Book Review: The Art of Thor: The Dark World

I'm impressed but also left with some mixed feelings after going through the book.

Let's start with the good.

This book comes with a slipcase as well, just like the first Thor movie artbook, but the book is even thicker at 272 pages. It feels good just looking at how thick the book is.

Since the first book has already covered the character designs for the main characters, coverage for them is smaller here and focuses instead on the subtle design changes. The bulk of the character designs are for the Vanir, Marauders, Malekith, Algrim, Kurse and Dark Elves. The enemies have more pages. But overall, there are lots of great designs and variations to look at, as well as some props. There are the head prosthetics and final film stills to look at.

Concepts for the locations are amazing, especially for Asgard which is really beautiful. However, the art can sometimes be a bit rough and have a very CGI look. Many of the environment art are printed huge, sometimes across two pages, but some don't seem to have the resolution to go that big and result in less than sharp images. At least they captured the mood and atmosphere well.

Storyboards for selected sequences are included, some are animatic storyboards.

Now for the bad part.

Some of the designs are too dark. I know the movie is called Thor: The Dark World, but still... The details fading into darkness thing can be a bit overkill in this book. I have a difficult time making sense of the interior of the Dark Elves' Ark. Much is shrouded in darkness. Many of the character designs also have their details lost into the black. If I'm reading a comic book, that's pretty stylish use of black, but this is a concept art book so I should at least be able to see stuff clearly.

The concepts are good but the quality is marred by the images being less sharp and too dark at times.

Overall, it's still worth a buy because it's a decent artbook with plenty of stuff to see.

The Art of Thor: The Dark World is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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