I watched this movie a very long time ago so my memory could be hazy. I also might be reading too much into it.
Asgard is destined to be completely destroyed in a catastrophe called Ragnarok. This is something from Norse mythology which I don’t know anything about but is a popular theme in popular media. The whole film is about Thor trying to deal with Rigmaroll.
His solution in the end is to evacuate Asgards inhabitants and remove them from the land, let Ragnarok happen which also destroys the Bad Guy. So Asgard is destroyed but Asgardians live on. His rationalisation is that Asgard is not made by its land, geography etc. but its people, the Asgardians, and they can possibly make another Asgard later on unburdened by predetermined destruction.
Now I gotta be honest, overall I thought the movie was alright. The Bad Guy was terrible and uninteresting. But I liked the comedy in it. And this interpetation of Ragnarok is pretty clever IMO. The problem I have is that this complete disentanglement of the people and their land is incorrect. I guess in a fictional treat slop based on magical mythology it would never come up. But IRL the people and the land make each other. There is a recent Prolekult documentary which focuses on how an integral part of capital accumulation is the dispossesion of land from people which I am not intelligent enough to rehash.
I think this could be ignored but then you realise that this movie is by and (mostly) for cultures that are built on colonialism and settlerism, processes that are centuries old and still ongoing. Downplaying the ills of robbing people of their land and sovreignty is done on a regular basis. Palestinians are currently being robbed of their lives and their land at the moment. How do Marvel treat enjoyers understand the implications of removing all Palestinians from Palestine and relocating them to a neighbouring country?
As I said I am probably reading too much into it.
I think the Asgardians in this situation are more refugees than settlers.
It’s muddied by Thor conflating Asgardian culture with Asgardian nationhood, which is such a white/Western cultural mentality.
Also Norway just cheerfully gives them the town to move into in the sequel, and doesn’t seem to have any issue with it becoming an independent city-state and renamed to ‘New Asgard’. Imagine if European nations were so generous with actual refugees! Norway wasn’t even remotely responsible for the destruction of the original Asgard, but they cheerfully give Asgardians sovereignty over one of their towns. Real refugees are lucky if they get food and a place to rest.
So the Asgardian situation in Ragnarok and Love and Thunder is actually an idealized example of how to treat refugees, but unfortunately that example will be lost on most viewers because the Asgardians are white (yes they have non-white people but they’re all culturally white) and so the idea of them being comparable to actual refugees won’t even cross the thoughts of those who need to think it.
Also Norway just cheerfully gives them the town to move into in the sequel
I thought Thanos killed them all or something like that. In one of the avengers movies. Which slop had them living in Norway?
Thanos’s MO is to kill half, infinity war had New Asgard in norway
I think you’re being ungenerous and not reading far enough. Asgard itself is an artificial world literally built from the spoils of conquest. Thor’s choice to cause Ragnarok is him rejecting imperialism and all of its gains past and future. Additionally the Asgardians are saved by the revolting slaves from nowhere and are explicitly refugees when they reach earth.
Asgard itself is an artificial world literally built from the spoils of conquest.
Can you tell more about this?
When Hela reveals the mural of her conquest she makes the comment- where do you think all this gold came from. Like the entire city of Asgard is gold and the place is just a floating rock. I don’t think the rock would have had any air or water (let alone enough for a city), and that they spaceballed the place.
I assume all capitalist slop is propaganda.
Just read the myths.
Scary to think there’s a generation growing up thinking ‘Thor’, ‘Loki’, etc. are characters from the superhero industry.
Anthony Horowitz published good tellings of the Norse Myths in English.
The myths are sadly inseparable from Christian propaganda
I mean… it’s a people who are gods, their science so advanced we believe it to be magic, and they relocated to a place that revered them. They also had plenty of gold and shit. It’s a LITTLE bit easier for them to relocate, but also I mean, it’s downplayed to be like “yay we are all not dead at least and the destruction is over.” Which is different from “oh good time to do this again in a week when the destruction follows us” (although, the story is not in a vacuum: thanos ends up finding them, Thor ends up depressed, and then love and thunder happens… so it’s not like they end up in utopia)
not all people are as closely tied to land as others and there are several examples thru out history of people who were nomadic to a pretty extreme degree the romani people are the prime example imo but there are plenty of steppe peoples who were entirely nomadic until only a few centuries ago. And there are plenty of historical examples of people being forced out of their land and settling somewhere else (peacefully (atleast at first)) and then building something even greater, Carthage for example and considering that their universe is full of uninhabited planets to terraform i think this has a much better chance of being what they meant.
I truly can not imagine that ur interpretation was even considered as something anyone could get from the film by anyone who worked on it, I would think they were going for a “home is where u make it” sort of thing rather than land not being important. That being said maybe it shows a bias, perhaps a different society would have never found that ending acceptable, but propaganda? I doubt it.
