Thor: Love and Thunder marks Chris Hemsworth’s eighth appearance as the God of Thunder. However, as we explored in the first part of our look back at the character, the Thor we’re revisiting in the new movie is radically different from the one who first debuted in 2011. What changed? The answers seems pretty simple at first: Taika Waititi, director of masterful vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, simply decided to give the Prince of Asgard a more overtly comedic tone in Thor: Ragnarok, a movie that upended his status quo in several ways.
This departure paid dividends despite its jarring arrival — Hemsworth now trails only Robert Downey Jr. for most major Marvel roles, a record he’ll likely break — but can the new comedic Thor be reconciled with the more serious and operatic version we saw before?
In the second part of our retrospective, we explore what the God of Thunder has been up to since Avengers: Age of Ultron, and how a series of tongue-in-cheek short films paved the way for who he would become.
Team Thor
Kenneth Branagh, who helmed Thor’s debut, has more Shakespeare under his belt than a textbook smuggler. Alan Taylor, who directed Thor: The Dark World, was best known for the regal prestige of Game of Thrones, and while Joss Whedon was no stranger to banter, his two Avengers movies used Thor largely as a gruff straight-man to fast-talking funny-men like Tony Stark. In essence, it seemed unthinkable that Thor would soon become the MCU’s de-facto comic relief, but if anyone was poised to make that change, it was Taika Waititi and his specifically New Zealand brand of comedy (which is marked, as my Kiwi friend Andrew Todd puts it, by the deflation of grandeur).
However, before jumping into Ragnarok, Waititi directed a pair of videos later released as special features for Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange. They’re technically short films, but they play more like that SNL sketch that re-imagines The Hobbit as an episode of The Office. “Team Thor” and “Team Thor: Part 2” function similarly, placing fantasy characters against the mundanities of everyday human life. They may not be “canon” in the strictest sense (they depict Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk as hanging out on Earth during Captain America: Civil War, when Ragnarok reveals he’d been sucked into space), but it’s so much more fun to accept them as part of Marvel’s ongoing story, especially given how they bridge the gap between the more dour, serious Thor and version 2.0.
In the first “Team Thor” (named for Civil War’s “Team Iron Man”/“Team Captain America” marketing approach), we’re re-introduced, via mockumentary video diary, to a surf trunks-sporting Thor Odinson in his new Australian apartment, alongside his soft-spoken normie roommate Darryl Jacobson (Daley Pearson). The joking vignettes explore how Thor would be particularly annoying to live with — Thor’s presence on Earth has always orbited the notion of culture clash — but “Team Thor” also gets to the heart of this new iteration of the character. He can’t help but see himself as the most vital piece of the Avengers puzzle, so his exclusion from the events of Civil War becomes a bruise to his ego, and a failure he masks with a boastful attitude. “Team Thor: Part 2” only lasts a minute, but it takes the roommate annoyances further, and presents Thor as even more pompous — not to mention, more oblivious— in his dealings with Darryl (who would go on to become a fan favorite and star in his own short, “Team Darryl”).
Whether or not one takes these shorts into consideration, they set the stage for a version of Thor that, while sillier, and more combative without crossing into meanness, still feels like an extension of Branagh’s Thor (if a caricatured one), given that all his interactions seem rooted in vanity. Hemsworth certainly has the sincere charm to strike the necessary balance, and Waititi’s Ragnarok takes a similar approach. For instance, when Thor is first asked about being dumped by Jane (Natalie Portman), he tries to mask his heartbreak with a cool, uncaring façade. He believes no one can see through his obvious ruse, but the disconnect between Thor’s self-image and the transparency of his mask is where Waititi’s approach succeeds.
Thor thinks he’s “all that,” the ultimate alpha male, but deep down he’s hurt — an approach that works especially well in the two subsequent Avengers films.
