Thor (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

• 1. Introduction

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  Thor Odinson, the God of Thunder, has appeared in nine films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of 2024. Chris Hemsworth plays him. Thor was born roughly 1500 years ago to Odin, King of Asgard, and his queen, Frigga. The Asgardians are an ancient alien civilization with long ties to Earth, and humans have long treated them as gods.

  Audiences did not embrace him at once. His characterization and early films met a mixed reception, and the warmth arrived later.

  How did a hero drawn from Norse legend and a 1960s comic book reach the screen at all? Why did a character this powerful need several films to find his footing? And what does a god do when pride, loss and grief strip away everything he was raised to be?

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• 2. Kirby's Thunder God

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  Journey into Mystery number 83, carrying a cover date of August 1962, was where readers first met Thor. Editor and plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber and penciller Jack Kirby created him. Kirby later explained the appeal of the character. He said, "I created Thor at Marvel because I was forever enamored of legends, which is why I knew about Balder, Heimdall, and Odin. I tried to update Thor and put him into a superhero costume, but he was still Thor."

  The Avengers number 1, dated September 1963, made Thor a founding member of the team.

  The screen version drops one famous piece of the comics, the human alter ego Donald Blake. In the comics, as in the films, Odin strips Thor of his powers and sends him to Earth as punishment for arrogance. There, the comics place Thor inside Donald Blake, a crippled human doctor. That arrangement runs through a long storyline of years, with Thor only occasionally able to re-emerge and fight villainy.

  On screen, the same exile is resolved within the first film, over the course of days. Blake survives only as a pseudonym Thor uses on Earth, a nod for fans of the comics.

  The missing alter ego changes Jane Foster too. In the comics she works as an assistant to Donald Blake. In the films she has no earlier connection to Thor. She meets him through her work as a physicist studying the strange phenomena his arrivals produce.

  A live-action version of the character had already reached television in the 1988 film The Incredible Hulk Returns. Film versions were proposed afterward but never came to fruition. In the mid-2000s, Kevin Feige realized that Marvel still owned the rights to the core members of the Avengers, Thor included. Feige, a self-professed fanboy, wanted to build a shared universe, just as Lee and Kirby had done in their comics in the early 1960s. That plan still needed a script and a director for its thunder god.

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• 3. Casting a God

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  Mark Protosevich, a fan of the Thor comic, agreed to write the script in April 2006. The project then moved to Paramount Pictures, which had acquired the rights from Sony. In December 2007, Protosevich described what he wanted. It would be an origin story, "not one about a human gaining super powers, but of a god realizing his true potential." He added, "It's the story of an Old Testament god who becomes a New Testament god."

  Marvel Studios signed Matthew Vaughn to direct. Vaughn rewrote Protosevich's script to reduce the budget. In September 2008, Kenneth Branagh entered negotiations to direct, and by December 2008 he confirmed he had been hired. Branagh described the film as "a human story right in the center of a big epic scenario."

  In October 2008, Daniel Craig was offered the title role. He turned it down, citing his commitments to the James Bond franchise.

  Chris Hemsworth's path to the part was bumpier. In May 2009 the 25-year-old actor was in negotiations, after a back-and-forth in which he was first refused and then given a second chance to read. His brother Liam also auditioned, but Kevin Feige passed on him. Dakota Goyo would play the young Thor in the first film.

  Hemsworth gained 20 pounds for the role by eating non-stop. He admitted, "It wasn't until Thor that I started lifting weights, it was all pretty new to me." To hold on to that strength for The Avengers, he ate chicken breasts, fish, steak and eggs every day. Asked how much, he answered, "My body weight in protein pretty much!"

  Hemsworth said the team tried to humanize Thor and keep him very real. For the fighting style, they studied the comics and noticed that Thor's power seems drawn up through the ground. They talked about boxers, he said, naming Mike Tyson, very low to the ground, with an open chest and big shoulder swings, "brutal but graceful at the same time."

