WARNING: SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! WARNING: SPOILERS!
Thor’s first movie gave you some good laughs, but in this sequel they really upped the comedy, it is downright hilarious most of the time between the awesome actions scenes and narrative drama. Director Alan Taylor beautifully combines royal family sociology, with grandiose sci-fi sights and highly riveting fantasy adventure, giving it a nice Star Wars meets Lord of The Rings feel. Chris Hemsworth returns as The Prince of Asgard and continues to bring that lovable yet fierce charisma of The God of Thunder he has perfectly established in his previous appearances.
I don’t have to tell you that Tom Hiddleston as Loki steals every scene he is in, cause you know going in that he’s going to, and this film continues his arc from enraged brother to would be conqueror to now prisoner then vengeful son to truly sneaky villain.Whereas the new central bad guy Malekith played by Christopher Eccleston I’m sorry to say was a very bland one-note antagonist, I don’t know if it was the make-up effects or the script or a combination of both, but he basically became a background character in the film up until the final fight, the writers really missed an opportunity to make Malekith an insane and threatening nemesis here. I am glad there was a secondary bad guy in the form of the henchman Kurse brought to life by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, it was nice seeing Thor trading blows with an equally strong opponent, I would love see him be made as a highly detailed Marvel Select figure.
I've said it before, no other actor other then Anthony Hopkins could bring the proper gravitas to Odin, he just naturally gives off the right amount of that fatherly and kingly radiance you would expect from The All-Father. Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster is given a little bit more to do this time around, but only because they made her a plot device for over half the movie, while characters like The Warriors Three and Lady Sif each get a great moment to shine but still only appear on screen just as much as they did in the previous film if not less. Which leads me to the two things that really bugged me in the movie, which was Tadanobu Asano's Hogun was only seen at the very beginning of the movie and then never seen again, and that the actor for Fandral was changed from Josh Dallas to Zachary Levi, I understand Josh was busy with a TV series, but I think he was the perfect Fandral and is a real shame he couldn't return for the sequel.
Idris Elba’s Heimdall is given a particularly badass scene showing he can do far more than just stand around watching the universe that was fricking awesome to see on the big screen. Speaking of seeing and hearing epicness in a movie theater, seeing Benicio Del Toro as The Collector and hearing mention of the Infinity Stones in the mid-credit scene, a goddamn Elder of The Marvel Universe, and the movie version of The Infinity Gems blows the Tesseract reveal from Thor 1 out of the water. Marvel Studios is expanding their Cinematic Universe with every new film, starting with the Thanos tease at the end of The Avengers, now dropping in Infinity Stones, and the upcoming Guardians of The Galaxy movie I think they are starting to set up their Phase 3 plans with I’m starting to believe is gonna cumulate in a Infinity Gauntlet/Infinity War movie that’s going to replace The Avengers as every Marvel loving comic book geek's holy grail super hero movie.
