Thor and Avengers: Infinity War Did Not Learn Their Lessons
When last we left, I went over-long talking about what I thought about spoilers and that might have alienated some of you. Then I gushed over Spider-man, and then talked about how Iron Man really didn't learn any lessons in Avengers: Infinity War.
Speaking of failed lessons, what's up with Thor? The most growth this character has seen was in his first movie and his last. In the first he learns to stop partying so much and get involved. In the Ragnarok he learned that he's not the god of hammers and that sometimes you have to give up to win. So where do we find him in this movie? Going off pretty much on his own to find a bigger hammer ax thing so he can straight up kill a guy for killing his brother.
I'm getting ahead of myself. We meet Thor right after the events of Ragnarok. Thanos has boarded the ship containing the whole of the Asgardian race and wants the Tesseract, AKA The Space Stone. He kills Heimdall and Loki and gets the stone. The Guardians of the Galaxy respond to the distress beacon (super convenient) and find Thor floating in space. They all have an amusing conversation about how manly he is, Thor commiserates with Gamora about families being tough. There's a really bad joke here that went too long on a second watch where Peter Quill mimics Thor.
Thor, Rocket, and Groot go off to the find the Tyrion Lannister to make a magical hammer ax thing. They do. Thor gets back on Earth just in time to wreck shit in Wakanda and stab Thanos in retaliation for all the Asgardian murder. He fails, though, and Thanos snaps his fingers and says "too late, girlfriend." Nobody super important to Thor disintegrates in front of him, but we can all hope that Marcy and her boy toy from Dark World did.
What did this do to Thor? What did he learn? Mostly, he learned to ignore the lessons of his previous films. It's all about revenge and needing a hammer big enough to kick ass with. We get little of him mourning Heimdall or Loki's death (although in the case of Loki he may have done that so often it's kinda a shrug been there), but all his other friends but Sif died in the last movie. He doesn't seem to care much about that.
Overall, Thor did some fun and hilarious things but of little consequence. Had Thor done nothing at all but hang out with the Guardians, maybe the fight in Wakanda would have been longer. It seemed futile and kinda empty in retrospect.
All that being said, this is still just half a movie. And it's a damn good half of a movie, but will be judged really on its whole. Marvel has done a massive achievement rounding up a ten year journey and that should be seen on the big screen.
Tomorrow I'm gonna continue this and talk about the Hulk. Be excellent to each other.
Update: RIP Loki and Heimdall even though it seemed Idris stopped giving a shit about this a few movies ago when they gave him nothing to do.
Update update: Oh yeah, where the fuck was Valkharie?