At the beginning of July, the new Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, was released, five years after Taika Waititi’s acclaimed second chapter of the saga.
In Love and Thunder, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor found himself in a battle against Gorr, also known as the God Butcher, memorably played by Christian Bale.
So we’ve all now seen Gorr for the first time on screen, but what do viewers actually know about him? Here’s some facts around the character and the movie.
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Gorr is a ‘newbie’ in the Marvel Universe
Despite the well-known actor playing him, Gorr is a totally new addition to the MCU and an unexpected one at that: the character was only introduced in 2012, making his first appearance in the second issue of the series, Thor: God of Thunder, by comics writers Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic.
And so Gorr was mainly known by avid comic readers and fans. Despite this, viewers’ reaction was a really positive one, although that had a lot to do with the presence of Bale who, after playing Batman in the Christopher Nolan trilogy, was credited with one of the most appreciated versions of the Dark Knight (as also stated in a superhero ranking by Variety).
Gorr is like Batman…
Bale has said, in an interview with Screenrant, that he finds Gorr and Batman to be really similar, both being characterised by an internal conflict, and with Batman not really falling into the canonical superhero model embodied by Superman in the DC comics.
Added to the internal conflict is a tragic backstory: Batman’s parents were killed during a robbery when he was just a kid, while Gorr was born on a planet with no name and with no means to survive. Living in this planet meant for him losing his parents and later losing also his friends and children.
These are also the main reasons why Gorr ultimately became a Gods Butcher: he was always told to trust the Gods to take care of him and his family, but no God has ever answered his prayers.
…Or maybe not?
But is it really faithful to the character how Bale pictured Gorr? Perhaps not.
Gorr is in fact one of the most cruel Marvel villains: he seeks the pleasure of torturing Gods and brings them to the brink of death, just to then take them back and restart with the torture.
For Gorr, torture is just the entrée. Why kill Gods when they could be useful? If he doesn’t kill them then he proceeds with enslaving them and forcing them to kill others like them, a destiny which also touched Thor himself.
Gorr has time traveled
To pursue the task of killing all the Gods, Gorr decided to travel into every space-time dimension to kill every God that has ever existed. But to do so, he needed a drop of blood from a God of Time.
Despite the Gods of Time being completely pacific – and in fact never interfering with the issues of humans and other Gods – Gorr stays true to his title of God Butcher and kills them all in an absolute blood bath.
Gorr’s character design was similar to Voldemort
Another peculiar thing about Gorr’s cinematic version his character design.
In the end, Waititi decided to not be completely faithful to the comics’ version of the villain because it was clear to everyone working on it that it was too similar to another villain who entered into recent cinematic history: Lord Voldemort.
Despite Waititi’s best efforts though, shortly after the trailer was released, people still went wild with the comparison between Voldemort and Gorr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiHKjpCq29Y
