By David Futrelle
You can always count on the dude who calls himself One Angry Gamer to have a highly nuanced reaction to developments in the gaming and comics worlds. For example, take his reaction to the news yesterday that the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder movie will feature Natalie Portman — a LADY — as none other than Thor himherself.
“This is the kind of news that strips the threads away from the very fabric of your soul,” he declared in a post on his One Angry Gamer site, really leaning hard on that fabric metaphor. “As always, Marvel is moving the dial ever further Left.”
Well, not that much further left, in that Portman played Man Thor’s gal pal in several past films, and that there already has been a series of comics in which Thor was a lady. But as One Angry Gamer sees it, those comics sucked and the movie will too:
For those of you unfamiliar with the Female Thor, it was as bad as everyone said it was, laced with the sort of propaganda that the Marvel comics have become infamous for … and included blatant agitprop such as Jane sharing an interracial kiss with Falcon after beating up some “racist” agitators.
But it didn’t end there… Jane ended up sleeping with the Falcon later on.
Oh my goodness, the comic book characters are miscegenating!
It’s the sort of thing that makes you sick to your stomach; churning your insides with a nausea-inducing swirl, as if you were butter in a theki.
If interracial sex makes you feel like butter in a sort of centrifuge used ito churn butter in Nepal, you might just be a teensy weensy bit of a racist.
“But it gets worse,” the Angry Gamer continued.
There were misandrist threads throughout the female Thor run, including one where a female villain refused to let another male villain fight female Thor out of “respect” for what she was doing. This is not even a joke.
Er. what? I’m having a hard time even parsing what exactly he’s mad at here.
But wait… it gets even worse!
According to ScreenRant’s tweets, actress Tessa Thompson said that as the new king of Asgard, the Valkyrie has to find a queen, since she’s obviously a lesbian!
I had to stand up and then sit down for a moment.
It’s a lot to take in. It’s like a hammer to the gut.
By Grabthar’s hammer, what a dingus.
If the news that a character in a comic book movie might be lesbian hits you “like a hammer to the gut,” you may be taking comic book movies just a teensy bit too seriously. And also you pretty definitely are a huge homophobe.
But it turns out Mr. Angry Gamer is just getting warmed up.
Starring [sic] at the floor, I began to realize that whatever good the Marvel Cinematic Universe brought to the world would be undone by the heathens of Hollywood.
Whatever memories or joy that you thought you could embrace from the previous three phases of storytelling, are gone.
Your joy is being systematically erased by the diversity agenda, and Phase 4 will taint these legacy characters… forever.
Ah bloo bloo bloo.
I wish there were words that could express the sadness that envelops my heart, to see Marvel wielding an axe of destruction for which all that you loved will be torn asunder and ripped apart like a pig’s intestines in a slaughter house; all for the sake of brainwashing the masses with their agenda.
Angry Gamer dude really loves working those metaphors, huh?
But there are no words… just bleakness and the realization that cultural entertainment is on the cusp of crumbling due to these degenerates.
Ah, I was waiting for him to work the word “degenerate” in there somehow, as if anyone had any doubts about his basically fascist sensibilities.
Anyhoo, after the Nazi dogwhistling, our Angry Gamer boi predicts the end of the world:
The end is nigh, and it will be ushered in with trends, claps, and applause.
The San Diego Comic-Con was the messenger of Armageddon, and you get to stand at ground zero to witness the complete and utter annihilation of comic-book movie culture.
Take some deep breaths, dude, you’re losing it. I don’t think even fans of Bewitched in the 1960s were this upset when they replaced Darrin with a whole other Darrin without saying a word.
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During the San Diego Comic-Con, Avengers: Endgame surpassed Avatar (2009) as the highest grossing film of all time.
One Angry Gamer is now, officially, the Wrongest Gamer Alive.
No, no, you see, this long and storied comic-book movie culture (dating back to, uh, 1978?) has now become victim to mindless chasing of progressive SJW multicultural feels-before-reals trends, and the gains in revenue are from mere dilettantes and virtue-signallers who don’t really get it. And of course this is only one facet of the greater war against Western Christian Civilization and Virile True Masculinity, as orchestrated by the Illuminati.
It’s the fucking Sad Puppies, whining about their pillow fort being invaded by outsiders, all over again, is what I’m saying.
BUT WAIT!!! IT GETS EVEN WORSE!!!
out there in the REAL world, people are GETTING ALONG, even though they’re not the same RACE!!! Men are getting along with women!!! People are respecting each other!!!*
It’s enough to make a trumpanzee throw feces!!!
