Thor: Dark World (5 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, released in November 2013. I had my doubts about the film at first, but after repeated viewing it's grown on me, and I now consider it to be one of the best MCU films.

The Stan Lee cameo scene lasts for 56 seconds, but we only see him for the last eight seconds. Dr. Erik Selvig was arrested for running through the Stonehenge stones naked. I'm not certain that a person would really be arrested for that. There are a lot of hippies who congregate at Stonehenge, especially on the summer solstice, so I expect that nudity is common at Stonehenge. Dr. Selvig is being held by the police for psychological evaluation. In this scene we see him holding a lecture on the upcoming convergence of the nine worlds to the other inmates.

Dr. Selvig uses two shoes to demonstrate how the convergence will take place. The light coloured shoe was borrowed from one of his listeners: Stan Lee. In the cameo Stan asks if he can have his shoe back.

Other reviewers have written in more detail about the notes written on the blackboard, because they're an interesting mix of scientific theories and Marvel mythology. I'll just point out three small details:

In the centre we have the tree Yggdrasil, which connects the nine realms (of which only eight are shown).

Above the tree we see the label "616 Universe", referring to Marvel's current habit of calling the main Marvel Universe Earth-616. I wonder how Dr. Selvig came up with this magic number.

In the bottom right there's a sketch of the Nexus of All Reality. This is the cosmic portal guarded by the Man-Thing. There was a film about the Man-Thing made in 2005, but it didn't include any references to the Nexus. It would be good to have a second film about the Man-Thing set within the MCU.

This is the company that Stan Lee is keeping. I wonder why he was arrested. Maybe it's because he's been accused of impersonating Larry King and Hugh Hefner.

There's some smart product placement in the film. Here's Darcy Lewis with an empty Vimto can. It's well known in the UK, but how many people from other parts of the world have tasted Vimto? It's delicious.

Here are more typical British products: Shreddies and McVities Digestive Biscuits. Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) is more interested in Kat Dennings' chest. That's understandable. I'd stare at any girl with a 34DD chest, and since she's only 5'3" her breasts look even bigger.

I mentioned in my review of "Thor" that the hammer Mjolnir isn't extremely heavy. It can't be picked up because of a magic spell, but it's still light enough to be hung in a coat rack.

Once more, Tom Hiddleston's performance as Loki is overwhelming. However evil he might be, he's a tortured soul, and we can't help feeling sympathetic when his words are emphasised by his sorrowful face.

When Loki laughs mischievously we laugh with him instead of worrying what he's laughing about.

Kat Dennings has a beautiful smile as well, although I suspect it's her real smile, not something she put on for the film. It's beautiful enough to tear my eyes away from her chest. Briefly.

I love the pictures shown at the end, during the final credits. They're the sort of pictures I'd like to frame and put on my wall. It's a shame that most of the pictures are covered with text.

When the film was released I read comments in a newspaper saying that it wasn't like a normal superhero film. Whoever wrote that is ignorant of Thor's origins in the comic created by Stan Lee. All of his other heroes were new creations. Thor was an adaptation of existing legends. His modernisation of the old Norse myths is one of his greatest successes. This gave the Thor comics a slightly different style to the other comics, resulting in a different type of film, but all of Stan Lee's comics were original. I'm still waiting for a big screen adaptation of Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan. That will be a very different type of superhero film.

Success Rate:  + 1.8

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