Road To Endgame: 'Thor' Expands The MCU Using Fantasy, Examinations Of Masculinity, And Chris Hemsworth Hotness

Prior to directing Thor, Kenneth Branagh's filmography included Twelfth Night, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, In the Bleak Midwinter (the story of a man fighting depression by putting on a production of Hamlet), Love's Labour's Lost, and As You Like It.If you count his role as Iago in Oliver Parker's Othello, that's as many Shakespeare adaptations as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Vishal Bhardwaj combined, arguably making Branagh the Bard's biggest fanboy. He's exactly who you call to make a grandiose family drama about an aged king, an ambitious prince and the snake in his ear. What makes Thor such an oddity though, is that in addition to being "Shakespeare In Space," it's also a fish-out-of-water alien comedy bordering on slapstick.The majority of the film's runtime takes place on Earth, where Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the banished God of Thunder, smashes a mug of hot cocoa, walks into a pet store demanding a horse, gets tranquilized in the butt, is tasered by Kat Dennings, and gets hit by a car on more than one occasion. Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok may have pushed Marvel to its farcical limit, but the seeds for Thor-centric comedy have been in place for quite some time.A drama about the complications of royal lineage and a comedy about a brutish space oaf in small-town New Mexico ought not to mix. In many ways, they don't; they may as well be two different films. In dramatizing the divide between them, Marvel also set the stage for The Avengers, in which a scorned space-prince leads an alien army into New York City. However, en route to this major crossover, Thor told a character story that brought humour to the fore, but missed the mark where it mattered.  

Thor is a rugged, chiseled superhero, and the first Marvel hunk we see from a woman's point of view. Thor began the Marvel trend of finding excuses for its men to be shirtless (turning even Chris Pratt of Parks and Recreation into a "Hollywood Chris"), thus catering to audiences who enjoy the action genre but find it lacking in male eye-candy.Not only does the film put Thor's physicality on display, its lens also caters to women in several ways usually tailored to men. Jane Foster, for instance, is a bumbling, nerdy scientists who gets the supermodel-hot guy in the end, rather than being a trophy for Thor's troubles. And while Jane certainly influences Thor's character arc — she helps him change by showing him kindness — she also benefits professionally from their relationship. Thor's mere existence is a confirmation of her life's work, and he even sits her down to validate her research under the stars.During their interactions, the film begins to feel like a romantic comedy. Where Thor is concerned, a character who starts out so hard-headedly masculine, this is a good thing. Most of the film is about two characters from different worlds — in this case, literally — and with different outlooks, overcoming quirky odds and ending up together (well, nearly). Strip away all the space stuff, and what you're left with is a rich, pig-headed playboy helping a girl get her diary back (and learning to cook eggs for other people, instead of scarfing down Poptarts solo).Thor comes from a place of antiquity, despite its futuristic technology. Asgard is a patriarchal monarchy, wherein women are usually court maidens, like Thor's mother Frigga (Rene Russo), since the kingdom's affairs are handled by the King and his sons. Rare exceptions like Lady Sif (Jamie Alexander), a female warrior, fulfill traditionally masculine roles in the hierarchy. Thor himself may be relatively forward-thinking in this regard — from their brief interactions, he appears to have supported Sif's efforts as a soldier — but it isn't until he arrives on Earth that he meets a woman who's also a leader in her field.More importantly, the woman in question, Jane, has no physical powers. Rather, she studies the physical. Her job is to inspect and investigate advanced astrophysics, the very magic that Thor has, up until this point, taken for granted. Essentially, her job is to learn about Thor himself. Her function in society involves progress through understanding, rather than knocking things down with a hammer. It's this understanding nature that draws Thor to her, as he attempts to introspect, and answer a fundamental question:Who is Thor?

When confronted by Loki's Destroyer, Thor's friends engage the metallic creature while the exiled Thor shepherds bystanders to safety. He tells Sif and The Warriors Three (Hogun, Fandrall and Volstagg) that he has a plan. He doesn't let them in on this plan, though Hemsworth's somber expression says it all: it will likely lead to his death. And it does.In what plays like the culmination of a character arc, Thor nobly sacrifices himself to save the humans in his vicinity. But this sort of gesture was never called into question during the preceding narrative. Laying down his life for someone else, especially someone innocent, never comes up during the film as something Thor is unlikely to do. Even his apology to Loki in this moment is for a reason he doesn't seem to understand. It's an apology just in case.There's little by way of action, or even dialogue, to suggest that the Thor of a few days prior wouldn't have laid down his life this way. Earlier in the film, Sif mentions wanting to die "a warrior's death." Sacrifice on the battlefield is already an Asgardian symbol of nobility, so what is Thor's Earth-bound journey really for, if this is how it culminates? Would Thor not have ferried innocent bystanders to safety, regardless of the kindness shown by Jane Foster? These are questions that don't seem to have answers. They only ever come up as answers, to questions the film never asks in the first place.Upon Thor's return to Asgard, Loki asks him why he no longer wants to kill Frost Giants, to which he replies: "I've changed." But Thor's apparent change, which came about on Earth and among a people he'd never encountered before, doesn't have any dramatic bearing on his initial battle on Jotunheim. The Frost Giants are a people Thor feared and detested because of their centuries old blood-feud, a notion that's never challenged or even mentioned during the film.Thor does, however, complete some semblance of an arc after his return to Asgard. When Loki unleashes the full power of the Bifrost (the bridge between Earth and Asgard), he aims its destructive capabilities at Jotunheim. The bridge is sure to destroy the Frost Giants, but Thor hammers away at its foundations until it breaks, cutting him off from Earth, and from Jane, in the process.This is an unboundedly selfless act, wherein Thor chooses the greater good over his personal desires. He would likely have never done this pre-banishment, given that it saves a realm at war with Asgard, but what leads him to this point in the story is still a question unanswered.There's no beat or even suggestion throughout the narrative that makes him question why he went to war in the first place. Thor's actions, while in service of saving lives (both human and Jotun), don't stem from reciprocating or paying forward any kindness or selflessness he was shown on Earth. Destroying the Bifrost still comes about through the force of his hammer, a symbol of masculine destructiveness. Thor, at least in this film, never comes around to using it the way his father suggests: as "a tool to build."Rather than any dramatized change in outlook or methodology, Thor still operates within the same archaic, masculine, militaristic paradigm. He merely shifts its target. Whatever one feels about superheroes constantly hitting things — one might argue the genre would be boring without it — by placing its character in this predicament, the film short-changes his arc.