In Love and Thunder Thor is deemed unworthy to wield Mjolnir, but his former love, Jane Foster, is. A female Thor is a dumb idea. This is why.
Taika Waititi has been confirmed as the director for the fourth Thor film and I’m excited. Thor: Ragnarok is one of my favourite Marvel Cinematic Universe films; it has all the charm and whimsy of the comic book series and, unlike a few of the others, doesn’t take itself too seriously. So when I heard Taika Waititi was returning to direct the fourth film I was beside myself with glee. But introducing a female Thor is a dumb idea, at least at this stage.
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The fourth movie is titled Thor: Love and Thunder and it will have a huge twist; Chris Hemsworth will no longer be wielding Mljonir, instead it will be be Natalie Portman. It is based on the first comic in the fourth volume called Mighty Thor which, I might add, is a great read. But what works in writing might not always be work on film and I believe this to be true for Thor: Love and Thunder.
You can put your pitchforks away, this isn’t a rant about how female super heroes are inferior and how nobody likes them. Instead I will discuss how I don’t think the audience will be ready for this massive transformation and also how the creator of The Mighty Thor completely dropped the ball with his concept of a female thunder god.
Thor is a name not a title.
The tag line for the comic book is “there must always be a Thor” and it insanely stupid. The writer of The Mighty Thor, Jason Aaron, must have had an aneurysm when coming up with this concept. A female who can wield Mjolnir? Sure. I’m all for that. A human that can somehow manipulate weather and electricity? Okay. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I will get behind it. But to call her Thor because of her newfound powers? Incredibly stupid.
Thor is not a super-hero name, it is just a name. Thor is his name and being a thunder god is his game. Just to give you an idea of how stupid this is, for argument’s sake, let’s pretend Thor’s name is actually David for a second. Now, that read the tag line again: “there must always be a David.” Oh, Jason, there are plenty of Davids out there, I assure you. Now that Jane Foster can wield Mjolnir she is no longer Jane Faster, she is The Mighty Dave! Why just call her Jane: Thunder Goddess? Jason, you are a great writer but you really screwed the pooch on this.
Jane is not ready for her own movie.
Take heed, this has absolutely nothing to do with Natalie Portman. Portman is one of my favourite actresses of all time and I would love to see her take over as the god of thunder some day, but the problem is that Jane Foster is just not ready for her own film.
Jane almost completely disappeared from the MCU after Thor: Dark World. And her absence has mostly been ignored in the MCU, up until Avengers: End Game where they briefly used archived footage of her. All of the sudden she is back and is now more powerful than Thor? It seems like the producers are forgoing story and continuation to pander to a few noisy people. At this point, people who are truly invested in the MCU don’t care enough for Jane Foster, especially not to see her in her own film. Jane Foster needs more character development before she is ready to be recognised as the next “Thor”.
It’s Captain Marvel all over again.
Despite what you’ve read, Captain Marvel was a big ol’ flop. Being the box office smash hit it was you’d expect home media sales to be good – great even, but sales are performing abysmally for a Marvel film. After 3 weeks a mere 800, 000 Blu-rays have been sold. That’s almost half of what Thor: Ragnarok sold.
The real reason why the true fandom doesn’t like the Captain Marvel movie is because her story felt tacked on. Her introduction made a mess out of the entire MCU story arch; creating many redundancies, contradictions and plot holes. Also, nobody wants to see their favourite super hero be reduced to zero with the introduction of a Deus ex machina, and that’s exactly what happened. People don’t hate Captain Marvel because she is female, if that was the case then you’d expect Wonder Woman to receive similar criticism, but it is one of the most loved super hero movies in recent times.
Introducing a female Thor is a dumb idea, at least right now. Even if we ignore Jason Aaron’s brain-fart of an idea suddenly changing Jane’s name to Thor (it makes zero sense) it is still a very risky move to give a character that has completely fallen off the MCU radar her own super powers and her own movie. Give Jane’s character time to develop, then introduce her as Thor’s replacement in the future. I’d be totally down for that.