Avengers Endgame: Thinkin’ About Thor
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This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, particularly Thor’s arc in the movie, so this is your chance to leave, if you haven’t seen it.
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So. Thor got fat. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. I’m being mildly hyperbolic, but Thor’s portrayal in the latest Avengers film, alongside his teammates’ reaction to his portrayal, has rightfully drawn a lot of criticism from body positivity advocates. My feelings are a little more complicated, particularly because Avengers: Endgame is a movie I truly enjoyed, but we’ll get to that. For now, let‘s start at the beginning. Which is technically the middle. See, the majority of Endgame takes place five years after the remaining Avengers have killed Thanos, but failed to reverse the effects of the Snap heard ‘round the universe, and during that time, the Avengers have dealt with their failure in different ways.
Black Widow has become the reclusive leader of a global rescue organization, Iron Man has started a family with his long-suffering fiance Pepper Potts, Captain America leads a support group for survivors of the Snap, Hawkeye has become a brutal vigilante killer, and the Hulk has reconciled the two halves of his warring personality into a single consciousness. Thor, meanwhile, has fallen into a deep depression, signified by his binge drinking and marathon gaming sessions with erstwhile space-buddies Korg and Miek. It’s not the most senstive portrayal already, but more importantly than that, Thor also got fat. Like, really fat.
From this reintroduction, Chris Hemsworth spends the rest of the movie wearing a not-entirely convincing fat suit in order to portray the newly tubby God of Thunder, and unfortunately, the stark (sorry) change in his appearance frequently leaves him the butt of jokes from a lot of the quippier Avengers. And, I mean, from a writing standpoint? I kind of get it. It’s an easy joke to make. Hemsworth has spent the majority of his time working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in, frankly, unreasonably good shape, to the point that his body was often used as focal point to approximate and equivocate the male gaze for the female audience members (I would argue that the female gaze is largely unseen in the MCU, owing to the franchise’s general lack of female representation behind the camera, but that’s an argument to be made by someone a lot smarter than me). So of course it’s a shock to see the character essentially turn from a bodybuilder into total schlub essentially overnight, and of course the initial reveal is played for big laughs.
Understandably though, some people take issue with this portrayal. It would honestly be enough simply to say fat jokes are just lazy writing, but increasingly, discrimination against fat people (fatphobia, if you will, and I don’t care if you won’t) is really one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination. I would obviously never go so far as to say fatphobia is as bad a problem as racism or homophobia. That would be ridiculous. No one’s life is being externally threatened because they’re overweight, but a disdain for people who are overweight is every bit as deeply engrained in western culture as any other form of discrimination. Hell, I had to correct for it in writing this essay, and it’s literally about how we should stop doing it!
Fatness in media is often used as a visual shorthand to imply a major character defect; greed, stupidity, evilness, etc. It’s a lazy device left over from more intolerant times, when comedy still generally tolerated punching down. It overlooks the fact that many people who are overweight, are overweight for genetic reasons beyond their control. And while there is a measure of personal responsibility to be considered when taking care of one’s health and appearance, mocking people for reasons frequently beyond their control is the height of cruelty, and the definition of punching down. This isn’t to say that fat people are off limits when it comes to humor. You can make jokes about anything. The problem is largely one of context and appropriate targets, and regrettably, Avengers: Endgame chooses the wrong target almost every time. As they’re deployed in Endgame, the fat jokes are made at Thor’s expense, and end up making fat people the butt of the joke. This is especially humiliating, because at the end of the day, Chris Hemsworth gets to take off the fat suit, and go back to being revered for his outlandish fitness.
Even if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t take issue with the idea of jokes being made at someone else’s expense, the jokes in Endgame are more often than not at odds with the emotional tone of the rest of Thor’s story. Between the events of Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War, Thor has essentially had one of the worst weeks of all time. In the space of a few days he lost: his father, his hammer, his sister, his brother, his best friend, and half (or more) of his entire people. On top of that, he feels personally responsible for not stopping Thanos from killing half of the entire universe when he had the chance. That’s enough trauma to ruin anyone’s emotional well-being, 1500 year old demigod or not. And in the intervening time, Thor’s only coping methods have been drinking a truly prodigious amount of beer, and endlessly playing Fortnite. I’m not a psychologist, but it’s probably fair to say that Thor is suffering from a pretty bad case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and has been getting approximately zero help for it. There’s an interesting story to be told there about a fallen hero trying and failing to deal with his demons, and while the movie appears interested in that angle, it’s also every bit as interested in goofing on that wounded character at every turn, often to its own detriment. I think it’s largely got to do to the character’s reinvention in Thor: Ragnarok as a fun loving surfer bro who’s a little bit thick, but otherwise good-natured. Making Thor the butt of the jokes in that movie, as well as its immediate follow up, Infinity War, works, but it works because of Chris Hemsworth’s relative physical perfection — goofing on him feels like punching up. His overall physical attractiveness, as well as his role as a superpowered demigod and king imparts a particularly high status distinction, and it feels good to see powerful people brought down a peg. In a movie like Endgame where Thor has been brought to his lowest point, and is both a physical and emotional shell of his former self, it feels atonal at best, and pointlessly cruel at worst.
