Thor: The Dark World Announced for Home Video in February

Thor: The Dark World, the newest Marvel movie success, has been announced for Blu-ray on February 25. Typical of current release strategy, it will be available digitally earlier — you can rent it on Digital 3D and Digital HD on February 4 — and the DVD package will include promo for the next Marvel theatrical release, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

The actual physical purchase formats are 3-D Combo Pack ($39.99 list price), single-disc Blu-ray ($32.99), and DVD ($29.99). It seems that the Blu-ray combo pack doesn’t include a DVD, just the two Blu-rays (3-D and plain) and a digital copy.

I enjoyed seeing the film, although it seemed very jumpy to me, with lots of plot points and quick cuts to keep viewers distracted. The actual fight with the Dark Elves (led by Malekith, played by Christopher Eccleston) felt overly familiar and didn’t have much emotional connection for me, but I loved seeing the brothers (Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hiddleston as Loki) play off each other. As with superhero comics, the character interactions meant a lot more to me than the big battle. Here are the planned special features (no word yet on which appear in which package version):

In my opinion, the single-disc Blu-ray cover is more eye-catching than the deluxe version.

• Never-Before-Seen Extended and Deleted Scenes
• Gag Reel
• Exclusive First Look at Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, including this cast of characters: Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Director Nick Fury, Chris Evans as our hero Steve Rogers, the Falcon played by Anthony Mackie, and the Winter Soldier played by Sebastian Stan
• “A Brothers’ Journey: Thor & Loki” — “In this 30 min. featurette go behind the scenes with filmmakers and cast as we … journey through the key moments that have defined and endeared these characters to audiences around the world”
• “Scoring Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World with Brian Tyler” (I don’t really get score featurettes — if the movie music works as it should, it shouldn’t have attention called to it. When I see featurettes on the movie’s score, I always wonder if the main filmmakers (director, writers, etc.) weren’t available to participate in something more relevant to most viewers… but that’s probably overly insulting to composers.)
• And finally, the audio commentary, with Tom Hiddleston, director Alan Taylor, producer Kevin Feige, and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau.

The new trailer for this release, shown below, emphasizes the epic and bombastic battles, without the more light-hearted moments that I remember from the film. Even the small bits of humor shown involve fighting. Oh, well, most customers have already seen the movie, anyway, and know what they’re getting.