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Sunday, February 09, 2014

Thor: The Dark World

You watch the Thor sequel because, well, it’s a blockbuster and everyone likes a blockbuster, even if you did not like the first film. And in the process, you learn to derive small pleasures out of a loud, clunky actioner with characters and situations that make no real sense.

Thus, you love Thor: The Dark World in bits — Loki’s screams and his shapeshifting skills, especially when he turns into Captain America for a bit, his verbal exchanges with his half-brother hero Thor on a flying boat, and mostly whenever Tom Hiddleston is on screen. Then there is Dr Erik Selvik in various states of undress and you know stellan Skarsgard can be charming. There’s the intern’s intern who keeps insisting that his name is Ian. There’s Jane Forster’s unsuccessful suitor Richard. There’s the gorgeous Idris Elba with his catlike, all-seeing eyes. There’s Rene Russo as the queen, who gets a tiny action sequence of her own and she is great in it.

And above all, there is Kat Dennings as Darcy, the clueless intern of the super-smart heroine. Dennings brings a peculiar-kind of humour to his character and how she reacts to the mayhem going-on around is actually worth more than the mayhems themselves. In short, she steals the scene whenever she is in one. Action blockbusters are usually cruel to the minor characters. Despite this, it is to the credit to the actors and the film itself that it is they who make the proceedings interesting, not the plot itself.

The plot itself is the same. The bad guys want to destroy the world, not only our worlds, but the Nine Realms of the Thor (Marvel) universe, including Asgard and the good guys must fight tooth and nail to thwart the plan. You have seen this a thousand times. You have seen those sleek-looking alien-ships, here steered by a race called Dark Elf. What’s new is a CGI-generated substance called Aether and Ether. Whatever.

You know how it all ends.

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