Don’t mistake Thor: The Dark World for anything more than it is, and you’ll be a happy customer. Just like its predecessor — 2011’s Thor — it’s big, loud and air-headed. It’s a perfect complement to its hammer-wielding titular character.

And just like the first film, the second installment in the Thor franchise is neither phenomenal nor terrible. It has major faults, plot holes, an astounding lack of subtly and all the other usual suspects that plague superhero movies, but director Alan Taylor (best known for directing several episodes of Mad Men and Game of Thrones) barrels through these inconsistencies to deliver a perfectly entertaining movie.

It’s anchored by two solid performances from Chris Hemsworth, who plays the Norse-god-from-space Thor, and particularly from Tom Hiddleston, who plays his estranged brother Loki. The onscreen relationship between Thor and Loki provides the film with the majority of its charisma; if this film is an improvement on its predecessor in any way it’s in the realm of humor. Loki’s constant belittling of his lumbering counterpart Thor provides the film with a disarming amount of laughs for a movie that deals with the destruction of the entire universe.

Thor and Loki’s dysfunctional and entertaining relationship aside, the film sinks into cruise control and guides the viewer through the necessary plot developments.

Natalie Portman returns as the love interest and damsel in distress. There’s a group of suitably grim antagonists, the “Dark Elves,” scorned by Thor’s grandfather in the distant path and who now trying to bury the hatchet by destroying the entire universe. And throughout, Thor and friends cavort across the Universe again, highlighting the franchise’s signature fantasy/science fiction cocktail.

A disproportionate amount of the film is spent puttering around Thor’s space kingdom Asgard, and the planet Svartalfheim, the home of the film’s suitably grim antagonists the “Dark Elves.” Both locales are beautifully rendered, but don’t provide much in the thrills department. But then the film finally journeys to Earth (one of its few cameos in the film) and it’s there the action-packed and satisfying climax takes place.

The new Thor isn’t trying to break new ground, it’s just trying to entertain you why it goldmines the familiar.

Thor dispatches a satisfying amount of baddies, the plot chugs along dutifully and the filmmakers do their best to imitate the sweeping imagery of a Peter Jackson fantasy epic without imitating the substance.

But that’s exactly what Thor: The Dark World is supposed to be, and faulting this film for not delivering the goods is like saying you thought 2006’s Snakes On a Plane was going to be more intellectually stimulating. If you liked the first Thor, the filmmakers give you no reason not to like this one too.