Without Thor, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would not be as good as it is today. Of course we have countless powerful heroes already who we enjoy watching on the big screen, but Thor brings an otherworldly aspect to it all– literally.
Though Thor is extremely powerful both on and off the screen, he and his lore have a few flaws. For example, not everything about the God of Thunder make the most sense.
The fact that Kenneth Branagh managed to make such a character work on-screen is commendable, he also made a great superhero movie out of a character that no one thought could be adapted into a movie without looking absurd.
Some of Thor’s abilities are pretty preposterous when we take the time to think about them. A lot of things in the movies and throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe that include Thor are full of moments that left fans scratching their heads.
For example, one such head-scratching moment may be when Doctor Strange fills up Thor’s giant mug with beer like it is no big deal. Where did Strange learn how to do that? Is there a refilling a beer mug spell in that library? However, that’s a conversation for another day. You’re here for the mighty Thor.
Here are the 16 Things That Make No Sense About Thor.
Nine Realms Among Trillions Of Planets
In Norse mythology, there are nine realms that include the godly home of the Asgardians known as Asgard. There’s also the realm of Midgard, which is known as Earth.
Earth may not be a weird, floating island in space with no explanation as to how it has mountains since it has no tectonic plates to form them, but it’s a proud planet.
The problem that comes from merging so many characters and plots into the MCU is that the mythology doesn’t really work that well.
We know that the universe is extremely large and that there are millions of planets and stars out there, but Thor still believes that there are only nine realms.
In Thor: The Dark World, Thor did battle while travelling through portals in the different realms during the Convergence. This is where the Dark Elves learn about their future, and maybe they could have even brought some Convergence horoscope tickets at some intergalactic gas station– you never know when the Convergence could make you hit the Powerball before the entire planet blows up and money is useless.
The nine realms idea isn’t as dumb of an idea in the Thor stories. However, the problem comes when it is brought into the MCU, where countless other beliefs are bound to contradict it.
Thor may believe that there are only nine realms, but we’re sure that someone who has seen far more of the universe, such as Doctor Strange, for example, would argue that there are more.
Heimdall Can’t See Everything
If anyone can rock a hero or a villain, it’s Idris Elba. His portrayal as Heimdall is so good in the Thor movies that fans might not even notice him because of all the Shakespearean dialogue.
Sure, he’s a major player on Asgard, but his abilities are a bit questionable.
Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe always feels like someone who fakes his powers when they go wrong, but if he is able to make up some exaggerated excuse, he won’t hesitate to take credit.
The biggest issue beyond him claiming to see people from light years away – like Jane watching Dragonball: Evolution or something– is that he is really nearsighted. The Dark Elves are invading Asgard, but Heimdall only notices them when a fighter ship passes right by the end of the rainbow bridge. Is this his equivalent of someone running onto his freshly-mowed lawn?
He does manage to jump onto the battle and destroy some of the Elves with his sword like a boss. However, the problem is that he missed the entire fleet, which was hidden behind the Elf who he just destroyed.
It gets worse in Infinity War when the Asgardians are fleeing from the events of Thor: Ragnarok. The post-credits scene shows Thano’s ship, uncloaked, fly right over the Asgardian ship that is fleeing.
Did Heimdall completely miss this with his all-seeing eyes? Maybe he just wasn’t paying attention that day, but either way, Odin should’ve written him up for being a bad look out.
Thor And The Problems With Mjolnir
Over the course of the first three Thor movies, we see a disconnect between how Thor and Mjolnir work.
In the first movie, Thor had the use of his hammer taken away by Odin because Thor decided to go to another realm and fight Frost Giants. He gets sent to Midgard to fumble about in a small town.
Without the use of his hammer, he’s just an average human who looks like a bodyguard. He eventually proves that he’s worthy again, picks up the hammer, and has gains all of his powers back.