…
* (ok, it’s not happening as much as I’d like, but it’s still HAPPENING!!!)
Echoing others on this thread, if a movie doesn’t appeal to me, I simply don’t watch it. The entire superhero/comic book movie genre just doesn’t interest me.
I’m old enough to have seen Superman in the theaters with Christopher Reeve in the title role. Sure, I enjoyed it, but I was only 11 years old. I don’t understand the appeal of these movies for adults, unless they have children they take with them.
Hollywood’s been recycling old TV shows, remaking old movies, and adapting comic books for the big screen forever. Hardly ever is there an original idea. C’mon, a movie based on the Scooby-Doo cartoon? Why?? I realize there’s enormous amounts of money at stake, too much to risk on untested concepts.
I thought that the gamergate line was that if you don’t like even one aspect of a piece of media, you should go make your own instead of criticizing? Why doesn’t One Angry Gamer just write and draw his comic book series and then adapt them into movies?
And I haven’t been on internet all that much this weekend. Are the usual whiners just mad that there’s a lady Thor movie? Or are they also mad that she’s being played by a Jewish actress?
@Fujimoto
I still see people whining about the She-Ra reboot every time it comes up, constantly going on about how they won’t let the women look like women and whatever other nonsense.
You can tell none of them have actually watched it because if they had they’d be instead whining about how unashamedly gay it is.
They’d particularly be upset by how butch Scorpia is
They definitely haven’t watched it.
Then again, most of them probably didn’t watch the original either.
@WWTH
Of course, there’s another irony here. GamerGaters don’t like it when people criticize media, but what is Mr. One Angry Gamer doing exactly? That’s right, criticizing media.
“But we got here first! This is our promised birthright! The art of comics is sacred and inviolable, and shouldn’t be cheapened by this trend-chasing caravan of invaders! These virtue-signallers should be making their liberal art in their own shithole mediums instead, like underwater basket weaving or interpretative dance or slam poetry! The silent majority of comic-book readers has spoken and they will not be replaced! Listen to the free market and stop trying to insert your own views into your art! Like it or leave it! Don’t tread on me! Deus Vult! Molon labe!”
(I’m having way too much fun writing this.)
Channeling the love child of Vox Day and One Angry Gamer:
@weirwoodtreehugger
From what I’ve read (first from The Guardian, then here), they’re just mad that there’s a lady Thor movie, with One Angry Gamer (as quoted by David) also still whining about Jane/lady Thor having an interracial relationship with Falcon in the comics storyline from roughly 5 years ago that this new movie’s based on. My guess is that maybe they forgot about Natalie Portman being Jewish (at least for the time being-they’ll probably remember and whine about it eventually).
A complicated and grudgingly respectful relationship between a hero and a villain? Yes, that’s certainly unheard of in comics.
Do these guys actually read comics at all?
So Mr. Angry Gamer feels like he’s taken a hammer to the gut because Natalie Portman is going to be the new Thor. Some dudes certainly take their comics seriously. If I had that gut-wrenching feeling I think it would be because patients are dying due to lack of medical care or children are starving or monsters are abusing helpless animals or we are destroying our environment. But, of course, I’m just a woman and I guess I can’t see the big picture!
@Lukas Xavier : it involved women and wasn’t sexual, so of course it’s misandrist. The only reasons for women to echange words in their head is if they will cater to the male fantasm about lesbianism.
I’m actually curious why they are making Thor into a Goddess. Why can’t Natalie Portman be cast as Freyja instead? Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a dog in this fight. Its All the same to me I just wonder what the motivations are.
So he’s saying he isn’t going to see the Natalie Portman Thor movie, along with billions of other humans? This is news.
I was never a fan of the “anyone can be Thor” storylines, going all the way back to Beta Ray Bill. It just doesn’t feel like the power of a mythological god should be transferable with a hammer. But Watiti has proven he can make a good Thor movie I am definitely looking forward to enjoying the next one.
@Pyxxxie:
It’s established Marvel canon that the magic power of Thor is independent of any physical body. A number of people have gained and lost Thor’s godly powers over the decades, including a space-alien named Beta Ray Bill. Usually it happens when they want to change up the Thor character in some significant way, so they have the main Thor undergo some something-or-other that keeps that character busy. At the same time, the magic power of that character passes to someone else so that the comic can continue being published once/month.
The passing of the magic is important because Thor is so powerful it’s hard to make him suffer or be subject to torture or magical enslavement or whatever. So long as he has his power, it’s very hard for him to suffer or be afraid or feel anything else that would truly transform the character’s outlook. But if the power goes to Beta Ray Bill or to Captain America or whomever, then the being with Thor’s memories is suddenly subject to those effects, and can grow and change as a character as a result.
