9. Locations
'We get to see more of the nine realms,' seemed to be, during promotion for The Dark World, the production team's catchphrase. While this is, as aforementioned, a good thing, I can't quite shake the feeling that Alan Taylor was simply jumping at the opportunity to make a big-screen Game of Thrones episode. In any given Thrones episode, the audience is treated to jaunts between the furthest reaches of Westeros, from sunny King's Landing in the South to the perpetual gloomy chill of Winterfell and the wildlands beyond the wall up North. And then there's Daenerys' journey through tropical Essos. This diversity in landscape is inevitably realised by an ambitious, global location shoot with filming taking place across the continents from the UK to Iceland. Thor: The Dark World echoes this disposition for cross-water location filming, with each of the nine realms distinct in tone and landscape from the next, giving unprecedented authenticity in the portrayal of a vast, fantasy universe akin to Thrones' vast, fantasy world.