Avengers: Infinity War may follow on a short while after the events of Thor: Ragnarok, but the Russo brothers still seem to have rendered that film largely irrelevant. Although Ragnarok is generally viewed as the Thunder God’s best solo film to date, the Russo brothers seem to have abandoned a number of major character arcs and plot points. Even Ragnarok’s new secondary characters - Valkyrie, Korg and Miek - are mysteriously absent. The tone and style are jarringly different; while Hemsworth still plays the role of Thor with a lot of comedy, it isn’t the screwball humor of Ragnarok.

Chris Hemsworth seems to have been aware of the issue. In one interview, he recounted giving the Russo brothers a call. “Look, don’t write me the old Thor,” he told them, “we’ve got a new Thor now.” Hemsworth was very proud of what he’d accomplished with Taika Waititi, and more than a little protective of it. The Russo brothers, for their part, stuck to their guns. “Thor’s never faced something like this,” they told Hemsworth, “never been a part of this large an ensemble.”

It’s true that Ragnarok, essentially a superhero comedy, sits rather uncomfortably beside the cosmic horrors of Infinity War. Although Ragnarok saw the heroes triumph at a cost, the darkness was offset by Waititi’s trademark humor. Improv humor blunted the dramatic impact of several key scenes, including the destruction of Asgard itself. The Russos take a very different approach, and as a result Infinity War doesn’t have the same style as Waititi’s film. But that’s not the limit of their adaptation; in truth, dig a little deeper, and you see that Infinity War undid so much of Waititi’s movie.

THIS PAGE: A VERY DIFFERENT VERSION OF THOR

A Very Different Version of Thor

By the end of Ragnarok, the core design for Thor had been changed completely. The film saw the God of Thunder lose his mighty hammer, Mjolnir, which was shattered by his sister, Hela. Over the course of the film, Thor gradually came to realize that he’d never truly needed Mjolnir at all; the enchanted hammer had only served to focus his powers. It all came to a head when Thor summoned “the biggest lightning bolt in the history of lightning bolts,” blasting a startled Hela aside before tearing her army apart. That particular scene was made all the more effective by Waititi’s inspired use of “Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” This was the end of what Ragnarok’s co-writer Erik Pearson described as Thor’s “hero’s journey” - to find “the confidence in himself to rise up against all this crazy stuff that’s happening to him.”

But this wasn’t the only notable change to Thor. Visually, the Thor of Ragnarok ditched his flowing locks, and adopted a new costume design that was very different to his classic look. Hela even took one of Thor’s eyes, with the Odinson forced to wear an eyepatch over one eye.

And all of this is undone in Infinity War. Defeated by Thanos, Thor launches a quest - to gain a new weapon, a new hammer that he can use against the Mad Titan. It’s notable that he doesn’t wield lightning at all until he’s finally armed with Stormbreaker, as though the God of Thunder has forgotten every lesson he learned in Ragnarok. Armed with Stormbreaker, though, Thor cuts loose in dramatic fashion, sweeping through Thanos’s Outriders with the same ease he destroyed Hela’s armies. Meanwhile, Thor reverts to another costume, one more comic-book-accurate, in the film’s third act. He even gains a cybernetic eye, and the pronounced scars seem to fade away after its insertion. Visually and thematically, everything Ragnarok did to the design of Thor undone. That’s quite a remarkable decision for Marvel.

Thanos Decimates Asgard Even More Than Ragnarok

The problems are even greater than that, though. In Norse legend, Ragnarok is the twilight of the gods. It’s the brutal end of one cycle of existence and the beginning of a new one. Fundamentally, there is nothing Asgard can endure that is worse than Ragnarok.

