Thor: the Dark World

Chris Hemsworth makes a robust return as Marvel's hammer-hurling thunder god in this bigger, bolder second solo epic. No sooner has Thor returned his trickster sibling, Loki (a terrific Tom Hiddleston), to face justice in Asgard following Avengers Assemble than dark elf Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) emerges to destroy the cosmos. The key to stopping him lies with Jane (Natalie Portman), Thor's mortal love. The first Thor flick was good entertainment and director Alan Taylor has built on that to produce a sequel brimming with Lord of the Rings-scale battles, bone-crushing smackdowns, eye-catching locations (Iceland, Greenwich) and laugh-out loud moments that leaven the doom, gloom and imminent universal destruction. The cast has more to do (even Rene Russo, as Thor's mum, gets to revive her ass-kicking antics from Lethal Weapon 3), but it's the sparring between the bickering brothers that really crackles - Hiddleston is at his mellifluously malevolent best, while Hemsworth shows genuine godlike poise as he puts the hammer down on numerous foes. On the downside, Eccleston's villain has little to do but exude menace (especially as Loki bags all the best bad-guy quips) and some further delving into Asgardian family relations would have been welcome. But, in the end, this is another epic-scale Marvel extravaganza and that's no bad thing.