New 'Thor: The Dark World' poster: Evil looms, Loki laughs, Jane hugs

By the beard of Odin! Behold the latest poster for Thor: The Dark World.

Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith the Accursed looms large, the sky falls, Tom Hiddleston’s eternal troublemaker Loki cackles, and Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster squeezes in close to Chris Hemsworth’s hero, sporting her own fetching Asgardian armor.

Fans would argue Loki is really the one who needs a hug.

The poster for the Nov. 8 movie also shows Malekith’s army of dark elves marching forward in silhouette across the bottom. In the lower right, we see a shimmering palace of Asgard, and above it hovers the Fist of Malekith, the name of his invading Black Ark ship.

Meanwhile, the entire cosmic cast of characters is reunited — Idris Elba’s stoic gatekeeper Heimdall, Anthony Hopkins as the one-eyed paterfamilias Odin, and of course the Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg) being very careful to keep their axe, sword, and mace away from grabby elf hands.

In the film (directed by Game of Thrones‘ Alan Taylor) Portman’s character gets drawn from Earth to Thor’s celestial realm of Asgard as a means of keeping her safe, so she remains very much a damsel in distress.

If we want ass-kicking, that would be the domain of Jaimie Alexander’s Sif, the goddess warrior off to Thor’s right, and his longtime ally (also his one-time lover, who in the comics was set to marry her.) Might we see a bit of a romantic triangle forming between her, Thor, and this helpless human astrophysicist?

Some problems can’t be solved with the smash of a hammer.

But Malekith …? He’s probably very fixable with a few well-placed swings.

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