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• 4. Hammer and Axe

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  Charlie Wen, the Visual Development Supervisor on the first film, began Thor's costume work with the hammer. He drew a number of alternatives, including a traditional short-handled hammer and versions from the Ultimates comics. Branagh chose the most traditional one. Wen mixed comic details with Norse mythology, keeping the six disk-shaped adornments on the upper body. In a 2018 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Hemsworth revealed that he kept a number of the prop hammers.

  For The Avengers, the costume was adjusted to fit beside the other heroes. Designers boosted the blue tones and shrank the cape. Efforts to dress Thor in Earth clothes drew criticism, with one commentator comparing him to "an extra in Cameron Crowe's Singles."

  Both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker answer when Thor calls, and each flies back to his hand after a throw. Either weapon lets him fly and channel lightning. Stormbreaker adds the power to summon the Bifröst, so Thor can teleport anywhere in the Nine Realms.

  Avengers: Infinity War shows Stormbreaker standing up to the Infinity Stones. Thor nearly kills Thanos alone with the axe, even though Thanos holds all six Stones. Screen Rant judged Stormbreaker the stronger weapon on that evidence, and because it is much larger and edged.

  The weapons also seem to have a degree of sentience. Stormbreaker appears envious of Thor's affection for Mjolnir. Director Taika Waititi traced that moodiness to the axe's handle, which is made from the arm of the adolescent Groot. In one comic moment, Thor tries to summon Mjolnir, but Stormbreaker enters the room instead, and Thor reacts as if the axe were jealous.

  Mjolnir had an owner before Thor, his sister Hela. She used it beside her own weapons to help Odin subjugate the Nine Realms. Odin banished her to Hel once his expansionist desires faded. More than a thousand years later, the hammer sits in Odin's vault among other artifacts.

  Concept artist Ryan Meinerding designed the screen Stormbreaker. He felt the comics version looked a bit too much like the original Mjolnir. His design instead resembles the Mjolnir from the Ultimate Marvel run. He made it oversized and overpowered on purpose, to show that its wielder must be someone incredibly powerful.

  The comics tell the axe's origin differently. There, Odin decrees that the dwarf Eitri will make Stormbreaker for Beta Ray Bill, a rival of Thor who becomes an ally. Bill earns it by fighting Thor hand to hand to decide who deserves Mjolnir. The film gives Thor a quite different role in building the axe.

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• 5. A Brother's Shadow

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  In 2011, Thor was preparing to take the throne when Frost Giants tried to retrieve the Casket of Ancient Winters, an artifact Odin had seized in a war centuries before. Against Odin's order, Thor traveled to Jotunheim to confront the Frost Giant leader Laufey. Loki, Sif and the Warriors Three came along: Voltstagg, Fandral and Hogun. A battle raged until Odin stepped in, and the fragile truce between the two races collapsed. For Thor's arrogance, Odin stripped him of his godly power and exiled him to Earth.

  That single act of impulsiveness shaped everything after it. Thor landed in New Mexico and met Dr. Erik Selvig, astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster and her intern, Darcy Lewis. Odin had enchanted Mjolnir so that only the worthy could wield it. Back in Asgard, Odin entered the Odinsleep, a rest needed to maintain his power. Loki, having learned he was an adopted Frost Giant, seized the throne and prepared to conquer the Nine Realms.

  The Warriors Three and Sif found Thor, but the Destroyer attacked and beat them. Thor offered himself in their place. Struck and near death, he proved worthy, and the hammer returned to restore his powers. He went home, fought Loki, and destroyed the Bifröst Bridge to stop his plans, stranding himself in Asgard. Odin kept the brothers from falling into the abyss. Yet when Odin rejected his pleas for approval, Loki appeared to take his own life. Thor made amends with Odin and admitted he was not ready to rule. One observer noted that Thor came out of the experience a more humble warrior.

  The same events led Loki to Thanos, in whose service he invaded Earth in The Avengers. In 2012, Odin used dark magic to send Thor back to Earth after learning Loki was alive. Thor found Loki on a Quinjet, held by Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff. He took Loki away, hoping to talk him out of the plan. When Rogers confronted him, Thor attacked, a flash of the old impulsiveness. Thor then agreed to bring Loki to the Helicarrier.

