I enjoyed Thor: The Dark World. I didn’t love it. But I enjoyed it. If you don’t want to read HEAVY SPOILERS, then stop reading now. The movie stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo, Stellen Skarsgard, among others.

First what I liked: The special effects are what you would expect from a Marvel movie. Very well done. The worlds look magical, the costumes are incredible and the monsters sufficiently ugly.

The humor is also on full display. Kat Dennings stills the scenes she is in and Tom Hiddleston as Loki is by far the most entertaining person in the movie. His one liners, accompanied by his Cheshire Cat grin, make you want to pull for one of our favorite bad guys.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor looks and sounds the part. I can tell you the female members of the audience leaned forward during every bare chested moment. Don’t blame them. If I looked as good as he does, I’d take my shirt off and let the ladies stare as well.

We saw the movie in 3D and I can’t say it was worth fourteen dollars each, though it is a visually eye catching movie. Gravity, however, it is not.

But the movie does have some hollow notes. Here is where the spoilers start. When Natalie Portman’s character, Jane Foster, is infected with a powerful force known as the “Aether”, Thor brings her to Asgard to try and save her life.

And here lies my first problem: Odin, played by Anthony Hopkins, spends the first movie punishing Thor for not being more introspective and thoughtful of others. Then he spends the first part of Dark World berating Thor for his love of Jane Foster, going so far as to say, when she is brought to Asgard, “You don’t bring a goat to a feast” or some such (I am paraphrasing). Odin spends much of this movie acting like the Thor of the first movie.

And the whole, “we must prevent the Aether from destroying the world” plot just didn’t quite grab my attention, even while making for some great special effects. The Dark Elves, which are the movie’s bad guys, aren’t all that frightening. The Kurse character, played by Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje is the one lone bad guy who looks the part sufficiently.

Also, Thor spends most of the movie getting his ever lovin’ ass kicked, with other saving the day. Who saves Thor from Kurse? Loki. Who beats Malekith, king of the bad elves? Jane and Erik Selvig, Who saves Thor form having a huge alien spaceship land on him and Jane? Eric. The only real thing Thor does in this movie is battle Malekith long enough for others to do his job.

What it boils down to is this movie is saved by Tom Hiddleston. I wouldn’t mind seeing Loki get his own movie, as I’d imagine it would be fun, brash and unpredictable.

So once again, I enjoyed the movie, but didn’t love it. As a side note, there are two after credit scenes. One right after the actor credits, and one after all the other credits.