But the MCU’s version of Ragnarok is actually damaged by the story of Infinity War. Thor: Ragnarok saw the God of Thunder learn that his homeworld was a far cry from the idyllic realm he had always believed it to be. Hela’s return revealed that Asgard’s wealth was built from the prosperity of plundered worlds. This was a city of gold, where no-one stopped to ask just where the gold had come from. Thematically, Taika Waititi’s film was a powerful commentary on the old British Empire. And ultimately, the script forced Thor to face a terrible choice; would he allow the past to return, with Hela claiming Asgard as her own, or would he instead trigger Ragnarok?

Fortunately, Ragnarok saw Thor receive advice from the All-Father’s spirit. Odin revealed that Asgard is a people, not a place. And so Thor’s challenge was not to save the Realm, but to save his people. He accomplished this, allowing Asgard’s past to be destroyed, and the group of Asgardian refugees set off to create a new future. But what of the cost in lives along the course of Ragnarok? Waititi’s trademark humor treated countless deaths as relatively meaningless. Thor didn’t even pause for a second to mourn the fall of the Warriors Three, his closest friends. So far as Waititi’s film was concerned, the past cycle was dead, and a new one had begun.

But the Asgardian ship was intercepted by Thanos. According to Thor, the Mad Titan had half the Asgardian refugees slaughtered. If Asgard is a people, not a place, then Thanos’s actions were far more of a “Ragnarok” than Surtur’s destruction of the Realm. Meanwhile, the fate of the surviving Asgardians is currently unknown. They only had one ship, and that was destroyed; so how did Thanos even spare half the refugees? Did Thanos himself send them elsewhere? The film is essentially silent about this, but whatever the answer may be, this is far from the joyous beginning of the next cycle. Rather, it’s a horrific atrocity - one made even worse by the end of Infinity War. Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to erase half the life in the universe. It’s doubtful he bothered to protect groups he’d already attacked before, so presumably more Asgardian refugees faded from existence after the Mad Titan snapped his fingers.

Ragnarok treated the death of Asgard as a joke, as though it didn’t matter. Infinity War didn’t even bother to show it, devastating Asgard more thoroughly than even Hela did.

What’s Next for Asgard?

All that raises a difficult question. in the wake of Thanos’s attack, what’s next for the refugees of Asgard? An important clue is offered by Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, who is nowhere to be found. Likely - along with Korg and Miek - she’s with the group Thanos supposedly spared. She was seen in set photos, filming scenes that didn’t make their way into Infinity War, so it’s possible they will appear in Avengers 4. “I exist in the overlap,” tweeted Thompson, possibly referring to the time between Infinity War and Avengers 4.

That seems to imply that the Asgardian refugees will make it to Earth, and it’s actually possible Vakyrie will help the remaining Avengers against Thanos. But that doesn’t really help the refugee community. Only a few hundred Asgardians escaped their home’s destruction; now their numbers have been culled further. For humans, 160 people are needed in order to create a new colony with sufficient genetic diversity to become sustainable. If Asgardians require similar numbers, then the entire race is on the verge of extinction. Far from launching the beginning of a new cycle for the gods, Ragnarok instead set the surviving Asgardians up to be almost wiped out. Incredibly, Infinity War didn’t even trouble to show the key scenes.

-

Infinity War frankly seems like a course-correction after Thor: Ragnarok. The Asgardians have been saved, only in order to die. New secondary characters have been added to the MCU, only to be ignored. And Thor has been dramatically redesigned, only to revert to type, albeit more powerful than ever before. These are strange narrative decisions on Marvel’s part, undoing many of the key decisions made in Taika Waititi’s film. Waititi is keen to return to Marvel, although he stressed that he wanted to direct “the second Ragnarok film,” not Thor 4. That’s perhaps a little less likely now, just because Waititi’s reinvention of the character and his world has largely been undone.

MORE: Could Avengers: Infinity War’s Ending Be Changed?

  • spider-man homecoming 2 Release Date: 2019-07-02 Avengers: Infinity War Release Date: 2018-04-27 The Avengers 4 Release Date: 2019-04-26 Ant-Man 2 Release Date: 2018-07-06 captain marvel Release Date: 2019-03-08