  Mind-controlled agents, Clint Barton among them, attacked the Helicarrier, and Bruce Banner became the Hulk. Thor and the Hulk were thrown from the aircraft as Loki escaped. Thor returned to help when Loki used the Tesseract to open a wormhole over New York City for a Chitauri army. After Loki fell at Stark Tower, Thor took him and the Tesseract back to Asgard.

  Hemsworth saw this as a different kind of fight from the other Avengers' fights. For them, a bad guy needed taking down. For Thor, the troublemaker was his brother. Hemsworth said, "I've been frustrated with my brothers at times, or family, but I'm the only one who is allowed to be angry at them. There's a bit of that."

  In 2013, the Dark Elves attacked Asgard hunting Jane Foster, and Frigga was killed protecting her. Against Odin's orders, Thor freed Loki, who knew a secret portal to the Dark Elf home of Svartalfheim. The price was Thor's promise to take vengeance for their mother. Loki was fatally wounded. Thor later told Odin of Loki's sacrifice and declined the offer of the throne.

  One feminist analysis observed that Thor might be a hotheaded braggart, but he never demeans women, unlike the womanizing Tony Stark. The next time Thor fought beside the Avengers, in 2015, Loki would not be the enemy.

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• 6. The Ragnarok Reinvention

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  One critic said that Thor: The Dark World added "absolutely zero development or growth for its main character." The result, by that account, was "little enthusiasm for Thor from either audiences or Marvel." Commentators wrote that before Ragnarok he was seen as "an ill-defined if likable meathead of a character, used primarily for punching and occasionally fish-out-of-water jokes made at his expense." His films were called "the studio's least fun franchise." Thor: Ragnarok reversed the mood so completely that it is widely described as saving the franchise.

  The groundwork came in 2015. Thor and the Avengers raided a Hydra facility in Sokovia and found Loki's scepter. Stark and Banner found an artificial intelligence in its gem and folded it into Stark's "Ultron" defense program. The result was a sentient Ultron who attacked the team. At the celebration before that, Thor had revealed that he and Jane had ended their relationship.

  Hemsworth said Thor had stayed on Earth since The Dark World and had started to feel at home, so he took Ultron's threat personally. It was the first MCU film in which Thor did not play against Loki. The film let Thor wear civilian clothes and mix at a party. Hemsworth said he had to work harder to avoid repeating himself.

  Thor and Selvig visited a mystical well, where Thor saw a vision of the Infinity Stones. After the final battle against Ultron, he left Earth by the Bifrost to learn more about the forces he suspected had manipulated events.

  By Ragnarok, Thor had become a "lone gunslinger" hunting the Stones. Hemsworth was "a bit bored" with the character and wanted to take risks. Thor got shorter hair and a different outfit. Waititi said that stripping him down like this let Thor end the film as a refugee. Waititi also wanted to use the comic talents Hemsworth showed in Vacation (2015) and Ghostbusters (2016). He cited Kurt Russell's Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China (1986) as an influence.

  In 2017, the fire giant Surtur held Thor prisoner in Muspelheim. Surtur claimed he would destroy Asgard in the prophesied Ragnarök once his crown went into the Eternal Flame in Odin's vault. Thor escaped, defeated Surtur and took the crown. Back home, he found Loki still alive and posing as Odin. With the help of Stephen Strange, they found a dying Odin in Norway. Odin explained that his death would free his firstborn child, Hela, from a prison where she had been sealed for millennia.

  Hela appeared, destroyed Mjolnir, and hurled Thor and Loki from the Bifrost into space. Thor crash-landed on the planet Sakaar and was captured by Valkyrie, a former member of an ancient Asgardian order of Valkyries that Hela had defeated. Forced into the Grandmaster's Tournament of Champions, Thor befriended fellow gladiators Korg and Miek. He fought the Hulk, then found the Quinjet that had carried him there. A video recording of Romanoff helped turn the Hulk back into Banner.

  They escaped through a wormhole to Asgard, but Loki betrayed Thor and was left behind on Sakaar. In the middle of the fight with Hela's forces, Loki returned aboard the Grandmaster's vessel, the Statesman, and helped Heimdall rescue Asgardians. Facing Hela, Thor lost an eye. A vision of Odin let him unlock his hidden powers, yet he realized that Ragnarok was the only way to stop her. He had Loki place Surtur's crown in the Eternal Flame, and Surtur destroyed both Asgard and Hela.

