Review Roundup: THOR: THE DARK WORLD-Action Packed or Fallen Flat?

Marvel's Thor: The Dark World continues the big-screen adventures of Thor, The Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself. In the aftermath of Marvel's Thor and Marvel's The Avengers, Thor fights to restore order accross the cosmos...but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe into darkness. To defeat an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor sets upon his most dangerous and personal journey yet, forced into an alliance with the treacherous Loki to save not only his people and those he loves...but our universe itself. (c) Disney

Let's see what the critics have to say...

Justin Chang, Variety: "In the end, that humorous approach is largely the film's saving grace, keeping the action sufficiently lively and diverting that audiences won't recognize how recycled the material is, or how low the stakes feel. Disposable as it may feel at the end of the day, Thor: The Dark World is not without a certain pleasing deftness, from its goofily offhand way of finding scientific explanations for blatantly supernatural phenomena, to the blithe ease with which it sends its characters hopscotching from one dimension to the next. "

Kate Erbland, Film.com: "It's not that the first seventy-five minutes of Thor: The Dark World are bad (although they are), but it's that they're so packed with meaningless exposition and messy action that they actually read as indecipherable. Whole chunks of the film simply fail to make sense, and the required suspension of disbelief effectively robs any emotional engagement audiences could make with the material. When you ask us to treat everything like a trick or a bit of magic or simply a poorly edited piece of film, you're also asking us to disengage with anything that comes with realistic merits. The result is the cinematic equivalent of getting hit on the head by Thor's hammer (painful and confusing)."

Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter: "Nobody gives good sneer like Tom Hiddleston, back once again in the pleather leggings and goat-horned helmet to play bad guy Loki in Thor: The Dark World and pretty much steal the whole show. Amiable hunk Chris Hemsworth may play the title character in this subset of Marvel's meta-Avengers franchise, but this well-intentioned "witless oaf," as his evil foster brother describes him at one point, is practically a guest at his own party here, as scads of new characters and millions of dollars worth of CGI crowd the screen. Most of it pales into insignificance when Loki takes the stage, which isn't often enough given how wildly uneven the sections without him are."

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: "What I enjoyed about the film and what I found annoying nearly canceled each other out, so that after two hours of noise and battle scenes and high-end CGI effects and conversations in the proto-Icelandic dialect of the Svartalfen, or Dark Elves, it almost seemed as if I hadn't had the experience at all, or as if this bewildering jumble of fantasy ingredients really were composed of miscellaneous bits and pieces of other movies I've already seen. Here's what I liked: the nerdy density of the storytelling and the evident respect for the comic-book audience; Hiddleston's irresistibly feminine sneer, and the admixture of regret and diabolical cunning on his face; Idris Elba, even standing still and doing nothing; cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau's spooky, spectral shots of Portman floating in womblike interstellar space, wreathed in tendrils of red goo."

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: "The other secret weapon here is Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon, who was brought in for some uncredited script rewrites. Movies in the Avengers universe have succeeded largely on their willingness to blend light humor into the battle between good and evil, and nowhere is that more essential than in Thor's entries in the series; the overblown grandeur of his world threatens to bog things down with self-seriousness."

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "The occasional charms of "Thor 2" are all about the way Kat Dennings (back again as Jane's intern) deadpans her way through another Armageddon, or Hopkins' stunning final-t consonant enunciation when he bites off the end of the word "birthright." Or Hiddleston's malevolent grin, the mocking face of sibling rivalry. Plenty of fine actors do what they can here amid the digital mayhem and Smashed columns. At times the film appears to have been directed by The Hulk, in a snit."

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: "The first Thor was directed by Kenneth Branagh with an elegant verve that made the special effects at once witty and spectacular. Alan Taylor, who directed this sequel, is a prestige veteran of the small screen (Mad Men, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones), but he brings little of that avid storytelling tightness to The Dark World. The new film sprawls, often with more spirit than reason. And though its images can be exciting (the Oz-like palace of Asgard, airships that glide like daggers), the battles have a videogame medieval dazzle that temporarily heightens the senses, then leaves you numb."

Soren Andersen, Seattle Times: "It's like Star Trek crash-landed in the middle of The Lord of the Rings. So the picture is a mess. But it's kind of a fun mess."

For more info on Thor: The Dark World click here.

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