Man...Sometimes you just gotta wonder...Am I getting too old to understand this stuff? I mean I spent a lot of time as a kid with sci fi comics--even some at Bat's when I was a student. But somehow Thor: The Dark World didn't reach me.

I think my dislike starts with the premise as stated by Rotten Tomatoes: Thor "battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself." Huh? Enemies who predate the universe? C'mon...can't happen even in sci fi. I was willing to accept that every 5000 years the Nine Realms line up in a confluence which causes rifts among the Realms, but enemies that predate the universe? That can't be so by definition.

Incongruously, these enemies are called Elves? Wha-at?? The authors couldn't be more imaginative? Similarly, their costumes sport the classic white ghost masks often seen on stage.

But all you have by way of plot is an invasion that lasts way too long and some odd, unrelated sidebars. Idris Elba is a great actor, but why was he running along the bridge cables and jumping onto a spaceship to no purpose?

There's a lot of fighting combining ancient weapons with the futuristic, along with Thor's marvelous hammer.

The enemy is certainly relentless, but why izzit that Jane Foster gets infused with the aether in the first place? She touches some goop from a magicly-appearing floating rock column? Not likely.

Anyway, this is basically a shoot 'em up for 13-year-olds (of which there were many). They seemed to get it all. I did not. Drop off your teens; don't see it yourself. The movie is said to have had a budget of $170M. If they get it back, it will be from the kids, not the adults.