  Thor was crowned king and chose to take his people to Earth. Aboard the Statesman, they were intercepted by Sanctuary II, the warship of Thanos.

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• 7. Weight of Loss

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  On the wrecked Statesman, Thanos threatened Thor with the Power Stone until Loki surrendered the Space Stone hidden in the Tesseract. First, Loki called on the Hulk, but Thanos overpowered him and killed Heimdall. Thanos then killed Loki as well. Thor clutched his brother's body while Thanos destroyed the ship, leaving him to die in open space.

  Thor survived. The Guardians of the Galaxy rescued him: Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Mantis, Rocket and Groot. They told him of Thanos' quest to gather the Infinity Stones and erase half of all life. Needing a new weapon, Thor left in a space pod with Rocket and Groot for Nidavellir. Rocket gave him a cybernetic replacement eye. They found the planet ravaged by Thanos and met the dwarf king Eitri. Thor repaired the damaged forge, and together they made Stormbreaker.

  Thor then transported himself, Rocket and Groot to Wakanda to join Rogers, Romanoff, Banner and the Wakandan army against the Outriders. He defeated scores of them and wounded Thanos in the chest with Stormbreaker. Thanos told him he should have gone for the head. Then Thanos snapped his fingers with the completed Infinity Gauntlet. Thor watched in horror as Bucky Barnes, Wanda Maximoff, Sam Wilson, T'Challa and Groot disintegrated.

  Joe Russo said Thor carries the driving hero's arc of the film, standing in direct opposition to Thanos' argument. Had Thor killed Thanos, Russo said, he would have been the main protagonist. Some critics called the film a step backward from Ragnarok. Thor learns there that his power does not come from Mjolnir, then spends most of Infinity War chasing a new weapon.

  Others praised it. Mike Reyes of Cinema Blend noted that Hemsworth seemed to adopt more of the tone and mannerisms of Anthony Hopkins' Odin. Reyes wrote, "We've seen the son become the father, and now he is ready to become the hero he was always meant to be."

  Three weeks after the Blip, Thor flew with Rogers, Romanoff, Banner, Rhodes, Rocket, Carol Danvers and Nebula to Titan II to confront Thanos. They found that Thanos had destroyed the Stones. An enraged Thor decapitated him with Stormbreaker.

  Sometime between 2018 and 2023, Thor and the remaining Asgardians settled in Tønsberg, Norway, and founded a colony called New Asgard. Trauma turned Thor into an overweight alcoholic. Hemsworth said he simply had an opinion and wanted to do something different, and the filmmakers were on board. Anthony Russo said of the physical change, "it's not a gag. It's a manifestation of where he is on a character level, and we think it's one of the most relatable aspects of him. I mean, it's a very common sort of response to depression and pain."

  The transformation took around three hours of hair and makeup, plus a large silicone prosthetic suit. On set, Hemsworth called himself "Lebowski Thor." The plan had been for Thor to return to his old chiseled self midway through Endgame. Hemsworth argued successfully to keep the aged physique.

  In 2023, Rocket and Banner arrived in New Asgard and urged Thor to hear the Avengers' plan to undo Thanos' actions by time travel. In an alternate Asgard of 2013, Thor met an alternate Frigga, who reignited his sense of purpose, and he borrowed that timeline's Mjolnir. The Avengers later held a silent mourning for Romanoff, who had sacrificed herself to obtain the Soul Stone. After Banner restored those Thanos erased, an alternate Thanos from 2014 attacked the Avengers Compound. During the fight, Rogers proved worthy to wield Mjolnir.

  In the final battle, Stark sacrificed himself to kill Thanos and his forces. Thor attended Stark's funeral. He then named Valkyrie the new ruler of New Asgard and left into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

  The depiction of Thor as a depressed and obese alcoholic drew accusations of fat shaming in editorial commentary and fan reactions, because other characters joked about it. Some objected that his emotional and physical state was played for laughs instead of treated with respect. Others gave it critical acclaim for its relatability and its handling of mental health. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal praised Hemsworth as "the graceful, exuberant comic actor he was destined to be."

