Here's the first glimpse of the villain Malekith and his army of dark elves from Thor: The Dark World comes via SuperHeroHype:

Tom Hiddleston is the bad boy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's appeared as the antagonist Loki in two of the films in the series and is currently filming his third appearance as the character in Thor: The Dark World. Even though he appears as the mischievous Loki in the sequel he's not the main 'big bad' for the sequel. Christopher Eccleston joins the film as Malekith the Accursed and you can now see the first photos of the character -

Melekith from Thor: The Dark World

Hiddleston also spoke with GQ about the upcoming film and the pressure on the sequel because of this summer's The Avengers.

"It's mostly self-applied pressure actually. I remember Chris [Hemsworth] and I saying over the summer when Avengers came out, where do we go now? Going into this one we were - very flatteringly - involved in big creative conversations about tone, and story. Thor and Loki are these two characters that people know and love and understand - so we have to take this in the right direction. You want to do something new - you don't want to re-heat the same recipe in the microwave, you want to cook up something different and exciting - but you don't want to lose the things that worked the first time. So we're our own slave drivers, in a way. Complacency is the enemy. But that's exciting and it's going well. I have never seen a group of actors or a crew work harder."

GQ then asked how much influennce The Avengers has had on the sequel, specifically will we get a reference to the Hulk smashing Loki?

"Yeah! [laughs] He's certainly eaten humble pie. The springboard for us in the second Thor film is at the end of Avengers you see Thor and Loki beamed up back to Asgard. The first question that we all asked was 'what happens next? What does Odin have to say about the events of Avengers?' 'What's Jane Foster been up to while she wasn't involved?' It's really exciting, actually. We're literally half way through - we started at the start of August and we should be finished by Christmas. It's going beautifully."

In Thor: The Dark World, Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos...but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all.

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano and Jaimie Alexander with Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins as Odin, the film is set for release on November 8, 2013.

 

An army of dark elves