Marvel’s God of Thunder is undoubtedly one of the most established heroes in the entire MCU. And it’s a credit to Taika Waititi and the writing team behind Thor: Ragnarok that the beloved Norse god underwent a radical transformation after four screen appearances.
That’s not to say that Chris Hemsworth’s Phase One Avenger was devoid of personality; rather, the aforementioned threequel stripped the character down to the bare bones, and crushed Mjölnir in the process, in order to create Thor 2.0, if you will. Gone was the stoic brute of Phase One and Two and in his place was a broken soul still reeling from the death of, well, his entire family.
All of this comes to a head during his heartfelt exchange to Sweet Rabbit Rocket Raccoon during Avengers: Infinity War, and it’s arguably one of Hemsworth’s finest moments in the role. But the actor also got a chance to shine in some heroic scenes, too, like when he forged his new weapon Stormbreaker, or when he was able to change the tide of the war against Thanos’ forces once he made a spectacular entrance in Wakanda during Infinity War‘s thrilling third act.
Be that as it may, the God of Thunder’s actions in the movie don’t quite add up. For instance, he’s more or less useless at the start as his people are slaughtered by the Mad Titan, even though we know he’s strong enough to withstand the power of a star – which he did in order to reactive the forge for Eitri. Not to mention Ragnarok also showed us how truly powerful he is, even without a weapon in hand.
That’s something which Collider recently asked Infinity War co-writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus about, and here’s what they said:
I think he’s very durable. Like I think, literally, his flesh is very hard to break. That’s why he can survive in space, that’s why he can take that thing in the star. But you can still drain him of energy, you can still knock him out, you can still hurt him. So I think it would be very hard to wreck his body, but I think, you know, he has stamina and his stamina goes up and his stamina goes down depending on what he’s been through.
That’s a fair, if not totally satisfying answer. But perhaps we shouldn’t think too much about it. After all, Avengers: Infinity War had a lot going on and this probably wasn’t on the top of McFeely and Markus’ list of things to address and properly explain. Hence why they don’t have a great answer for it.
As the scribes say, though, sometimes you just need to humanize your heroes a bit. You can’t always have them kicking ass and taking names, right?