Good Grief
Thor: Ragnarok may have intriguing colonial parallels, but its story is only “about” Thor inasmuch as he drives the plot. His realization that he can access his powers without Mjolnir leads to some fun audio-visual panache — good luck listening to “Immigrant Song” without picturing Thor’s lightning spin — but the loss of his eye and his hammer prove to be perfunctory enough that they’re easily undone in Avengers: Infinity War.
However, Infinity War opens by placing the film’s biggest emotional onus on Hemsworth’s shoulders. Genocidal villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) begins his reign of terror by killing many of the remaining Asgardians in front of Thor, including not only his friend Heimdall, but his brother Loki shortly after the gods of thunder and mischief have finally reconciled. Losing his brother lights a fire under him even in his most comedic moments. When Guardians member Rocket (Bradley Cooper/Sean Gunn) points out that Thanos has beaten Thor before, he responds: “He’s never beaten me twice.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but it comes from a place of desperation and denial. Thor spends much of the movie in outer space, so rather than contrasting his princely ego with a human world (or with an Earth-like civilization, à la Ragnarok’s Sakaar), the film forces it up against distinctly human emotions like loss and rage. It’s funny and touching all at once, and it makes his eventual arrival on Earth, Stormbreaker in hand, one of the most rousing moments in any Marvel film — so much that he’s granted the musical suite once used for all the Avengers assembling.
In Avengers: Endgame, five years after his grief leads him to decapitate Thanos, he’s tumbled down a rabbit hole of beer, chips and video games. Half the universe has disappeared and he holds himself responsible. While it may not be the most tasteful physical depiction of weight gain resulting from depression — when he’s re-introduced, the Russos’ camera ogles his fat suit more than it embodies his self-loathing perspective — Hemsworth gives in to an apocalyptic nonchalance. All is lost, so why bother? He rambles even more than before, allowing his melancholy to be viewed both from two contrasting perspectives, like when he recounts his time with Jane. In some moments, he’s a sad clown. In others, he's a heartbroken friend you just want to reach out and comfort.
When he travels back in time and meets his late mother, Frigga (Rene Russo) — another scene where Hemsworth hides volatile emotions behind a braggadocious masculine façade — the seams in Marvel’s long-term narrative show once more. She delivers a speech that sounds poignant in isolation: “Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be, Thor. The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.” However, this ends up being superficial lip-service as, mere moments later, she bids him goodbye while telling him the opposite: “Now go be the man you’re meant to be,” as if she’s confused about her own advice. Perhaps it’s a result of the scene’s fleeting runtime, but the series also never establishes any difference (or dissonance) between who Thor is “meant/supposed” to be and who he is, and so the two concepts become immediately interchangeable. It certainly doesn’t help that, in the wider context of Marvel heroism, the question of who Thor is had been mostly answered in his very first film. Since then, he’s remained a noble protector who wields his might for good, even though each film makes reference to some invisible dilemma about learning who he is beyond his powers. All that’s really changed is his packaging, and the journey of “who he is” beyond a warrior remains to be seen.
However, Waititi’s remixed himbo Thor was such an unequivocal success — not only in “Team Thor” and Ragnarok, but in the two-part Avengers finale — that he’s quickly become the dominant version of the character in the popular consciousness, and so the director’s continued involvement makes perfect sense. At this point, any reversion to Thor’s original solemnity would play like a bastardization, so while the change in his demeanor might have felt sudden back in 2017, it was ultimately created by magnifying the core existing elements of his character and turning them up to 11.
Ironically, this shift in tone may have marked, in a meta-textual sense, the true fruition of Frigga’s advice. It was Thor achieving his ultimate form, succeeding at being who he already was.
For more on Thor, check out Christian Bale and Taika Waititi on bringing Gorr the God Butcher to life, dig into the Thor: Love and Thunder end-credits and what it all means, catch up on our Love and Thunder ending explained and Easter eggs, find out how to watch Thor 4, and dig into how Thor: Love and Thunder undermines Jane Foster's worthiness.
