MCU Retrospective, Part 9—"Thor: The Dark World"
In this weekly series, Film Yap writer Andrew Carr revisits each installment of the decade-long Marvel Cinematic Universe. Once a week, Andrew will review one film in the series, in the original release order, reevaluating his previously held opinion of the film and giving each film a new score out of 5 Yaps. All 18 films (plus Avengers: Infinity War, upon release) will be compiled into one definitive ranking. Each entry in the "MCU Retrospective" series will include a short review as well as a historical recap about the film's initial conception and release.
A new entry in this series will be posted every Sunday until the weekend prior to the release of Avengers: Infinity War on May 4.
Last week's entry in the series: Black Panther!
Complete list of all entries in the "MCU Retrospective" series!
History Time!
After Iron Man 3, it was time for the MCU to return to one of its least loved properties: Thor. In an attempt to garner interest, the stakes were raised this time around. It wasn't just some little New Mexico town getting demolished by a giant magical robot while Thor tried to find his way home. This time, the universe was on the line, threatened by the "Dark Elves." In addition, marketing for The Dark World seemed to promise a much grimmer tone, and the potential of heavy casualties. The first trailer featured Thor, lying defeated on the ground screaming, "No!" in desperation. Might Jane or Loki die? The heavy tone of the trailer got fans excited for this turn with the God of Thunder.
Unfortunately, when it released, the film received backlash partially for its over-reliance on humor—an unexpected approach, given the darker advertising. It was also labeled another Avengers mimic, given its generic world destruction plot. While not hated, the film received mixed reviews from critics, landing at a franchise-low (to this day) Metacritic score of 54 out of 100. Fans today seem to forget it ever happened (or at least they try to). So how does it fare now? Was time kind to The Dark World? Or should it be buried in the darkest depths of the universe?
The Review
THOR: THE DARK WORLD (2013)
I was kind of dreading my latest viewing of this movie. I've long stood by the idea that Marvel Studios has yet to make a bad movie, and so far in this “Retrospective” series, that has held up, to me. Marvel's worst film so far, Thor, still earned itself a mediocre review (not bad, but rather, an unfortunate mix of good and bad).
But one of the most agreed upon stances among MCU fans is that Thor is at least better than its miserable mess of a younger brother, The Dark World. TDW is commonly referred to as the worst or one of the worst MCU films, and typically isn't mentioned unless in the punchline of a joke. So when I found the first Thor to be utterly middling, it came as a bad omen about TDW’s fate.
Personally, I've been kind of all over the place with this film. When it first came out, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved seeing Loki back in the anti-hero role; the Asgardian family drama was done pretty well, and got more focus than it did in the first film; we got a better look at Asgard’s society and beautiful sights. It had some obvious flaws, but I still thought it was another solid entry. With a little more time and another viewing, TDW would falter a little bit in my eyes. The insistence on spending time with Jane Foster & Friends threw a wrench in the more interesting stuff on Asgard; Thor’s glorious home was repeatedly interrupted by boring scenes in boring London; the oversaturation of juvenile comedy clashed with the “doom and gloom” world-ending plot (and the especially grim tone projected by the marketing). I began to understand why people thought it was such an ugly movie, and over time, I conceded to the popular opinion that it was, in fact, a lesser film than its predecessor. And that's pretty much where I've stayed ever since.
However…
Upon review, I think The Dark World is unfairly remembered, though I do understand why. I believe the general shrug of indifference directed at this film comes from one main issue: its lack of ambition. Or perhaps, rather, its ambition to be more of the “same” that fans expected after the colossal success and influence of The Avengers. People like to criticize Iron Man 3 for trying to be The Avengers all over again in its finale, except with just Iron Man instead of the whole team. I think that's totally unfounded and superficial. I find The Dark World to be the true perpetrator of that offense. Just two movies after Loki threatened world peace and society on Earth as we know it, TDW decides to up the conflict to—wait for it—universal destruction. In a solo movie. Not only that, but the film finds a ham-fisted way to center that universe-spanning conflict where? Right here, conveniently on Earth. The primary plot and central conflict simply falls flat on its face, having slipped on the proverbial banana peel that is its main villain, Malekith, Lord of the Dark Elves, and also a living being constructed entirely of flavorless Jell-O (or at least that's what he feels like to watch).
And if your film's central conflict is that flimsy, is there any way it can still be good?
I think so. It won't be perfect—or in this case, even great—by any means, but I think there is both plenty of entertainment and plenty of valuable character work done in The Dark World that gets forgotten in the dreary haze of bland villains, world destruction, and London fog (the climatological phenomenon, not the brand). I'll start with the film's greatest strength: Loki.
In a role reversal from his previous outing in The Avengers, Loki now finds himself at the center of sympathy, as TDW shuffles off the “I'm evil just because it's fun” motive that Loki adopted in The Avengers and returns to the neglected and misunderstood second child that we saw in the first Thor. Early in the film, we see Loki is still a momma’s boy, proving that what he wants more than anything is respect and appreciation from someone he looks up to.
