I rewatched Thor: The Dark World last night...

I hated the villain being a useless device for the plot. Nothing about him was entertaining, he had no good lines or skills.

Jane being the plot since she had the aether in her.

The stone being a reality stone, but nothing interesting happen with it. Didn't create anything and we didn't see Thor go into a different reality.

Darcy and her bf getting screen time.

The movie had some enjoyable parts mainly Thor and Loki scenes.

Let me start by saying that I think The Dark World is a good film, but I'd still put it towards the bottom of Marvel's lineup.

The problems for me were three-fold:

1) There just wasn't enough to it. It was a simple story that was over far too quickly, and didn't do anything to really stand out. This is a perfect example of a movie that would really benefit from a side-plot.

2) The movie focused on the wrong elements. I don't care at all about Malekith, but he was the focus of the film. Meanwhile, the most interesting thing in the entire film (Loki's apparent overthrow of Odin) was just randomly tossed in there like a minor aside. Why wasn't the film about THAT?

3) This is perhaps a pet-peeve, but I hate how they hand-waved the destruction of the rainbow bridge. In the first film (which I loved), it was implied that the destruction of the bridge was some kind of epic, world-changing event ("You'll never see her again!"). Then a few years later it's like "yep, we rebuilt it. No biggie." What a disappointment.

I can forgive the Avengers for not wanting to get into an explanation. That wasn't Thor's movie, and it had enough to explain already. But this film doesn't get that excuse.

Malekith was the deal breaker for me, if they portrayed him like they did in Thor Tales of Asgard it would have been better

For me, Thor TDW ranks somewhere next to Hulk 08.
The film had really jarring editing and bad story telling. For instance the transition from Loki's death to a joke. Or Loki and Thor being in such high spirits shortly after Frigga died (the scene where Loki changes shapes). It's a fun scene, but it steals gravitas from Frigga's death.

The film revealed everything about the Dark Elves in the very beginning and gives you the same info somewhere in the middle of the film AGAIN. Emotional scenes are killed with misplaced humour. And we don't even see anything about the villain to make him interesting to the audience.

I agree the cast is great and the cinematography is beautiful at times, but it's not a well-crafted film.

And on a personal note:
I feel Frigga's death was very lazy story-telling. In my opinion it would have been better to leave some of the deleted scenes in the film (her conversation with Loki via magic and her conversation with Thor right afterwards) and have her be the one to reunite Thor and Loki towards a common goal.

It's awful.

The dialogue, villains, continuity errors, huge amounts of clunky exposition, etc

its definitely underrated and gets undeserved hate imo. i enjoyed it more than the iron man sequels as well and it definitely upped the production value and epicness scale from thor 1. cap and avengers movies will always be better than it though.

It's my least favourite MCU film but it's still a lot of fun to watch. My main gripe with the film is that I think Eccleston is wasted. He's a great actor and I would've wanted his character (Malekith) to have more development.

I liked it overall, but the final fight was pathetic. I remember when I first saw it and I just thought: "that's it?"