LogFAQs > #925118131

AllstarSniper32 posted...

I never said it wasn't, I was just pointing out that Jane as female Thor was a concept already put to print long before Tumblr was a thing to pander to.

Yes, but I'm dismissing that as something that doesn't matter.

Throwing out the idea of "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if Jane got Thor's hammer and got Thor's powers?" as as a one-off joke in a non-canon comic in the 70s doesn't really mean anything or influence anything if they proceeded to ignore the idea for 40 years. It's about as meaningful as some of the ridiculous things Superman did in Silver Age comics, or again, like the What If where Aunt May was chosen as a herald of Galactus. Or where Wolverine became king of the vampires. Or the story where Storm from the X-Men got a duplicate version of Thor's hammer and took his place as god of thunder in Asgard. Or the issue where Conan got transported to modern day NYC, had a sword-fight with a cab, and then sort of had a one-night stand with the wife of the guy who wrote the comic. What If? was a fun title, but it had a LOT of "let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks" ideas, because the people writing it knew that nothing really mattered.

Treating Jane as Thor as a serious concept and as a canon character that would be part of continuity going forward is something that didn't really exist before 2014. I'm not saying the mere idea of the character couldn't have been thought of or referenced earlier, but the only version of the character that really matters - especially in the context of this movie - is a very recent phenomenon.

But ultimately, it isn't even Jane as Thor (or any woman as Thor) that's the problem. It's how the story was handled in the comics. It was poorly written, poorly justified, and when people pointed that out the writer immediately became overly defensive and childish.

At least some of the problems of the comic won't be an issue in the movie (ie, the comic had an asinine justification for why Thor became "unworthy", in the films you have the Endgame justification of his failures, self-doubt and self-loathing, and years of wallowing in self-pity and gluttony/sloth to erode his worth), but some of the problems from the comic could easily still be adapted, and the film can create entirely new problems (ie, if he was still worthy enough in Endgame to literally steal Mjolnir from his past self and use it in combat with Thanos, what happens after that to suddenly make him not worthy enough to wield it? And what justification will there be to make JANE worthy, when she never really seems overly worthy in any way in prior films? Remember, just being a good person isn't enough - none of the Avengers other than Cap were able to lift it.)

It's not impossible to adapt a bad comic story into a good movie, and it's possible that Taika Waititi could pull it off. But as is it's more apt to inspire dread than optimism.

(And that's before we even get into issues like how making Thor 4 means that Thor won't be in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - something James Gunn has already commented on - so we're basically sacrificing what could have been a neat idea for something that probably won't be as good. Or how the whole Jane thing kind of comes across as being a stunt, because Natalie Portman is unlikely to agree to keep doing these movies long-term - so either she only has the hammer for like 5 minutes in the movie as a swerve, loses it before the end of the movie, or keeps it but just never shows up in later stuff and people just ask where the hell she is the next time an alien invasion happens and she's nowhere around.)


---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family