but I'm willing to forgive a certain amount of hand-waving at climaxes providing the film doesn't try to pretend it's being clever.

I agree. Like I mentioned in my post about it, Thor was exactly what I was expecting from a summer movie adaptation of a comic book series with characters loosely based on Norse mythology.

Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect with Loki, but I'm kind of glad that they gave him at least a little bit of depth as a conflicted villain, rather than flat-out psychotic supervillain.