UPDATE! This trailer may not tell the whole story. After it was released we learned that Thor: The Dark World is doing reshoots in order to add more Loki.
The summer blockbuster season is coming to an end, but that only means that the fall blockbuster season is beginning. For Marvel Studios that means we are inching closer and closer to the release of Thor: The Dark World, and to make sure audiences are prepared for the experience they’ve just released a brand new trailer over on YouTube.
What you see here is a lot of the highlights that were shown for the Comic-Con crowd a few weeks ago, including the priceless moment of Jane slapping Loki and saying "This is for New York." Despite the disappointing news that Loki won't be part of Avengers: Age of Ultron, they clearly know what a great character he is, giving him a huge role in this trailer and allowing us even more of the sparring brotherly relationship between him and Thor. As amusing as Loki's smirks are, though, the clear highlight here is the tag at the end with a giant rock monster (who may or may not be Korg from the comics). Sure, it's really similar to the "puny god" scene between Loki and Hulk in The Avengers, but there's still a good laugh to be had in seeing a seemingly immoveable foe struck down with a simple swing of a hammer (or Hulk fist, whichever you prefer).
Directed by Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones), the new film finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returning to Asgard following the events of The Avengers and imprisoning his treacherous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) for his crimes against both Earth and Jotunheim. The hero is able to finally reunite with his lady love, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and reconnect with his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) – but it doesn’t take long until a new threat arrives on the horizon. The evil race of Dark Elves, led by the villainous and vengeful Malekith Accursed (Christopher Eccleston), put in motion a plot that will plunge the universe into darkness, and it becomes up to the God of Thunder to stop it from happening. Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander and Rene Russo return in their respective roles from the first movie, which other new additions to the cast include Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Zachary Levi.
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been getting more and more amped for the release of the next Thor movie. We were totally blown away by the footage that was shown during the Marvel Studios Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con last month and this weekend we might see even more from the movie, as Disney will be holding their bi-annual D23 Expo down in Anaheim, CA (which we will be on-hand for). If that isn’t enough for you, you should also check out the new poster for the film that came out last week as well as our on-set interview with Chris Hemsworth that we posted yesterday.
Marvel Studios is currently on one of the biggest rolls in Hollywood history, and it will be fascinating to see how that situation works in Thor: The Dark World’s favor. Joss Whedon’s The Avengers is the third highest grossing film of all time worldwide and Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 sits at number five on that same list. Can the Thor sequel come anywhere near those numbers? The first movie about the God of Thunder stands as the biggest non-Iron Man solo feature that Marvel Studios has made, pulling in nearly $450 million worldwide by the end of its run. That’s a long way away from Iron Man 3’s $1.2 billion take earlier this year, but there are many factors working in The Dark World’s favor. For starters, the popularity of the series’ two key characters, Thor and Loki, has increased exponentially since the release of Whedon’s movie last year, but one also can’t forget that there will be people out there who want to see Thor: The Dark World simply because they want to be all caught up when The Avengers: Age of Ultron rolls around in 2015.The recent run of success that Marvel Studios has had could be a rising tide that lifts all of its boats.
Thor: The Dark World will be in theaters on November 8, 2013. You can watch the film’s first trailer, which came out with Iron Man 3 back in May, below.
