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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Perhaps Angry Gamer should take Donald’s advice, if he doesn’t like it he should leave.
@Simon:
Leave Midgard, you mean? And go where? That shit-hole Jotunheim?
@Scanisaurus:
Amherst College womens’ sports teams used to be known as the “Lady Jeffs”. The men were “Lord Jeffs” (after the founder, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who is perhaps best known for deliberately giving native American tribes blankets infested with smallpox).
Recently the college decided it was the 21st century and they didn’t want that guy being their mascot anymore, so they changed it to (believe it or not) the Mammoths.
@Violet the Vile
The power of aggrieved entitlement and the hammer of purple metaphor are independent of any physical body. They pass from one reactionary gamer dude to the next.
Please, let it be true, for about the next fifty years.
…So, AG’s premise is that heathens have gotten a hold of the Thor franchise. And that’s terrible for… reasons?
…Is he trying to look stupid? I mean, on purpose?
donald The Dumpster-Fire’s “it’s just locker room talk” again leads directly to threats of violence against a person of color…
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/louisiana-gretna-police-ocasio-cortez-shot-facebook.html
… and I think to myself, “what a wonderful world….”
@ Scanisaurus – I watched the first Thor movie with a friend from Sweden. It bothered her that Odin lost his eye in battle.
As for Valkyrie’s queen…I wonder. Regardless of orientation, a monarch must produce an heir…I wonder how the manbabies would take it if Valkyrie’s queen was a transwoman.
I frankly welcome our new diversity seeking hollywood overlords.
let Grabthar’s hammer crush the hopes and dreams of the little authoritarian weasels, so I can hear the lamentations of their girly men.
make it so.
This guy should call himself “One Sad Gamer”. The fact that he seems almost incapable of saying, “Okay, I just won’t see this one. I wonder what else is playing?” is more than a little pathetic.
Also, these guys need to get over the idea of Marvel Comics’ Thor having anything to do with his mythical namesake, as others have noted. He’s about as accurate to that as the Lucifer TV series is to Judeo-Christian mythology, or about as close as the Kiss song “God of Thunder” is to accurately describing Zeus.
@Seraph4377
Yes, but given that Valkyrie isn’t actually Thor’s daughter, I think Asgard has abandoned the requirement that the heir be a biological descendant of the previous leader.
What with all that overwrought purple prose, all I could think was that this angry gamer person really needs to just sit down and hate-write some angry fanfic.
Icthyic said
Me too! It’s actually perking up my interest in entertainment again.
I’m currently working up the nerve to see Jordan Peele’s “Us” but the trailer has me freaked out. A bit. Okay, a lot. I mean, I haven’t even gotten round to watching Chris Stuckmann’s review yet…
Scanisaurus
She is not actually called “Lady Thor” in the comics. Just Thor. And 2 other men, not (Thor Odinson) have used the name Thor while wielding the hammer. In the Marvel Universe, it has been a name and mantle since the beginning when Donald Blake didn’t know he was the actual Thor Odinson, and thought he was just transforming to Thor.
So as a mantle, your argument would be more like if someone demanded a female successor to Captain America be called Lady Captain America.
So can I get this scene in a movie? (I know, not yet, we still need Batroc the Leaper and Gwenpool for it but 1/3s there!)
@Moggie: Leave Midgard, you mean? And go where? That shit-hole Jotunheim?
*Perhaps Niflheim, if Hela will have him?
@Tessa:
Yeah, this isn’t the first time that someone other than Thor has used the Hammer. In the comic books, Thor was once replaced by an alien named Beta Ray Bill, and Thor once got turned into a frog.
Since Thor is not a Lord, she wouldn’t even be called Lady anyway. She would simply be called God of… just like him.
I had quite the opposite feeling when reading his little screed though. I was cheering it, in fact. It sounds really exciting, especially since its also being helmed by Taika Waititi, who I trust to make a great movie, and give the female characters their due.
I keep forgetting that every time Hollywood takes steps forward in representation White fanboys (and not a few fangirls) lose their emotional shit. It happens so often now that its almost reflexive, and I don’t even think they know theyre doing it. Theyre reaction is so common that Ive started dismissing it myself.
Crying wolf all the time gets tired and Hollywood has just started ignoring their sorry asses too, and taking their whining in stride. There not quitting. They know what side of the bread their butter is on, and its with increasing the diversity in their product.
I don’t care why they’re doing it, or even whether or not they believe in it, but they know they’re making a f*ckton of money off of it, and were all getting the representation we asked for, and that’s all that matters.
He sounds like an angry kid with over-indulgent parents. He wants what he wants and he wants it now!!!!(ALL THE EXCLAMATION POINTS)!!!
