Hemsworth's Love & Thunder Training Hints At Thor's Dangerous New Obsession
Thor: Love and Thunder is now in post-production, and while fans wait to learn more details about the story and its characters, Chris Hemsworth has shared a bit of the training he had to go through to reprise his role as the God of Thunder, and through it, he’s hinting at Thor’s new, dangerous obsession. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been bringing various heroes and villains from Marvel Comics to the big screen for over a decade, and it has become a tradition to give its heroes three solo movies. Things have developed differently with Thor, who went from being the least popular Avenger with the weakest solo movies, to getting a fourth solo adventure after going through much-needed changes in Thor: Ragnarok.
Played by Chris Hemsworth, Thor made his debut in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor in 2011, and he returned the following year to join the Avengers in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. His second solo adventure, Thor: The Dark World, is widely regarded as the worst MCU movie to date, but that didn’t stop him from returning in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Thor was absent from the Civil War conflict, but his next adventure, Thor: Ragnarok, changed everything for the character. With Taika Waititi as director, Thor: Ragnarok gave the God of Thunder a personality and sense of humor, seizing Hemsworth’s comedic talents and guaranteeing the character a longer stay in the MCU. His next appearances were in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the latter with some big changes to his appearance.
After failing to kill Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and doing so at the beginning of Avengers: Endgame after learning Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones, Thor isolated himself in New Asgard and fell into a depression, with his only activities being eating, drinking beer, and playing video games. Avengers: Endgame, then, saw the introduction of “Fat Thor”, the complete opposite from the athletic Thor viewers had seen up to that point. Fat Thor was received with mostly negative reactions, as many accused Marvel of “fat-shaming” and not taking topics like depression and PTSD seriously and using them for laughs, while others praised this change arguing it added reliability and invited a discussion about mental health. Thor stayed as Fat Thor through all of Endgame, but he has left all that behind in Thor: Love and Thunder, and he might be obsessing over this.
Chris Hemsworth has been sharing parts of his training for Thor: Love and Thunder, and a new video on his Instagram account showed how intense his training to reprise his role of Thor was. Hemsworth’s Thor look for Love and Thunder had already been teased in a couple of pics from the set, with some of them shocking the audience (and his co-stars) and even becoming memes, but this stronger, more muscular appearance could be hinting at Thor going through another mental health issue, one where he’s now obsessing over an unhealthy ideal of perfection to “fix” Fat Thor. What drove Thor to gain all that weight in Avengers: Endgame were mental health issues like depression and PTSD, so rather than “correcting” his appearance by turning Thor into his most muscular version yet, Thor should tackle those issues that made him isolate himself in the first place. Being extremely strong and “fit” doesn’t necessarily mean happiness, so Thor is pretty much going too far the other way to get rid of Fat Thor.
Whether these extreme changes will be addressed somehow in Thor: Love and Thunder, as well as his inner struggles, or not is to be seen, but Marvel risks giving a toxic message to the audience and making the problems with Avengers: Endgame’s Fat Thor even bigger, more so if his physical appearance is once more used for various jokes throughout the movie.