illwynd:

I was just thinking the other day about one of the differences between Thor’s characterization in Ragnarok vs. all the other MCU movies. And I think one of the things I’m saddest to lose is that aside from Ragnarok? Thor’s greatest strength was relationship-building. When set down on Earth with nothing, he makes friends willing to help him (and utterly charms the first astrophysicist to cross his path, no less), even though they’re initially skeptical of him. When he goes after his wayward brother to stop him from conquering Earth? He joins a team and makes friends willing to help him and who let him take his brother home at the end, which is actually rather generous under the circumstances. When faced with a Dark Elf invasion that his father no longer seems competent to deal with? He goes to his friends, Heimdall, and his brother, and—on the strength of their trust in him—enlists their assistance in carrying out his plan. Even AoU features Thor working closely with others (in sync, actually, on a few occasions), showing his skill at forming strong bonds even with people very different from him. Whereas in Ragnarok… he barely manages to badger and cajole his existing friends into begrudgingly going along with him, and his dismal attempts are supposed to be part of the hilarity. It’s a disappointing change, is all I’m saying. That was such a unique and refreshing quality in a hero and now it’s gone. 

(I was re-reminded of this just now by the “Thor 1 is a chick flick” post going around again, with regard to how Thor being really good at relationships, at building trust and being likeable and having high interpersonal intelligence and all that stuff, is exactly the sort of trait that lots of viewers, i.e. generally straight guys, found boring and unrelatable. Why can’t we have nice things.)

Yep, Thor’s ability to build relationships was one of his most admirable strengths. And it was nothing like his ‘clever’ (rather ham-fisted), manipulative attempts in Ragnarok. His new-found thoughtfulness in Thor 1 meant that he would approach relationships with more care, not less. But I guess Ragnarok and most of the cis straight guys didn’t care enough about that, which is really no surprise. Because those chick flick things like feelings and caring for other people? Nawww, that’s lame and uncool so let’s not do that. Clearly, we should turn him into an edgy, manly man of a hero who manipulates his family and friends. Also, let’s laugh about his feelings and have him not take other people’s feelings seriously because LMAO that shit is just HILARIOUS, like that totally isn’t toxic masculinity right there and hasn’t been done a million times before. Really, Ragnarok is just so creative and daring. So feminist and representative, refreshing and FUNNY :))))