Take for example, an emotional scene midway through the film where Thor, (through a detailed act of what I’ve been referring to as “gratuitous timefuckery”) is granted the opportunity to have one last conversation with his mother, Frigga, who was killed several years prior during the events of Thor: The Dark World. During that conversation, Thor expresses his insecurities about being a hero, and explains that he feels unable to live up to the burden of expectation after such a monumental failure. It’s actually a fairly moving scene; one that adds a layer of emotional resonance to one of the MCU’s otherwise most (rightfully) maligned films, while simultaneously providing insight into the depths of the depression Thor’s been dealing with ever since he failed to prevent Thanos from killing half the universe five years ago. Honestly, I teared up a little bit. And then it was completely undermined by some of Frigga’s last words, both in the scene, and to her son, ever: “And eat a salad!”
Why? Why would Frigga, who otherwise completely intuits the emotional distress her son is experiencing, choose to end what is clearly, even to her, their final conversation with a joke about his weight? I mean, I guess the answer is it’s a Marvel movie, and if they go too long without a character making a quip, the writers might die, but it’s a weak joke to begin with — haha, salad! The thing fat people hate! — and it undermines both the scene, as well as Frigga’s character. Besides, it’s not like the sequence on Asgard was otherwise completely devoid of humor! Moments later, Thor having regained his confidence, summons his hammer, Mjolnir, and for a moment, we see the shades of that irrepressibly funny golden retriever of a demigod we all loved in Ragnarok and Infinity War. Also, Rocket Raccoon was there, and he was up to shenanigans! Those should have been enough! We didn’t need another joke at Thor’s expense to close out the scene. As an overweight person myself, I just sighed. I hadn’t had much of a problem with the jokes, but at this point, they began to feel like they were on the cusp of getting out of hand. Luckily, the scene on Asgard also marked a turning point, both in Thor’s arc, and the movie’s attitude towards it.
As much as I think people are right to be upset at the jokes made at Thor’s expense, I have to appreciate the way the latter portions of Endgame actually managed to treat a fat character with some degree of respect. This mostly comes through in the film’s refusal to “fix” Thor before the final showdown. Thor got fat, and Thor stays fat, all the way through the final confrontation with Thanos and his time-displaced army (this movie gets weird, y’all). And let me tell you, fat Thor holds his own, and fuckin’ owns it. Leading up to the final fight, I was seriously expecting Thor’s weight gain to be written out, either through some offscreen handwavery (“While you guys built that gauntlet, I was training!”) or just through Thor’s own special blend of lightning and hammer-y Asgardian magic. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see him call down the lightning and transform back into the lean, muscly hunk we all know and love. Tony would’ve probably had a quip about it being better than a Bowflex, or something. Cap would clap him on the shoulder. They’d march out to fight Thanos, and we’d forget all about Thor’s beer gut. But then, to my surprise, that didn’t happen. Thor summoned the lightning and set out alongside Iron Man and Captain America for a final throwdown with Thanos, and the only things that changed were his beard and his clothes. And I thought that was really cool.
It says a lot about the way western media treats fatness that I spent most of the movie expecting Thor to get back in shape. It says even more about how we absorb the messages of that media when you consider that I wanted that to happen. Superheroes typically represent idealized, but completely unrealistic body types, and for all the discussion of unrealistic portrayals of women in media (which is still absolutely worth talking about), and the unhealthy body image issues that can encourage, we tend not to talk about how these representations can affect men. Comic book heroines are designed largely to represent the “ideal male fantasy” of a woman, yes, but comic book heroes are the opposite side of the same coin, and the same goes for the movie stars playing them. They’re meant to represent a basic power fantasy; being strong, and saving the people you love. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that fantasy, toxic masculinity often twists media to the point where being a superhero, and having a superheroic physique stops being fantastic and starts being aspirational. And because western men are so frequently discouraged from discussing, or even admitting that we have emotions, we rarely discuss the negative psychological impact these hyper-idealized portrayals can have on people who are already made to feel inadequate just by existing. So when a movie that, by any logical understanding of contemporary western media, should have found a way to “lose the weight,” chooses not to, I think it’s worth paying attention to. At least, it is when they’re not trying to undermine that choice with a joke.
For as much as Endgame drops the ball in their portrayal of fat Thor by treating his appearance as a joke, I still really appreciate that, when it mattered, he wasn’t any less integral to the team just because he was fat. Thor’s being fat didn’t slow him down, and it didn’t hinder his allies. He didn’t get sidelined because he “wasn’t in fighting form,” or have to take a break, because he got winded chasing Thanos. When the chips were down, and it mattered most, Thor was a superhero. One who also happened to be fat, fighting for the universe alongside his friends and allies, and ready to die for it. As someone who spent a lot of time as a kid getting bullied for my weight, I can’t help but think about how good it would have felt seeing that when I was younger. Again, I’m not going to pretend this is some significant milestone for representation, along the same lines as Black Panther, or Wonder Woman, or even that that’s necessarily needed. I’m still a straight white guy, so I’ve had plenty of other opportunities to identify with super powered characters in film. But with Endgame, it was a genuine delight to see something I didn’t even know I wanted: a hero who was both fat AND super powered, even if it was just for a few scenes. I only wish the rest of the movie could have risen up to match that portrayal.
