[trackercowe]

Just wanted to start a thread so we can avoid a bunch of spoilers in the recommendation thread.

I just want to say first off that I really liked the movie. It was a very earnest effort by everyone involved, and I thought for a Thor movie it was pretty great. Thor the character has never been all that compelling, and the comic series does not come close to matching the best out there. So really considering the best Thor has to offer would be an 8/10 compared to other series, I would say the same applies to the movies. It's always going to be difficult for Thor movies to top what can be done in Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, and even the Hulk if done right.

Even with this in mind I would still rate Dark World as the third best Marvel movie yet only behind Iron Man and The Avengers. It surpassed my expectations going in, and was far better than the mediocre effort that was Iron Man 3.

It sort of combined Star Trek with Game of Thrones, which was kind of awesome. Not everything worked of course, as they needed to compact a rather expansive plot into only two hours. Although I did actually love the comedic style the movie had, something that didn't work for me in Iron Man 3. Then of course there were some great performances from Hiddleston, Elba, and Skarsgård. Hemsworth fills Thor's Mjölnir nicely, and I even liked Eccleston as the villain. They kind of hamstrung Portman into the plot initially, but at least she didn't become a silly powerful character like Paltrow did in Iron Man.

I also quite liked the climax, and thought it was quite creative in what they were able to pull off. Even the cameo was far superior to the one in Iron Man 3. Also quite happy that they decided not to kill off Loki, as they need to keep Hiddleston in this series going forward.

Then of course there is the after credit sequence with The Collector. The last person I would trust with anything is Benico Del Toro, but at least this means we'll be getting Thanos soon enough (Avengers 3 I assume).

As usual some probably won't like the movie if they're sick of superhero movies. But Dark World was a mood nice change from the somewhat joyless entries of Wolverine and Man of Steel.

Really want to give the movie a 4.5, but I'll probably keep at as a 4 for now because of how they forced Portman into the battle in Asgard. Happy that they killed off Renee Russo though, never been a fan of hers.