This review is about a month late but I didn’t want to be in a crowded theater to watch Thor: The Dark World the sequel to Thor and a follow-up to The Avengers.

The events of the latter is only referenced a few times but not essential to the plot of the latest Thor movie.

The basic premise of the film is that the villain of the piece, Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), a Dark Elf who has a major beef with Asgardians, in particular Odin’s father, Bor. The film begins with Odin (Anthony Hopkins) narrating Malekith thirst for power and revenge where he developed some sort of liquid weapon called Aether that would destroy that nine realms. The gist is that Bor wins this battle and buries the power of the Aether.

Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is trying to move on from Thor and is out on a date with a nice English chap (Chris O’Dowd – in a funny performance) when Darcy (Kat Dennings) interrupts her date with some out of this world readings. This intrigues her and off they go around London to investigate these readings. When they get to this warehouse, kids show them what they have discovered, it seems that objects disappear and reappear through some portal with some objects not coming back.

Jane gets sucked into one of these portals and discovers the Aether and gets infected with it. Malekith gets awaken and plots his revenge. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to Earth when he sense Jane in trouble and takes her back to Asgard.

A lot of stuff happens like Malekith’s henchman invading the prisons to create havoc, Malekith seeking Jane so he can get the Aether, a significant character dies and Thor needs Loki’s (now a prisoner) help in defeating Malekith.

Part of their plan is to go to the Dark World and just when you think Loki (Tom Hiddleston) betrayed Thor, the two “brothers” work together to try and stop Malekith and his Dark Elf army. However, Loki [spoiler] dies.

Anyways, Malekith invades Greenwich and Jane and Thor return to Earth and work to defeat him with the help of Darcy, Ian the Intern (Jonathan Howard) and Eric Selvig (Stellan Starsgaard), who has gone a bit crazy after what happened to him in The Avengers.

Malekith basically wants to use an event called Convergence to destroy the nine galaxies of the world in which Earth and Asgard are two of them.

Of course, if you’ve seen the last two episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. you know that Earth is saved.

Afterwards, Jane wonders when she will see Thor again and while on Asgard, Thor tells his dad that he doesn’t want to be king but wants to be with Jane. Odin seems to grant that request but he soon disappears and we then see [spoiler] Loki in his place.

I didn’t stay for the post-credit scenes, but if you read the Wikipedia entry of the movie, it details what happened. The mid-credit scene apparently sets us up for Guardians of the Galaxy.

What I really loved about Thor: The Dark World is actually all the humor in it. I loved Kat Dennings as Darcy. She really brought much needed comic relief. I really looked forward to the scenes in London because I knew that I would be LMAO. And I did. My favorite scene is when Thor goes to Jane’s London apartment and hangs his hammer as if he was hanging his coat.

However, I though the overall story and the whole Aether that drove the plot, a bit convoluted and drawn out. And while I love Zachary Levi, I thought that he was miscast in this part but I think I felt the same with Josh Dallas, who played his part in the first Thor. I just think that those two weren’t right for the part. I kept on think “Oh there is Chuck” when Fandral came on screen.

Natalie Portman was fine as Jane but I find Jane to be a bit boring as a superhero love interest. Plus, I personally still think of her as Padme from the prequel Star Wars trilogy. But at least Thor is no Anakin.

I liked the special effects of stuff going between alien worlds and Hemsworth was good as Thor and Tom Hiddleston chewed his scenery well as Loki.

As the second film in Marvel’s phase 2, it is not so bad but just like Iron Man 3 the humor and not the action is what I will remember most.