The first Thor was a pseudo-Shakespearean romp that knew exactly how silly it was and delighted in that fact. Consider Chris Hemsworth's Norse god demanding horses in pet stores in between flattening a small town in New Mexico and hamming it up with Anthony Hopkins in Asgard worked to great success. Unfortunately, the sequel didn't do as great a job at marrying the silliness of the first film to the darker plot and tone of The Dark World and Christopher Ecclestone's dark elf Malekith was the most obvious symptom of the film's main problem. Veteran Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor attempted to inject the franchise with far more seriousness and darkness than it could really take and Malekith's one-note characterisation (EVIL) didn't really resonate with the periods of the film involving slapstick comedy, Loki being an incorrigible cad and Kat Dennings making out with an intern. Despite some refreshing action sequences like the climactic portal-jumping fight and Taylor's eye for great composition, the film just doesn't hang together as a single piece the way that Thor does.
