Though I think there are some minor hiccups for Thor The Dark World, I'm confident to say that anyone can enjoy it as it is.  But since a lot of us enjoys some little bashing, I will try to enumerate some of the things that makes Thor: the Dark World a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

The Good


Asgard is bigger than ever. One thing that makes the first movie very memorable is the depiction of Asgard.  If you think Asgard is gorgeous in the first movie, this sequel makes it breathtaking.  And it doesn't end in Asgard as the production design stretches its muscles to the other realms across Yggdrasil.  Though we didn't see much of some the realms, they did a good job on giving them distinct designs.


Fight scenes are bad ass.  The other realms are constantly threatening peace on every realms leaving Asgard as the one who maintains peace.  So we got to see a lot of war scenes and they are bigger now.  Alan Taylor sure knows how to handle such scenes and they are quite effective.  The fight scenes becomes more interesting and exciting. 

Real Sets, Real Action.  A departure from the first film, Thor The Dark World now uses more real sets for Asgard and the other realms.  In the first film, Midgard/Earth is the only one who uses real location shoots.  But now, the world beyond ours gets an organic treatment with real trees, real soil and real rocks exploding in background as the actors fight for their lives. 


Actors are superb.  No questions to this.  Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman.  Such names already proved their worth in the business and they are still proving it everytime they do movies like this.  Thor The Dark World maybe just one of those superhero movies we watch, but the acting chops we get from the cast are definitely high end.

The Bad

The story telling is all over the place.  Yes we get the main plot but I find it a little annoying how the story unfolds.  It is like I'm watching a TV serial which in my taste don't really work on a feature film.  And the reason is probably because ...


There are too many elements to handle.  Other than the main story that revolves around Malekith and the Dark Elves, there are more elements present in the plot that congest the film's overall story.  We got  Jane looking for ways to contact Thor, Sif trying to win Thor from Jane, the family issues between the members of House of Odin, we also got Erik Selvig's slow descent to madness and of course they still managed to inject the funny girl Darcy.  Of course as expected not all of this elements can be resolved in less than 2 hours so what happened?  Some of the characters are just dropped.  Yes, most of them just vanished in the background.  It really breaks my heart that some of them didn't shine on this film as much as they are in the first movie.  And this leads to an  Uninspired and weak presentation of roles.

In the end, in my opinion Thor The Dark World steps up to a new level from its predecessor for giving us a stunning and beautiful world.  They just need to look for a better scribe that can write a more solid and appealing script. We need all those characters back on the spotlight.  I know the movie is titled Thor but it doesn't mean that the movie should be all about him alone.

Now showing in Philippine cinemas, Thor: The Dark World is from Marvel Studios, distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International through Columbia Pictures.