Egad, the gods!

Titans are clashing all around the movie world these days and I swear to the gods that none of it has any sense to it.

What are we supposed to make of a story that would not have even gotten started if it weren’t for a bunch of kids in an abandoned London parkade who accidentally discovered a kind of wormhole through realms of existence?

It’s gobbledygook, yes, and it requires a convincing Macguffin. Hitchcock described this term to mean as an item or whatever serves to compel the plot forward. In Thor: The Dark World, the Macguffin is a mysterious vapour called the Aether.

A long time ago, Odin’s (Anthony Hopkins) father and Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) grandfather, Bor, fought and won a battle with Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), a dark elf who wanted to use the Aether to destroy the universe and turn all matter into dark matter. Bor vanquished the Elves (or so he thought) and encapsulated the dangerous substance into a stone prison.

If it weren’t for those meddling British kids …

Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), at the behest of her intern Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), is summoned to this parkade where she slips through a portal into another realm of existence. It just so happens to be the same realm where the Aether’s prison is. She gets infected by it and that’s bad news for her and everyone in the universe. The Elves come out of retirement, track her down, and resume Plan A.

Herein lies a major problem or two. The Dark Elves are presumably residents of the aforementioned universe. Destroying said universe would, I’m guessing, destroy themselves.

Problem 2: the Aether seems to be unreliable. Why does it wait until Foster drops by? It could just as easily have wafted out of the big obvious crack in the prison and wreaked havoc from the get-go. It doesn’t summon the Elves or slip out unnoticed (there aren’t any guards). It remains passive until the incredibly unlikely series of events that all began with those British kids doing something incredibly unlikely all on their own.

This is how comic books work, it seems: nothing needs to make sense. They only need to happen in order for the characters to get from A to B to C. Who cares if the reasoning falters even within the movie’s own logic? The more incomprehensible the movie is, the easier it is for these points to slip by. And besides, if Thor gets to throw his hammer around every five minutes then our attention will easily be diverted, popcorn spilling into our laps as we regale in his combat, the special effects of his battles like stars in our eyes blinding us from what would otherwise baffle us.

I could go on.

Thor: The Dark World is just another chapter in the ever-broadening Marvel universe of superhero characters and storylines. That universe also includes some bafflingly vacuous love interests like Foster, a young and brilliant astrophysicist with zero personality or charm, a penchant for slapping people, and the most sterling eyelashes. Her hair never loses an iota of salon glamour even after being wrenched through wormhole after wormhole, or even facing death at the hands of Elves or Aether alike.

Thor 2 is a sad crossbreed of the Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars series, with all of the wooden acting, pale dialogue and special effects that you would expect. Even worse, the only enjoyable characters are the kooky sidekick Darcy, the unhinged astrophysicist Erik Selvig (Stellan SkarsgÄşrd), Thor’s mom, Frigga (Rene Russo) or Malekith himself. I’d much rather Thor and Jane got hitched and took an extended vacation in another realm and left the stories we get to watch up to these marvelous supporting characters.