In a ‘Dark World,’ From Thor’s Mouth to Our Ears: “Meh!”

In this month’s edition of GQ, a less deified (but still slightly hunky, as the ladies may say) Chris Hemsworth dawns the cover. In the article, they discuss fun with the family, fashion sense, being a “new kind” of macho (whatever the hell that means), and of course…

Being Thor. And that’s when this happened:

That newfound recognition—that mistakes aren’t always fatal and first impressions aren’t always final—was useful as Hemsworth helped push the Thor trilogy forward in Thor: Ragnarok. “The first one is good, the second one is meh,” Hemsworth says.

 

“What masculinity was, the classic archetype—it just all starts to feel very familiar. I was so aware that we were right on the edge.” Where in the first two films he played his hero character straight, in the third iteration he injected more humanity and created a character truer to his own spirit.”

No more debate. No further discussion. You heard it from Thor!

Shakespearean acolyte and renowned talent, Kenneth Branagh, brought us to the bifrost first and we marveled (no pun intended) at what it would look like in Asgard. Take any video game, Thor has always sounded noble and aristocratic. Thor needed Branagh’s vision.

Then, Alan Taylor came and mucked the whole thing up creating this dank existence with arguably one of the most easily forgotten villains in the MCU, Malekith the Accursed.

(And be honest, dude looked like and acted like a reject from a J.J. Abrams concoction of Star Trek.)

Reading Hemsworth’s recollection of The Dark World, it was as if he would prefer to use the bifrost to crawl over Taylor’s vision and move right to Ragnarok. You can see how much Hemsworth appreciated Taika Waititi’s ability to humanize the Asgardian god and create someone “truer to his own spirit.”

In any multiverse, these brands deserve a mulligan. Let’s leave that version of Thor in the dark and pretend this discussion didn’t happen.