MCU: All 33 Marvel Cinematic Universe films ranked from worst to best

31. Thor: The Dark World

The God of Thunder’s second offering gets a lot of unwarranted flack but it is admittedly hard to overlook the fact that it took its title far too seriously. With dark elves who wanted to use their dark weapons to plunge us all into a dark world, the film was, for lack of a better word, dark. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it was just too far removed from the whimsically hopeful tone that made its predecessor so enjoyable.

The film’s use of Jane Foster is also rather questionable. In Thor, she may have fallen head over heels for a complete stranger far too quickly, but she was still a strong, independent woman who was determined to get to the truth and, in doing so, lived up to her reputation as one of the world’s leading astrophysicists.

In The Dark World, however, she became the archetypal damsel in distress, waiting to be saved by Thor as the Aether infected her. As a result, she remained at the center of the story throughout the whole film without ever really being involved in it.

That said, it’s still an enjoyable spectacle that deserves more credit than it gets (the Asgard portion of the film is visually-stunning) and the dark picture is flooded with metaphorical color every time that Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is on-screen – it’s just a shame that his screen-time barely amounts to 15 minutes in length.