Thanks to a bit of good luck and a healthy dose of being related to the right people [1], I was at the Marvel Friends and Family screening of “Thor: The Dark World” yesterday. I know a lot of my friends, and some people I’ve seen on the internet in general, are going into “The Dark World” with fairly low expectations of it based on the first “Thor” film, which existed almost exclusively to explain who Thor is and give Loki a reason to want to take over Earth in “The Avengers”. [2]
Those people are going to be shocked, because “The Dark World” is an awesome movie, you guys. I love it almost as much as I love “The Avengers”, and I’ve seen that more than a dozen times in theaters, so that’s saying something.
I am not going to write a “real” review – I think the above Tweet is more than enough of that – but I do have some quick, spoiler-free thoughts.
- Tom Hiddleston owns this movie. I would be okay with him playing every comic-book villain from here on out, as he’s got the mix of crazy/funny/intense down to a science.
- Unlike other movies with red-caped demigods I can name, “The Dark World” makes a character who should be completely unrelatable and gets you to not only to relate to them, but actively root for them as well. Marvel’s Distinguished Competition should take notes, because this is how you do an invulnerable alien superhero movie.
- How is it that people don’t know by now that you need to stay to the actual end of the credits of a Marvel movie? I was shocked at the number of people who had gotten up before the credits were done, and this was at a showing for Marvel-related people, so you’d think they’d know for crying out loud.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be sitting here waiting anxiously for this to open on Friday so I can go see it again. (And again. And again.)