  By his next film, Thor carries a large tattoo on his back that memorializes the family and friends he has lost.

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• 8. Midlife and Multiverse

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  Director Taika Waititi described the Thor of Love and Thunder as going through a midlife crisis. He is "just trying to figure out his purpose, trying to figure out exactly who he is and why he's a hero or whether he should be a hero." Chris Pratt said the film would continue the rivalry between Thor and Peter Quill, also called Star-Lord, that began in Infinity War and Endgame.

  In 2024, after a stretch with the Guardians that restored his muscular physique, Thor helped them fight an alien army on the planet Indigarr. Distress calls then sounded across the galaxy, and he left to answer one from Sif. A beaten Sif warned him about Gorr, a being with a god-killing weapon, the Necrosword. Gorr sought the extinction of all gods, and New Asgard was next.

  Dr. Jane Foster, Thor's ex-girlfriend, arrived at New Asgard with a terminal cancer diagnosis, hoping for treatment. His shattered hammer Mjolnir re-forged itself and bonded to her. Years earlier, Thor had unknowingly enchanted it to protect her. In January 2022, promotional artwork showing the remade hammer, cracks and all, had already been reported. Foster researched whether Mjolnir might grant strength and stamina, and the hammer proclaimed her worthy. She took the alias Mighty Thor. Her hammer could separate into fragments to strike several targets and then reassemble.

  Thor arrived as Gorr attacked with shadow creatures. Surprised to see Foster with Mjolnir, he teamed up with her, Valkyrie and Korg. Gorr escaped and kidnapped several Asgardian children. The group traveled to Omnipotent City to warn the other gods. The Olympian god Zeus refused to help and had Thor captured. When Zeus injured Korg, Thor impaled Zeus with his own thunderbolt, which Valkyrie stole during their escape.

  The Shadow Realm rescue turned out to be a ruse so that Gorr could take Stormbreaker. He used it on the Bifrost to open a portal to Eternity, where he planned to ask for the destruction of all gods. Valkyrie was badly hurt, and Foster was drained, her cancer worsened by Mjolnir. Thor went alone and used Zeus's thunderbolt to give the kidnapped children his power. Foster arrived and destroyed the Necrosword.

  Admitting defeat, Thor convinced Gorr that he had really wanted his daughter back, not the death of the gods. Foster died in Thor's arms. Eternity granted Gorr's request to revive his daughter Love, and Gorr asked Thor to take care of her before he died. Thor adopted her. By 2025, Thor again held Mjolnir and went on adventures to help people on other planets. Love, who calls him "Uncle Thor," fought beside him wielding Stormbreaker. At a later, unspecified time, Thor comforted the mutant mercenary Wade Wilson after he was wounded.

  In September 2020, Hemsworth said, "I'm not going into any retirement period," calling Thor "way too young for that."

  The animated series What If...? (2021-24) shows other Thors, again voiced by Hemsworth. In one alternate 2011, Barton seems to shoot Thor dead by accident, but a vengeful Hank Pym, as Yellowjacket, had arranged the death. In another, Odin gives the infant Loki back to Laufey, and Thor grows up as an only child. That Thor throws a huge intergalactic party on Earth in Las Vegas, with guests including the Sovereign, the Ravagers, Surtur, Korg, Nebula, the Grandmaster and Howard the Duck. He fights Danvers, who is sent by Maria Hill, and the partygoers damage sites such as Stonehenge and the Statue of Liberty. When Frigga is about to arrive, he threatens everyone into cleaning up. The Watcher later recruits him into the Guardians of the Multiverse to fight an alternate Ultron.

  Other versions fare worse. One is killed by Ultron in an alternate 2015, and another by Kang the Conqueror during the Multiversal War. A zombie Thor is destroyed by an Infinity Hulk. In another reality, the Time Variance Authority turns Thor into a frog and sends him to the Void, where he is called Throg.

  In the Disney+ series Hawkeye, a Broadway show called Rogers: The Musical features an actor playing Thor with a prop Mjolnir.

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