While Thor: Love and Thunder seems to be gearing up to be another fun 80s-style romp, it surprisingly offers a large abundance of scares.
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Trailers
- Gorr the God Butcher. Let's just say that his name is the least scary thing about him, as evidenced by the official trailer.
- His appearance. While the comics' version resembles a demonic Twilek, his MCU incarnation looks more like a zombie than an alien. He's even seen at one point with black goo oozing from his mouth, which almost resembles blood.
- The official poster shows him looming over the heroes in an ominous manner, not unlike Darth Vader, with him also sporting a Slasher Smile.
- The first scene of his scarred appearance on display shows him in a room with writhing tentacles and black ooze circling around him. It looks like a set-piece out of the Cthulhu Mythos than a Taika Waititi movie.
- How lethal he's built up to be. The teaser shows Falligar, a draconic kaiju god laying dead, with the killer all but stated to be Gorr. That's right, a creature the size of Godzilla was killed by Gorr, who from its perspective, was the size of a flea. And it's heavily implied he's just getting started.
- He's presented in the official trailer using the Necrosword to demolish an entire planet.
- His overall contrast with the rest of the film. Literally, everything else is vibrant and saturated while Gorr is only seen in black, white, and grey, save for his piercing orange eyes. The scenes of him in the trailer almost seem pulled right from another movie.
- Most of the trailers show Gorr looking grim and speaking in a dour tone until one “Tickets on Sale” spot flipped the script and showed him sporting a slasher smile and declaring “how exciting!” in a voice that sounds downright giddy. The sheer contrast is utterly unnerving.
- His appearance. While the comics' version resembles a demonic Twilek, his MCU incarnation looks more like a zombie than an alien. He's even seen at one point with black goo oozing from his mouth, which almost resembles blood.
- The Shadow Monsters. While in the comics they're goofy-looking, vaguely dinosaur-shaped, and eventually revealed to be cousins of the symbiotes, in Thor: Love and Thunder's trailers they're shown overpowering and devouring several Asgardians while blending into the darkness of the chaotic battlefield save for their bone-white fangs and writhing tentacles silhouetted against the flames.
- The Journey trailer shows a horde of them in varying shapes and sizes — all horrifyingly grotesque — charging towards the Thors and Valkyrie.
Film:
- Gorr and the Shadow Monsters attack the children of Asgard through shadows and kidnap them from their rooms. Their parents were all outside trying to protect them and the city, and it is all for naught.
- Axl spends some time trying to comfort the other kidnapped children, reminding them that Thor cut off Thanos's head and he'll come to save them. Cue Gorr showing up, summoning a creature, and ripping its head off before throwing it at the children.Gorr: What? You thought it was fun a second ago.
- When caught by Gorr in the Shadow Realm, Thor is Bound and Gagged and Forced to Watch as the villain slowly strangles someone he loves, again. Even though Thor and Jane are both able to break free and keep fighting, the psychological number this would have done to Thor...
- The Stinger shows Zeus recovering from his wounds, angry at the dismissal of the gods by mortals and how they now look to superheroes. He decides that he'll remind the mortals who they should really pray to when he has Thor killed. Who does he send out to do the job? Hercules.
- In spite of the raucous theatrics, wasteful debauchery, and hedonism of lazy Jerkass Gods like Zeus being largely Played for Laughs, the awful reality dawns that this is precisely why in spite of having entire pantheons of Gods in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who can save humanity and make the world a better place in the blink of an eye, it has not happened because the majority of Gods simply DO. NOT. CARE. There are exceptions of course (The Asgardian Race, Falligar, Khonshu, Taweret, and the Eternals being the standout examples), but it doesn't change the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (if not Multiverse) is still a war-torn purgatory of suffering plagued by armies of monsters, (often literal) demons and tyrants. As Gorr himself had to learn the hard way, most Gods will gladly laugh with a plate of delicacies and a flagon of wine by their sides, and apathetically watch as innocent mortals suffer and die by the millions to said horrors from the gold and marble view of their gilded paradise. They never even notice that you exist... until you personally offend them...
- Regarding the Shadow Monsters, their initial "goofy" looks have a sinister explaination: they were based on Gorr's daughter's drawings. Gorr took the last memory he had of her and twisted it into a grotesque, murderous weapon to defile and avenge her suffering at the same time.
