At this point everyone has seen Endgame or knows generally what happens. To start, I think Endgame had many great things going for it. I truly enjoyed the movie, the throwbacks, the action, the twists, all the things that make Marvel movies great. Except there was one specific thing that was absolutely terrible about Endgame, and it's Thor.
Taika Waititi did an excellent job with Thor in Thor: Ragnarok. He rebuilt the character to make him more likeable and made arguably the best Thor movie in the MCU. Thor loses his hammer which he believed to be the source of his power, only to realize his power comes from within him ("you're not the god of hammers..."). He becomes more powerful by the end of the movie than he was at the start.
In Infinity War, the Russos took over and pretty much disregarded what Waititi did in Ragnarok. Even though it was established that Thor was so powerful he didn't need a hammer, they decided to dedicate a full subplot to him making a new hammer/axe to defeat Thanos. And you can argue he's more powerful with Stormbreaker the same way a normal person is more potent with a knife than unarmed, but with Thor, the whole point is that he was already at god-levels of power, so giving him a weapon makes it seem like he has to rely on the weapon just to do anything. And thats pretty much exactly what ends up happening, because after he gets his new hammer, he never fights without it. It gets worse in Endgame when they decide to give him ANOTHER HAMMER, because again, having more hammers makes you more powerful in the eyes of the Russos.
There are other things wrong with Thor in IW, but moving on to Endgame, the biggest change to his character is the fact that he's an overweight, anxious, depressed alcoholic. And it wasn't a horrible pitch, considering everything Thor has been through. He never gets a break. Throughout the course of the MCU, he loses his mother, his father, his brother, his best friend, his girlfriend breaks up with him, his home is destroyed and half of his people are killed by Thanos. He feels like a failure and he becomes depressed. He eats and drinks and shirks his responsibilities as a ruler. Putting Thor at such a low point in his development makes sense because of what he has been through, but they fail miserably in how they execute this new version of him. They almost never take Thor seriously in the film. He's almost always used to lighten the mood with comedic relief. In one scene he has a literal panic attack, but its played for laughs. It portrays Thor in an emasculated state and we're supposed to find that funny. There is one meaningful scene where Thor gets to talk to his mother and she validates him, but it wasn't as impactful or serious as Tony Stark being validated by his father, or Steve and Peggy, or Clint and Natasha fighting to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Some people are saying "Now he looks like like a REAL viking! He's got long hair, a long beard, and a belly, like a viking." Yea, he pretty much looks how he did before Ragnarok, because they gave him back his missing eye and hair. They just undid what Taika Waititi did for him. "Now we have an overweight superhero! He didn't have to change back into a beefcake to still kick ass, this is empowerment and inclusion! We have a superhero with mental issues, he's relatable!" It's not like they cast an actual overweight person, or asked Chris Hemsworth to gain weight for the role, they put him in a fat suit. And yes, we now have an MCU superhero who is overweight and has mental issues, but at what cost? They made fun of him for half the movie for the very traits people are praising about him. They were never used to make him a more interesting character. Obesity, alcoholism, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, emasculation, all of these things were used for humor.
Out of all the heroes in the movie, none of them come close to Thor in terms of degrading humor. His vulnerability isn't used for complex character development, it's used to make him the butt of the joke. Chris Hemsworth has stated that he enjoyed this new comedic side of Thor and that he enjoyed taking risks with the character, and the Russos basically said "Wait till you hear this new pitch: fat Thor." The writers claimed they didn't write his weight gain as a vehicle for comedy, but that still ended up happening. This could've been a unique representation of a superhero with mental issues, but it wasn't. I'm disappointed in Chris Hemsworth for using the opportunity to portray a vulnerable superhero the right way to just invalidate and ridicule those who actually suffer from the same issues, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change.
theartofmadeline
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