When Thor—desperately trying to hold Asgard together in the wake of a surprise attack from the Dark Elves—offers Loki a chance at vengeance for ***SPOILERS: his mother's death at the hands of Malekith***, it seems Loki will now finally have a righteous cause to fight for: love. This is only made more interesting by the insane twists and turns—the betrayals and un-betrayals—that follow in Thor’s and Loki’s subsequent adventure together. It's honestly a really well done character arc for Loki that even bleeds over into effective work for Thor himself.
I want to list the other things I really like about The Dark World, that everyone seems to misremember or forget entirely, before I move on and concede to the film's myriad of issues:
Seeing more of Asgard and the other realms is fun and helps pull the viewer into the experience
Asgard is gorgeous; I know this movie was criticized for being ugly, and the sequences on Earth certainly are. But Asgard remains as beautiful, and in fact even visually richer and more developed, as it was in the first film.
Odin’s flawed and selfish parenting helps build Thor into the person we want to see him become, and it sets up well for the revelations about him in Ragnarok.
Just kind of the set and production design in general; both Asgard and the Dark Elves’ stuff look beautiful, terrifying, and unique. It's unfortunate that the Dark Elves were so poorly used.
The Loki-related twists and turns on Svartalfheim, which I mentioned earlier, are an emotional roller coaster. I can still remember being stunned in the theatre by all the mischief Loki concocts.
Heimdall, oh Heimdall. You badass.
The portal-jumping fight between Thor and Malekith is pretty fun, even if the drama and tension is gone and I've pretty much checked out of the conflict by that point.
Finally, we can't forget Loki turning into Captain America—possibly the best cameo and piece of fan-service in any MCU film outside of Thanos showing up at the end of The Avengers.
If you don't remember The Dark World in the best light, maybe that list will jog your memory to some of the things the movie truly does right, and I hope it makes you want to give it another chance. I say “hope” because now I'm going to talk about everything wrong with it. Here are my biggest issues:
Jane & Friends. I didn't like Jane in the first film, as you know from reading my entry about Thor in this series, and I certainly don't like her now. Fortunately, I think The Dark World improved on her role in the movie (mostly by giving her less screen time), but she's still a weak point. Additionally, her friend Darcy gets even more pointless and annoying. Darcy even gets her own pointless and annoying sidekick, as if one wasn't already too much. Dr. Selvig, a kind-of father figure and protector of Jane in Thor, is now a loony mad scientist played for crazy jokes. Admittedly, some of them are funny, but it's just kind of irritating to have 3 comic relief characters, all tied to the same subplot.
Malekith. He's just lame. He barely speaks in the movie. He's an ambiguous, ancient evil force with no personality. The comic book character is eccentric, devious, and flamboyant; what happened to that? To make it worse, Malekith’s character design goes from decent to “what am I looking at?” after Thor fries his face with a lightning bolt and he grows into a giant version of himself, Power Rangers-style.
The whole third act, really. The best part of the movie, Thor and Loki’s misadventure, gets wrapped up with 20 or 30 minutes left in the film. We're left with a combination of the dry world-ending conflict and Darcy and Selvig’s relentless pseudoscience subplot.
Some of the comedy, not just with Darcy, but also with Thor and Loki, is a little stiff and awkwardly written. It mostly works, but it goes too far in a few places.
The reason I went to a bulleted pro/con list style right there is because I realize how much of a mixed bag The Dark World is. Much like its predecessor, it constantly alternates between stuff that works and stuff that doesn't, almost as though two very different filmmakers were competing to make the movie at the same time, shoving each other out of the way to control the scene like resentful brothers over an arcade game.
That said, I think The Dark World wins out over Thor—even if just barely—for a couple reasons:
TDW is simply more fun to watch. There's more going on, more locations, more action, more characters being developed, etc. While it has its plot threads and characters that don't work, it simply lands better because it has other successful dynamics to fall back on. In the first Thor, you were stuck with two options: the sappy Thor and Jane stuff in New Mexico, or the Shakespearean family drama on Asgard. The Asgard stuff was mostly pretty decent, but it played second fiddle to the much weaker New Mexico plotline.
TDW also fleshes out what Thor just sort of scratched the surface of. It shows us more of Thor’s world, and his family and friends. It also builds on his and Loki’s relationship. In the end, I understand why someone would like the first Thor better. It certainly aspires to be something greater, via Kenneth Branagh's classical style, where The Dark World is content to just be another middle chapter on the way to the next Avengers movie. But ambition does not always equal results, and I felt the first Thor's failings much more harshly. It may have had higher highs, but it's lows really sank it. The Dark World may be somewhat lazy, but I think it holds more value than most people care to remember. It's not one of Marvel's better ones, but it's still a good time.
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The MCU Ranking!
Every week, I'll take each entry covered for that week and place it in an ongoing ranking, which will eventually include all 19 films.
Fortunately for him (I guess?), the mighty Thor managed not to dethrone himself from the seat of "Worst MCU movie." Below is my current ranking of the MCU, including the first seven films: