Thor: The dark ring around my tub

Marvel Studios has come up with a solid formula to keep its film franchises chugging along as money-printing juggernauts bulldozing presidential portraits into their coffers. The formula calls for equal parts action, humor and romance. The "equal parts" statement could be arguable at this point. They found with the original Iron-Man (2008) that an ample dose of quips is good enough to make the audience forget about the nonsensical parts of any cinematic offering. The only problem is, formulas get tired. You can only go to the well so often before it just becomes lame and tired.

And that's how I'm starting to feel about it after being subjected to one hour and fifty-two minutes of one-liners, inanity and superhero beatdowns in "Thor: The Dark World" (2013). Alan Taylor's sequel to 2011's "Thor" is certainly a funny film and, at times at least, entertaining. The jokes, however, are becoming a bit predictable. If the current trend continues, my 12-year-old son will be coming up with better one-liners than "Thor 3" can offer.

But, really, that's not what bothers me most about "The Dark World." What bothers me most is that I cannot take any of it, not one ounce, with any level of seriousness. Most superhero films succeed because they allow you to immerse yourself in the fiction of the worlds they've created. You don't have to wonder how it is Thor flies or whether it's reasonable for a lightning-wielding demigod to be infatuated with a mere mortal down here in good old Midgard. When I first heard about plans to do the original Thor film, I thought it just wouldn't work. I frankly never much liked Thor as a Marvel superhero. I feared the movie would be lame and silly, but they made it work. The plot was tight and self contained. The romance between Thor and Jane seemed contrived and lacked chemistry, but the story worked and the action was satisfying.

In "The Dark World" we must accept the idea of dimension-jumping, spaceship-flying Dark Elves as a dire threat to Asgard and Earth. There's too much about the battle scenes--especially those involving the spacecraft--that just doesn't seem to fit. The whole bit about the ancient Dark Elf threat to Asgard is easy enough to swallow, but then it just gets weird. And they overcomplicate things with the world alignment business that will allow Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) to use the Aether as a weapon to destroy Asgard. The bigger problems arise back on Earth where scientists who run around with Galaxy Note-like devices try to explain what's happening in sciencey-sounding terms. I'm sure it all looks and sounds really cool--to third graders, but it's just plain insipid to anyone over the age of 12.

I'm honestly not sure whether it was supposed to be absurd or whether they thought it would be appropriate for comic book fare to not really make any sense. It felt almost as if the actors were ad-libbing the silliness that escaped their lips during the scenes in which they discussed the alignments and portals and vortexes.

Frankly, I had a lot of trouble caring about anything that happened in this film. At least in the first one I felt empathy for Thor when he was tossed out of Asgard and left to walk the mortal plane as a regular guy. In this sequel there's very little vested interest in the characters. Most of them are endearing and amusing, but it's hard to really make it work in less than two hours. If this were a TV sitcom, I'd grow to love some of the characters, including Darcy whose lines are often lame and contrived.

There's a YouTube joke about it involving Chris O'Dowd, who is underused and misused in this film, employing his standard line from "The IT Crowd." The YouTube parody is hilarious, but it also makes me think how much better this film would have been if it were itself a parody of Thor. It dances around that line enough that it would take but a slight breeze to push it over the edge. I could easily imagine seeing Richard Ayoade step into the scene with O'Dowd when Jane calls him on a cell phone from the other side of one of those portals. No, dammit, I am not making that up. It actually happens in the movie. Instead of Richard, O'Dowd should actually be playing Roy, and Moss's entrance into the film would have elicited nothing but floor-rumbling belly laughs from me.

At least then I could have said I thoroughly enjoyed the film. As it stands, I paid way too much money to purchase a digital title.

Oh, no! You sank my movie!

I don't believe I've ever watched a movie that made less sense than Battleship, the movie inexplicably based on the board game of the same name. Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard star as unlikely brothers Alex Hopper and Stone Hopper, respectively, one an officer in the navy, the other a down-and-out, unemployed loser. Older brother Stone tries to convince younger brother Alex to join the navy, but Alex is more interested in the curvy blonde who has suddenly appeared in search of a chicken burrito. And that's where everything begins rolling down the Baffling Highway of Inexplicable  and Senseless Events.

Alex somehow goes from breaking into a convenience store, stealing a chicken burrito, destroying property, resisting arrest and being tased to becoming a commander in the US Navy. One could begin making jokes about how selective the Navy is with its recruits. As absurd as it sounds, this is just one of the many head-slappingly unbelievable events that put severe strain on suspension of disbelief—even in this sci-fi actioner. Had this been a made-for-Saturday-morning-TV movie released in the '90s, it could have become a popular classic among the younger crowd. Unfortunately, it's just impossible to take seriously a movie like this being released on the big screen.

After Hopper lands command of his own ship in the US Navy, the aliens appear with the apparent intent of launching an invasion to conquer the Earth. Well, at least that's what the audience is expected to believe—in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The alien race possesses military technology far beyond that possessed by the US Navy—yet time and again they don't utilize it to their full advantage. They can swat us Earth humans around like flies, yet they allow us to one-by-one destroy every ship in their reconnaissance fleet. In addition to artillery that resembles the pegs used to sink ships in the board game (this was obviously intentional), the alien arsenal also includes spinning, fiery balls of doom that can chew through metal like wet cardboard. They could easily have launched a few of these to eat through every single weapon the humans possess. Instead they sit around waiting for the insects to attack them with their puny weapons and slowly demolish everything they have.

Oh, but this is, after all, just a reconnaissance mission for the aliens. They're just here to send a message back to the homeworld about a plump fruit ripe for the picking. Never mind that the reconnaissance forces themselves seem to be more than a match for anything the Earth can throw at them. Naturally, the humans, against all the odds prevail because of their tenacity and ingenuity in the face of insurmountable obstacles. And the gullible audience is expected to rejoice in the triumph of the underdog, assuming that the homeworld won't miss the reconnaissance mission or will have decided that the Earth is just too powerful for them to conquer.

The movie really just doesn't make much sense, but it does offer up plenty of moments that tug at American heartstrings. And, if I may digress for a moment, that is another of the film's great failings. Like many other films, it suffers from being solidly planted in an American perspective with blinders firmly in place. After all, if an alien race is going to launch an invasion of Earth, it would certainly be the US Navy it confronts. Because nobody else has any weapons to bring to bear.

But if we can ignore such shortsightedness, then we will surely be moved by the double-amputee military veteran who has the courage to go toe-to-toe with one of the alien brutes, pounding it with one right cross after another until several of its teeth go flying. And who could possibly be immune to the emotional appeal of the WWII veterans who help Hopper launch the USS Missouri into the battle? Even the movie's token geek steps up to inspire the audience with unlikely bravery. Ultimately, however, it is Hopper's rise from ne'er-do-well to hero that provides the films strongest moment.

The movie counts on emotional appeals to please the audience because, quite frankly, it's got nothing else in the tank. This is an empty, illogical, senseless mess that nevertheless manages to make us—some of us at least—raise our fists in triumph and belt out a loud "Hurrah!"