[Seven pages of frantic key smashing later…]
I will keep myself pretty spoiler free for now. There is SO MUCH MORE I want to say, but I need to think, and not have two extremely generous beers flowing through my bloodstream, and see this movie a few more times before I can reach Pacific Rim levels of nerdly overthinking.
As usual for these kinds of movies, there is a MacGuffin. And it’s a silly MacGuffin, though not quite to the level of red matter thank goodness. But the McGuffin really doesn’t matter in the slightest. What matters is that this movie is having fun. And you get to have fun with it. The Dark World filled me with Nutella-flavored glee.
And it’s pretty. Oh gosh is it pretty. And so much snark. So, so much snark. This is the movie I wanted in every way.
I’d actually started getting worried that it would be a bit too much Loki (yes, I do believe there is such a thing despite the fact that he’s my favorite You Little Shit of a character ever) just considering the released footage and the fact that you literally cannot turn around without seeing Tom Hiddleston promoting the movie, to the point that it would almost be a bit creepy if he weren’t an adorable life model decoy made out of sunshine, curly blond hair, and swan-murder. But no. The amount of Loki is perfect and viciously jocund.
And Jane is most excellent. Have I mentioned I like Jane? Because science. This movie finally made me buy Thor/Jane, which I appreciate after being left in such a state of Meh after the first movie. Jane got to be the smart, strong in her own way character I always wanted her to be.
Really, I don’t have a lot of complaints other than I would have always loved more. At least we got a bit of time with all of the side characters. (Darcy-senpai!) They did the best they could cramming that much awesome into 112 minutes. The movie definitely didn’t feel that long, which is always a very good sign. The only reason I knew time was passing as such were the increasingly plaintive signals of distress coming from my bladder. (I did mention the two generous beers thing, yes?) And it had a bonus unexpected mini-heist movie right in the middle because why the hell not. Really, I’d love to see a bit more genre play like that, it was fun.
And there are some excellent cameos that made me repeatedly slap my housemate’s leg but it’s okay she still likes me anyway. If you liked the first Thor, I have little doubt you’ll like this one even more. Because this movie is honestly more fun, and determined in that special way Marvel movies have mastered to be a motherfucking comic book movie, exuberant and larger than life and unabashedly cheesey.
Stay all the way to the end of the credits. All the way. There are two extra scenes. (Marvel, this is getting a bit silly, when will it end?)