I’m not a comics collector by any means, but, actually I kind of am. I mean, it’s not like I don’t go years without buying a single comic book, but now and again I do go a couple years in a row consistently buying a few titles. Thor was a character I followed for a while in the 80s. I remember them making a big deal out of the Beta Ray Bill story lines and there was another famous story line where Captain America wields the Thor-power. But most of the times the power shifts, it’s not quite as big a media event.
And yet… there have been many others, including his power passing to a FROG. That’s right, a literal amphibian from Central Park in NYC. After passing his power to androids and frogs and space aliens as well as human men, it would really be kind of odd if the power **never** ended up in the hands of a woman, right? Well, that’s what Marvel thought (eventually), so they had a storyline where a woman (it happened to be Jane Foster, but that was concealed for most of the run) took up the power.
Since Captain America is being written out of the continuity after the avengers: Endgame movie, Jane Foster is an established character, and people are more likely to remember the Jane Foster-Thor than the BRB-Thor from 30 years ago, Foster is the best character other than a frog or a not-yet-invented android to take up the mantle.
If they wanted to feature this type of storyline in the movies to help Thor grow as a character, Foster was really the only choice.
@Shalimar:
Most of those storylines are pretty bad, but I liked the BRB one (maybe it was just that I was young enough not to care much about making sense). I still want to read the Foster-Thor storyline, but that’s the only one that’s even mildly intrigued me since BRB.
Seeing american dudes get butthurt about Marvel’s Thor not adhering to their idea of Norse mythology is pathetic.
Marvel Thor and all related characters are completely separate entities only vaguely inspired by the Norse originals, and any schoolkid in Sweden, Denmark, Norway or Iceland could tell you so, and it’s ridiculous to see some guy with zero knowledge on real Norse mythology be perfectly fine with all the other changes Marvel did to Thor (like making him blond and not a redhead, giving him multiple love interests instead of having him be married with Sif and have children, having him fly instead of riding in a wagon drawn by goats, have him wear spandex etcetera) but get up in arms over women and black men getting lead roles.
I do have a gripe with the title of “Lady Thor” though. Thor is a name and not a title, and an exclusively masculine name at that. Just to illustrate how stupid this is, imagine if Steve Rogers (A.K.A. Captain America) got a female successor taking up his shield and she’d call herself “Lady Steve”. There is a female equivalent to the name Thor in Sweden, and it’s Tora, so if they had to use the Thor brand on a female character, couldn’t they have used that name instead?
I so love when dudes, who obviously don’t read comics have strong opinions about them. How do I know he doesn’t read comics?
1) Can’t tell the Avengers book (where Jane dates Sam, I’m not sure about sex given Jane being very ill and all) apart from the Thor* one (where the villainess shows respect)
2) Doesn’t know that said villainess and villain are a married couple (Titania and the Absorbing Man)
3) Doesn’t know that the main heroine going by Valkyrie in the comics (Brünnhilde) is canonically a lesbian
I might be able to find more if I cared to look.
* I don’t even particularly like Jason Aaron’s Thor. (It has/had the plot advancement speed of a glued down snail, and is somehow less than the sum of its parts.)
Does this guy understand that Thor is the Norse god of thunder?
Logic would be nice. But irate MRAs and rage-filled gamers don’t bother with it. It’s just too difficult.
In Marvel comics originally Thor was a dude called Donald Blake, who just turned into Thor with the help of a magic cane. Just in body not mind (so he identified Loki by using his knowledge of the myths not his memory).
But as time went on, and the other mythological characters acted as if he was the real Thor anyway, this tidbit got forgotten and later fully retconned away. But the core idea that Thor is whoever holds the hammer never entirely went away. That’s how we get storylines like this or the probably most 90s thing ever the THOR CORPS (which didn’t even include Thor Odinson).
Oh my god I can’t stop laughing
This is how he reacts to a plotline he doesn’t like in a movie? I dread to think what happens when he’s stuck in a traffic jam, or the supermarket runs out of that pizza with the barbecue chicken on
Also, isn’t the version of Thor most westerner are acquainted with very heavily inspired by Jesus Christ ?
When I play more hardcore games inspired by norse mythologie, Thor seem to have a much lower and different role in them.
@Ohlmann:
As far as I know it’s more the opposite… a version of Jesus that was inspired by Thor (the warrior Jesus, basically) became the one celebrated by western Christianity.