'Thor 2: The Dark World' On Course For $450 Million Box Office, Sorry WHAT?

Despite the release of Malcolm D. Lee's well-reviewed sequel The Best Man Holiday, Marvel's Thor 2: The Dark World will remain at No.1 on the box-office in its second weekend with a predicted gross of $40 million.

The 3-D movie should take its overall gross to an incredible $450 million, which already eclipses the $450 million entire gross for the first Thor movie. It's another success story for Marvel, who will almost certainly green-light a third movie.

Universal's Best Man Holiday stars Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terence Howard, Nia Long and Melissa De Sousa who all reprise their roles from the first movie Eggs, which opened to $9 million in 1999.

As the Hollywood Reporter notes, the movie should primarily play to African-Americans - in a similar fashion to the Tyler Perry pictures. Universal believes it will open to around $17 million, which, given it only cost $17 million to make, will be a solid start to proceedings.

Watch the 'Thor 2: The Dark World' trailer:

This weekend should have seen the release of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, though Paramount pushed it to Christmas Day in order for the legendary director to trim the running time.

In the independent market, Alexander Payne's Oscar-tipped Nebraska, starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte will play following critically acclaimed showings in New York and Los Angeles and Shia LaBeouf's Charlie Countryman is screening in selected theaters.

Thor 2 may as well make the most of another comfortable week at the top of the box-office as it will be thoroughly deposed following the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire next weekend. The sequel will turn into a blockbuster in hours, rather than days or weeks and could open to around $170 million.

The first Hunger Games movie opened to $152.5 million in March 2012.

Next page: Our 'Thor 2: The Dark World' Review.

Review: Thor 2: The Dark World, by Rich Cline.

4/5 - "Excellent"

Marvel can't help itself: these movies have to get bigger and crazier. And this one leaves us wondering where they can possibly go next, as it spirals into a madly funny-scary thriller that threatens the existence of the whole universe. But it also feels like a story children would make up as they go along. Still, the sparky characters and wildly cataclysmic approach are hugely entertaining.

The action picks up right after the Battle of New York (see 2012's The Avengers), and scientist Jane (Portman) is miffed that Thor (Hemsworth) didn't call when he was back on Earth.

She has just started dating a nebbish Londoner (O'Dowd) when her assistant Darcy (Dennings) stumbles into a spatial anomaly that draws Jane right into the middle of a 5,000-year-old struggle between Thor's home-realm Asgard and the dark elf Malekith (Eccleston), who wants to use a swirling goo called the Aether to plunge all of existence into blackness just as the universe aligns itself. As this convergence approaches, Thor defies his father Odin (Hopkins) and turns to his disgraced, malicious brother Loki (Hiddleston) for help.

The film is overcrowded with small but pivotal characters, including stern but helpful gatekeeper Heimdall (Elba), mad-doctor Erik (Skarsgard) and Odin's wise wife Frigga (Russo). All of them help distract us from the movie's wildly shifting tone as it darts from sardonic comedy to Lord of the Rings-style battles to silly romance to dark emotion.

But the best thing is the tense, unpredictable relationship between Thor and Loki, an enjoyable mixture of sibling rivalry and brotherly love that's well-played by Hemsworth and especially Hiddleston. None of the other characters really has a chance to develop around them. But at least the actors have fun with their roles, including a number of hilarious cameos along the way (there are also two post-credit stings).

Yes, this is a massive-scale adventure, and it helps that the portentous storyline is undermined continually by jagged sarcasm. We don't even mind that the script is packed with lazy plot devices, including a continual series of holographic double-bluffs and spatial gateway nonsense.

All of this combines to create an exhilarating climactic action sequence in London that ramps up the suspense and keeps us smiling even though it's impossible to make any real sense of it. And since the movie essentially maintains its focus on the relationships between the characters, it leaves us gasping for more.

Watch the 'Thor 2: The Dark World' trailer: