Fat Thor Has A New Name, And You'll Either Love It Or Hate It
Move over, Fat Thor.
In advance of the digital and Blu Ray release of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios released an extensive list of the special features awaiting home viewers — and one of those features is entitled "The Creation of Bro Thor," which is a slightly more charitable nickname. (via Den of Geek)
It's just the latest development in the ongoing saga of...well, we suppose we're calling him Bro Thor now, although we were always partial to Tony Stark's christening of the Thunder God as "Lebowski." In case you somehow weren't aware of the uproar over the character's portly new physique in Endgame, allow us to recap the madness for you.
In the film's first act, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) — out of sheer rage and frustration — unceremoniously decapitated Thanos after the Avengers and Captain Marvel tracked the Mad Titan down to his farm planet. It turned out that Thanos had essentially set the Infinity Stones to self-destruct after using them to complete his mission of wiping out half of all life in the universe, and without them, the Avengers had no way to undo what had been done.
The film then jumped forward five years, a period during which our heroes had adjusted to post-Decimation life in a variety of ways. Natasha Romanoff desperately struggled to keep all of Earth's defenders on the same page in the hope of averting another catastrophe, Bruce Banner found a way to retain his smarts and personality after Hulking out, Tony Stark got married and had a precocious daughter who loved him 3000, and Thor... retired to the New Asgard settlement in Norway to play Fortnite with Korg, drink all of the beer he could possibly get his hands on, and put on just a few pounds.
Recruited by Banner and Rocket to take part in the Avengers' audacious plan to travel back to various periods in time to secure the Infinity Stones before Thanos could, Odinson came along only halfway willingly. For a good portion of the film — especially during his encounter with his mother Frigga during a jaunt back to Asgard in 2013 — it was obvious that his, er, letting himself go was but a symptom of a deep depression. At a crucial moment, he had failed his friends and the planet he had sworn to protect by way of not going for the head, an oversight which allowed Thanos the opportunity to snap his big purple fingers and make the Avengers' worst fear a reality.
Now, we should mention that during Endgame, a few tasteless jokes were lobbed Thor's way (mostly by Stark, who among other things accused the Thunder God of having Cheez Whiz coursing through his veins). These jokes provoked the ire of a sizable swath of the internet, as many felt that the character was being fat-shamed, and that his depression was used as a device to make him the butt of simplistic gags.
Still others, though (ourselves included), read the situation a bit differently. Sure, Stark had a few snarky things to say about Thor's rotund waistline; we submit that this is because he was Tony Stark, and it would've been completely out of character for him to not lob a few zingers at his friend. Further, Hemsworth gave an absolutely brilliant performance which managed to hit comedic notes while being a completely relatable illustration of the realities of depression. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have even stated that it was their intention to use Thor's fragile mental state to humanize the Asgardian to a degree, and in our humble opinion, they pulled that off smashingly.
Well, to no one's surprise, it seems that Marvel Studios must have caught wind of the whole brouhaha, and made the understandable decision that the "fat" descriptor just wasn't going to work for official purposes. We think it's a laudable choice, but we can already see the inevitable backlash coming, because the internet is kind of like a rabid dog with two heads that can't stop fighting with each other. We could have predicted that there would be a contingent of fans who would be quick to anger over Thor's weight gain, and it's just as easy to predict that there will certainly be a portion of the online community who are of the opinion that the re-labeling of Fat Thor is nothing more than a feeble stab at "political correctness."
Fortunately for Marvel Studios, they make movies that are beloved by you, everybody you know, everybody they know, and so on. You simply can't please everybody, and we sincerely doubt that Marvel even feels pressured to try at this point. Renaming the stocky Asgardian "Bro Thor" was a thoughtful move, and one that shows that the House of Ideas isn't into shaming anybody.
Except, of course, for bros. We can expect an overwhelming wave of indignation from the online bro community at any moment.