K-SCORE: 50
Director: Alan Taylor
Writer: Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Don Payne, Robert Rodat
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman
Spoiler Level: Minor
These Marvel movies are all the same. This is fine for a Marvel movie. There are a few moments that are funny, especially when Chris Hemsworth daintily hangs his hammer on the wall of Natalie Portman’s London apartment. Mostly though it’s about some thwarted universe-ending plot in ninety minutes, which really doesn’t make any sense regardless of how many mental leaps you make or MacGuffins you accept. Because of the gargantuan scope of the conflict, they are only willing to give their supporting characters three minutes of screen time each. Their devotion to utilizing so many obscure comic book characters must be something held aloft by the vile Hollywood publicists because from a story standpoint it's only a hindrance. The film has laughably easy-to-predict twists, an insane amount of property damage, and even more randomly inserted science words. “Oh, that’s a molecular quantum generator. Oh, what’s going on here is parallel stasis manipulation waves with particle dilation distortion.” Once upon a time I would have ripped apart that miserable excuse for faux-science but who has the energy anymore. I just went to bed underwhelmed.