Fast forward to Thor: Ragnarok, and Mjolnir is destroyed by Hela after Thor throws it at her like the lovely brother he is. He is once again without his powers, but not really? He is still super powerful, which is seen when he fights The Hulk with only conventional weapons. So, he still can fight, but he’s just not as powerful as he would normally be with his hammer by his side.
At the beginning of the movie, Thor talks to Odin, and Odin tells him Mjolnir was just a tool to help him hone his powers. He states that Thor didn’t really need the hammer at all because the power was in him all along. Thor then flies off charged with electricity and a soundtrack by Led Zeppelin. He no longer needs a weapon– he is the weapon.
However, then comes Infinity War, and suddenly he needs to make a new hammer. Apparently he does need a weapon to use his powers against Thanos.
Although, technically, what happens in Infinity War erases what happened in Ragnarok, and Ragnarok erases everything in the first Thor movie.
Thor Returning To Earth In The Avengers With No Explanation
In the first Thor movie, the Bifrost was destroyed, which meant no more going to other realms to fight Frost Giants or Netflix and chill with Jane. As with the Thor movies, nothing really remains permanent.
For example, when we thought that Loki passed away at the end of the movie, we later find out that he’s actually alive and okay. All it took was a few minutes of credits to show that the tragic scene of him perishing was a bit meaningless.
The next we see of Thor is him landing on the jet that Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers crew were on. However, how did he actually get there? Did Asgard hire the best repairmen in the world to rebuild its rainbow bridge from Mario Kart?
There’s a throwaway line where Thor explains that Odin conjured up dark energy to send him to Earth. However, first of all, no one really knows what dark energy is or what it can do besides sound really cool when Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about it.
Using it in a random way to explain how Thor was sent light years to go get Loki? That’s pretty dumb, especially when Heimdall could use his sword to send someone anywhere without the Bifrost, which we saw in Infinity War.
Thor’s Healing Factor Needs Some Clearing Up
Thor can get shot at, slammed against the ground by The Hulk, and fly into alien ships and destroy them and remain completely uninjured. He has amazing healing capabilities, but they aren’t always consistent.
For example, when Loki stabs him with a knife in The Avengers during the alien invasion, the blade is somehow able to penetrate his tough Asgardian skin.
When Thor is stabbed, it looks like it hurts– not only that, but it looks like it hurts a lot. That moment should’ve had an impact on the audience– it should make us worry about whether or not Thor is in serious danger. However, he then starts bashing stuff with his hammer again and it’s as if he was never stabbed.
One could say that Loki had his daggers enchanted with magic, which allowed him to stab and injure Thor, but that doesn’t explain how Thor can shake off such a serious injury.
Most stabbing victims don’t fly off and save the world directly after, let alone celebrate by eating shawarma with friends when it’s over.
Did Thor’s wounds heal after he was stabbed because he’s a superhuman, or was it just a plot hole that Joss Whedon forgot about? It’s strange to think that the dagger would do any damage at all, since earlier in the movie, he fights a 400% Iron Man, and Stark didn’t even manage to put a scratch on Thor.
Mjolnir is said to heal all injuries, poisonings, and whatever you can think of, but that makes about as much sense as Vibranium doing all it does in Black Panther.
Thor’s Thousands Of Years Old, But Has Never Been To Earth
Thor is a God who has been around for thousands of years. Being thousands of years old, you’d probably learn a lot about the nine realms as you travel around saving them and living among the people. However, in the first movie, Thor acts like he has never set foot on Earth ever before.
The fish out of water story is always fun to see, but not when the protagonist is a God who has been alive for thousands of years. Asgard doesn’t even look bigger than Manhattan, so leaving it to visit other planets over the course of a thousand years doesn’t seem too out of the question.
When he first gets sent to Midgard as punishment, he gets hit by a truck by Jane and friends. He wakes up and then demands to know what realm he was in. If he had ever been to Midgard, he’d know exactly where he was from his thousands of years of travelling. There aren’t many trucks or coffee shops in Jotunheim.
