"Thor: Ragnarok" (2017)

There were two things that jumped out at me in the otherwise silly, fun, more comedy than action “Thor Ragnarok.” One involved the hammer-lightening stuff, the other was the apocalyptic elements.

Near the start of the film Thor’s (and Thor’s writers) crutch—Mjölnir, his hammer—is destroyed. This comes as a surprise because Hela is able to hold it (up to that point no one save Thor was worthy) and she crushes it with her bare hands. It makes sense later when the movie reveals that Hela had wielded Mjölnir before Thor; not to mention the fact that Odin had died. (It was his magic that made it so that only Thor could wield the hammer.)

Later on in the action, Thor begins to be able to control another weapon: lightning. This makes sense in the story because we have always been told that Thor is the “god of thunder.” So why had he never used thunder and lightning before? Probably because he had that handy hammer. Only once his father (and the crutch his father had given him) were gone could Thor begin to really tap into his own abilities. Sometimes we need to be forced through hardship and difficulty to discover who we truly are. The care and help of those who care for us is the very thing that holds us back.

The other interesting insight that the film explores is the real nature of the Apocalypse. It is assumed that “the end of the world” is a bad thing. What Thor discovers in this story is that the only way to really rid the world of evil is to destroy it and start over. Hela is pure evil, but her power is drawn from the world of Asgard itself. The only way to save the people of Asgard is to destroy it and give them a new place to live. That is similar to the understanding of the Biblical idea of Apocalypse.

Only the biblical one is less comic-book-y and more relevant to real life!