*I* wan’t particularly thrilled with Endgame, with the weak-sauce story line, gaping plot holes, and mandatory shoe-horned heteronormativity**. However, I’m not going to cry about (and expect sympathy for) movies not being made to my taste. Marvel and Disney are going to make decisions based on where the money is. They’re going to focus-group the heck out of the production and leave the bits that don’t sell on the cutting room floor. They’re making some awkward and ham-handed nods to *grrl power*+, so those must have rated well.
**I will take to my grave that Steve and Bucky are DTF. It is known.
+I am all for nods (or outright statements) of girl power. The ones in the film are better than nothing, but they stink of an exec somewhere wanting to be patted on the head for being a good boy who thinks of the womens.
I guess he forgot that in the 1980’s Thor was a woman for a while. AND when Thor was in mortal form her hammer was disguised as a wooden hairbrush.
“Lady Captain America” would be silly, anyway, when there’s the perfectly good “Captainess”
@Seraph4377 : conceiving a children with two cis womens who happen to be literal gods, and friends with other gods including a shapeshifting specialist is *probably* not terribly hard anyway. That’s before taking into account that they *also* have access to modern medicine if they don’t want to go the “a god did it” way.
Worse case scenario, they adopt someone and make a royal decree that this is their biological heir, like hundred of royalties have done in the past.
Not that I am against the idea of a super powered transwomen or transmen. But if a movie revealed that someone is a transwomen just because the plot need her to put someone pregnant, I would find that distasteful, and misleading about what transsexuality is.
@Amtep
I am loving you. In what I hope is the non-creepiest way it is possible for a total stranger to love another total stranger on the internet.
@Tessa
My mistake regarding the “Lady” addition, but my point still stands regarding Thor being used as a title and not a name. Captain America is still called Captain America, “Steve” isn’t his official title.
I can also feel that simply giving a woman an exclusively male name rather than giving her the feminine form is kind of sexist, similar how a lot of role-playing games have female monks (as opposed to calling them nuns) whereas giving a male character a female name or have male characters as nuns or some other female title is treated as a joke in virtually all forms of media. It’s a tired double standard that also often ends up belittling the female equivalents to the male versions and reinforces the idea of male as default, female as something niche.
Scanisaurus:
No, it doesn’t. As I said, 2 other men used the title Thor. Even though Beta Ray Bill didn’t call himself Thor, Odin referred to his Thor form as “Beta Ray Thor.” So in the Marvel Universe it is most definitely a Title. Not saying it is in real Norse Mythology, but in Marvel’s fake attempt at it, it totally is. So if all the dudes get to use the title “Thor,” why can’t the woman?
As for the name thing. In 1880 Ashley was an exclusively male name. Now it’s mostly female. Has been female since the 60s. Same with Meredith. So give it some time and Thor might become a girl’s name anyway.
This doesn’t actually happen the other way around as often. Not for the reason you gave. Not because male is the default, but because a man being like a woman is considered an insult to his masculinity. For that reason, a girl with a boy’s name doesn’t have the same stigma. This this allows for that drift. Plus as more and more girls get the name, the more they get their cooties on it and the names become more feminine.
As for the monks and nuns thing. Are they actually equivalent? Which religions are we talking about there? If it’s made up fantasy world, they can have monks of all genders *shrug*. Or nuns of all genders.
@Tessa: If you’re talking D&D, “monk” (think shaolin, not benedictine) has been used as a gender-neutral title since the early 1980s. For that matter, “wizard” has been at least theoretically gender-neutral right from the start, though some of the female wizards were called witches or sorceresses instead. There haven’t been any “nuns” that I’m aware of.
Also, “witches” and “warlocks” have been very different things from each other and from wizards for over a decade now. They go out of their way to make sure players are likely to see male witch art and female warlock art first to hammer the point home that these terms are not meant to be gender specific.
@Tessa
I suppose this is less jarring to English speaking people, but in Sweden there has been little change as to which names are masculine and feminine, and Tor and Tora still exists as names for regular people here. If “Steve” was an official title in the Marvel universe, wouldn’t you find that weird? I’m fine with a woman picking up Thor’s mantle, I just with the’d used the female equivalent of the name instead.
As for the monks and nuns, the problem with defaulting to “monk” is that it does kind of diminish the nuns, especially when it comes to eastern religions I’ve literally seen people who honestly believe Buddhism has no nuns because they’ve only seen monks portrayed in media, but buddhist nuns are real and they are about just as much an equivalent to the monks as catholic nuns are to catholic monks. When I was in Thailand I saw many buddhist nuns doing the same things the monks did, and their shaved heads and clothes were the same, only the clothes were white instead of orange.
@ scanisaurus
As any devotee of Eastern Martial Arts will tell you, Ng Mui, the inventor of Wing Chun was a Buddhist nun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng_Mui
I’ll just imagine Marvel’s Thor represents the original Anglo-Saxon (parallel to Scandinavic) derivation of ancient Germanic mythology.