences of the first Thor movie and the Avengers movie, it was fun to watch his character change from these experiences instead of remaining the same character.  Even Loki was affected differently from those movies as well.  It was a blast seeing him helping Thor out and the way that transpired was inspired without feeling forced.  I also believe there's something in Chris Hemsworth contract that for every movie he's in, he has to have at least one scene where his shirt is off - and yes that scene is here in the movie for all of the girls out there. 

All and all it was one of the better sequels of the Marvel Movies, at least much better than the Iron Man sequels, whose story lines always seemed shackled to the actions scenes and world never seemed expanded or explore but more of the same, same.