Thor also loves beer, and Earth is pretty darn good at making beer. One would think that Thor would show up for at least one Oktoberfest. He had to of been to one, or at least visited Europe. His whole family speaks with an English accent, so a pub crawl wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.
The History Of Thor Doesn’t Really Match Thor From Mythology
In the movies and comics, Thor speaks like he was ripped out of a Shakespearean play. Tony Stark even insults him when they first meet by making a Shakespeare in the Park reference.
However, Thor has no idea what that means. He shouldn’t know what Tony said anyway because Thor shouldn’t know how to speak English.
The Norse Thor wouldn’t have blonde hair, either. In fact, it’s more likely that he would have red hair and a huge beard, as we can see in most mythology.
In mythology, Thor obviously has Mjolnir, but he has to wear magical gloves in order to allow the hammer to fly back to him after he throws it at his enemies. He also wears a special belt so that he could use the full power of the hammer.
Imagine watching a Thor movie and seeing him pause to put on his magical gloves and belt before attacking any oncoming villains. It was probably a good idea for Marvel and the MCU to avoid including those aspects of the character.
Those, and the chariot with goats named Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder that he used to fly around in. Those were in a few comics, but thankfully, they were left out of the MCU. Nothing says powerful like landing a chariot drawn by goats in front of Thanos.
However, it’s still odd that certain factors about Thor’s character were left out, while others were included.
Why Doesn’t Thor Use His Hammer To Bring Free Power To All Nine Realms
When Thor first fights Iron Man, he uses his lightning power to hit Iron Man and potentially take him down. This has the opposite effect of what Thor thinks it will do, though, as it actually supercharges Tony’s suit to 400% power.
This makes Tony even more powerful, as he is not at 400% against Thor, but it also shows off how much energy Thor has within his hammer (or without it, as seen in Thor: Ragnarok).
Tony’s suit is powered by an incredibly powerful arc reactor in his chest, which he uses to power Stark Tower and his other buildings. This is seen in Iron Man.
The fact that Thor is able to charge Tony’s suit up past it’s regular charge shows how incredibly powerful he is. In fact, the amount of power that Thor has could probably be used to power an entire world.
For example, just look at the energy of an average lightning bolt. An average bolt of lightning contains around one billion (1,000,000,000) joules of energy. An average household uses 41 billion joules each year.
Thor could easily sit in a plastic lounge chair and point Mjolnir at a hypothetical energy storage facility for a few hours each day to charge the world.
However, he never thinks to use his abilities to power the nine realms. Don’t hog all the energy, Thor.
Thor flies With Or Without His Hammer
In Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow would often make a sarcastic quip before grasping a rope on a ship and swinging away. This action is often replicated by Thor, who swings his hammer in order to fly away.
Thor uses Mjolnir to propel himself in the air to fly, which doesn’t really make sense with the laws of physics for continued flight, but he’s also the God of Thunder in a franchise where a Racoon can talk and sounds like Bradley Cooper.
However, his ability to use his hammer to propel himself into the air also makes no sense in the MCU.
For example, when Thor uses his new hammer, Stormbreaker, in Infinity War, it allows him to stop in mid-air, then fly into one of Thanos’ landing ships.
When he is without his hammer fighting Hela in Thor: Ragnarok, Thor flies off and lands on the Bifrost to help out his crew of Revengers. This is a pretty big distance to fly. While some fans might argue that Thor is super strong and that it was thus more of a jump, this still doesn’t make sense, since the distance was so great.
Hopefully Spider-Man will eventually ask bluntly how it all works. He’s helpful in clearing things up sometimes since he’s a curious high schooler.
Thor Manifests His Armor In Different Ways With His Hammer
Thor has the ability to manifest his armor at any time when he’s holding his hammer, and even when he isn’t. It’s understandable that he has the powers he has because of who he is, but this is one of those powers that makes absolutely no sense.
Odin bestowed the power of super strength, flight, healing, immortality, and the gift of willing clothing from thin air for Thor. That last part is the most baffling of all of Thor’s superpowers.
The first Thor movie had the epic moment where Thor was once again worthy of wielding Mjolnir. It flies to him, he grabs it, and then suddenly he’s magically changed into his armor.
This feels like one of those powers that was made up on the spot. Superman used to just be super strong, bulletproof, faster than a locomotive, and could leap over a building in a single bound. It was only later that he could shoot lasers out of his eyes and use his freezing cold breath.
This feels like an obvious addition to the ridiculous super power list that Thor has. Imagine if Mjolnir came back to him and he was still wearing his civilian clothes. It would be highly amusing if he had to run off to go put on his costume.
Thor And Loki Are The Same Age Even Though One Is A God And One Isn’t
There were bits in the Thor movie that showed Thor and Loki as children. In one scene, they were seen wandering around with Odin, who was teaching them life lessons and telling Thor that he would one day be the ruler of Asgard, and subsequently rubbing it in Loki’s face.
Odin is a bit of a horrible parent in the Thor movies. This makes no sense because the reveal of Loki as a Frost Giant means that he’s not a God and is therefore not immortal.
If Thor and Loki are both kids, as shown in the movie, which might mean they’re only 10-years-old or 1,000-years-old, this doesn’t explain how Loki is still alive when the present day Thor movie stars. Frost Giants aren’t immortal, yet Loki is somehow able to remain the same age as Thor.
Thor is thousands of years old and happens to be a God. Meanwhile, Loki was just some baby Odin picked up from Jotunheim. He isn’t a God. He might as well have been one of the Frost Giants that they beat up like Ninja Turtles foot soldiers on NES.
Now he’s suddenly immortal, has the power of trickery, and is also immortal. Unless Odin did some enchantment or magic on him, it makes no sense at all to anyone who walks out of a theater with a moment of thought.
Thor Manages To Pilot Any Spaceship He Encounters
Our hero manages to pilot ships in both Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok. In the former, Thor has a bit of trouble flying the ancient Elven ship because it predates him, but he still managed to do it.
He is being made fun of for being a bad pilot, which would’ve been funnier if the establishing shots of the ship weren’t showing him doing barrel rolls between buildings like he’s Poe Dameron.
In Ragnarok, he gets in the weird ship that the Grandmaster uses for, well, special reasons. He manages yet again to pilot it with zero knowledge of how it works. As pointed out before, Thor isn’t too bright, yet he somehow manages to jump into any random ship and fly it around like an ace pilot.
However, despite his amazing piloting abilities, Thor still has issues with even the simplest machines on Earth. For example, he doesn’t even know what coffee is.
If all someone did was play PS4 for the last few years and nothing else, then turning them onto PC gaming with a mouse and keyboard would be completely foreign until they learned what each button did. This means that Thor would be a pro at both PS4 and PC, as he manages to jump onto any ship, despite it’s model, and pilot it within minutes of getting behind the controls.
Maybe he’s been around for a few millennia, but knowing how to pilot the the Grandmaster’s special ship says a few things about Thor.
Thor Having A Fake Infinity Gauntlet Before It Was Even Created By Eitri
One of the more glaring errors in the MCU is that of the Infinity Gauntlet in Thor. The appearance of the Infinity Gauntlet perhaps proves that the whole shared universe idea wasn’t 100% planned out, at least not when Thor first came out.
When we first saw the Infinity Gauntlet, it was just an Easter egg that was in the first Thor movie. As the MCU progressed, we soon learned that it was going to become the next big weapon that would eventually lead to Avengers: Infinity War making close $2 billion at the box office.
As the MCU continued, the Infinity Gauntlet became a huge plot point because it could hold all of the Infinity Stones. The problem here was that fans had already seen the Infinity Gauntlet safely locked up on Asgard, protected by Odin.
Or at least that’s where we thought it was, until we saw Thanos slip the golden glove on in the end-credits of Age of Ultron. This confused most viewers, as we had seen it on Asgard.
It wasn’t until Hela walked by it in Thor: Ragnarok and proclaimed it as a fake that we realized that Thanos actually had the real thing.
How did Hela know that it was a fake? Also, more specifically, how did she know what it even was? She was in a space prison for thousands of years.
There’s no way that she could have known what it was.
Not only that, but the Infinity Gauntlet wasn’t even created by Eitri by the time of the first Thor movie. The explanation of the one on Asgard being a fake is clearly a misfire in trying to plug a plot hole.
How Did Thor Know The Whereabouts Of The Time Stone?
Unless Thor was watching interstellar television while Doctor Strange was using the Time Stone to mess with apples, there’s no clear reason why he would know that Earth had the Time Stone.
Thor did go to Doctor Strange for help about finding Odin, but nothing was even mentioned in the post-credits about the stone, nor was it even visible on Strange.
Unless it was general Asgardian knowledge that was never given to us before, the fact that the Time Stone, or the Eye of Agamotto as the Masters of the Mystic Arts called it, was on Earth could not have been known by Thor.
All Thor should’ve known about was the location of the Mind Stone and the Reality Stone.
He knew that the Mind Stone was with Vision on Earth and that the Reality Stone was with The Collector. There’s no evidence that he knew that the Time Stone was with Strange, even if Thor had seen Strange’s necklace. The necklace wouldn’t be open to expose it unless Doctor Strange was using it.
Near the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor did say that he was looking for the stones, but he said that he knew that Strange had it. Maybe in his searching for the stones, he heard about the Eye of Agamotto and put it all together?
Only Hulk Gets Sent Back To Earth By Heimdall
Speaking of knowing where all of the Infinity Stones were, Heimdall uses his sword to send The Hulk back to Earth before he is impaled by Thanos in Infinity War.
Bruce Banner knows nothing about where the stones are, so he might as well have been left on the ship to explode because his knowledge doesn’t help the plot. He was of no use the Thanos.
Thor, however, knows where the other stones are. Sending him to Earth may have led Thanos to Earth to follow him, but it would still mean that Thor would get to Earth to help fight Thanos before Thanos was able to collect all of the stones and conquer the universe.
Thor travelling to get a new hammer after he lost Mjolnir might have been the most catastrophic decisions he has ever made instead of finding a way back to Earth ASAP.
Thanos didn’t have the other stones, so Thor, without a hammer and with full power after the events of Thor: Ragnarok, could have helped wipe out the invasion on Earth with a less powerful Thanos.
Two of his three children couldn’t even hold their own against Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon – although they walloped Vision and Scarlet Witch with barely any effort.
Thor Didn’t Call Or Get Help From Any Of The Avengers In The Dark World
Everyone knows that actors are contractually obligated to appear in so many movies. However, such franchises like the MCU are huge, and thus actors can be obligated to appear in multiple movies over multiple years.
In Thor: The Dark World, the Dark Elves show up on Earth and start wrecking havoc. They destroy London and terrorize its citizens.
In The Avengers, this type of havoc becomes so disastrous and dangerous that the government decides to intervene and shoot a missile at Manhattan.
It’s not the same case here, however, as it seems like all of The Avengers turned their smartphones off and decided to binge-watch Parks and Rec. Even Ant-Man got a cameo from Falcon, where he broke into The Avengers headquarters. We won’t even bother mentioning how Loki transformed into Steve Rogers.
What makes this all the more ridiculous is when we look back at the first Iron Man movie. Tony is adjusting his suit and sees terrorists attackuing a village. He flies off immediately not knowing if his suit is 100% ready. That’s enough to get Stark to fly around the world, but a catastrophic alien attack in London isn’t?
Can you think of any other things about Thor that don’t make any sense? Sound off in the comments!
