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| Thor: The Dark Age Directed by Alan Taylor and James Gunn Three Stars |
Alan Taylor’s and James Gunn’s “Thor: The Dark World”, the
latest in the Marvel movie ponzi scheme, is the big, dumb comic book movie we
deserve. Make of that what you will. I’ve maintained that the first “Thor” was
the most turgid and listless of the Marvel superhero movies, and the most
emblematic of the Marvel marketing con, wherein each Marvel movie seems to
exist merely to sell the next Marvel movie. Marvel, Marvel, Marvel. The machine
has been effective, but most individual installments don’t have the foundation
to stand independently of the others. Each film is propping up the next, and
the system barrels forward with an ever-more perilous pace of bar-raising
spectacle. Given the momentum, “The Dark World”, with its bumbling,
Shakespearian, Hammer-wielding barbarian, behaves like the proverbial bull in a
china shop, and the effect is weirdly satisfying.