Thor breaks Brandon Sanderson’s First Law of Magic
Before Thor was released back in 2011 as part of the burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was met with some deserved level of skepticism. After all, out of all the fairly unknown Marvel superhero characters, Thor was easily one of the more obscure choices to throw into the mix with the likes of earth-bound characters like Iron Man and Captain America.
And yet, the gamble paid off and now everyone’s favorite Australian, Chris Hemsworth— aside from Hugh Jackman of course — has made Thor a staple of the MCU and has since become a fairly well established actor in his own right.
Chris Hemsworth has made Thor his own and has created a character that is funny and charming, yet has a gravity about him that makes him appealing to critics and audiences alike.
Yet, there’s always been something off about Thor and his adventures in the MCU.
It didn’t hit me until recently why that was so. When I was riding the bus while going to school some time ago, I picked up a random book to read during my long commute not expecting much from it. I had always been interested in science fiction and fantasy, but I had found that the fantasy genre had become boring and predictable, so I had steered away from it for a long while.
The random book I picked up happened to be Mistborn, or more accurately, Mistborn: The Final Empire.
I expected the book to be a run of the mill fantasy story about dragons and elves and whatnot, but I was thrilled to discover that Mistborn had none of those things and was so good that it singlehandedly drew me back into the fantasy genre.
I later discovered why I found Mistborn so intriguing. Brandon Sanderson, the author of the Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive series, had found a way to make magic interesting, and he later described this process in great detail which he called his Law of Magics.
Here’s Sanderson’s First Law of Magics in its entirety: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
That was the key that made Mistborn so intriguing. The laws of the magic system were clearly laid out for the reader to understand which made using magic in the Mistborn universe perilous, and by extension, thrilling.
When a character in Mistborn made a mistake using magic, the story became instantly intense because we clearly understood the consequences of misusing the magic system.
Which brings me back to Thor. I can gush as much as I want to about Chris Hemsworth and how I think that the original Thor movie is particularly underrated, but at the end of the day, I can’t defend the use of its magic system or any of the other movies to feature Thor as a character.
We’re never really sure what Thor and his trusty hammer, Mjolnir, are capable of, which dilutes what little suspense was already there. In almost every MCU movie, Thor consistently whips out some new power or ability that we’ve never seen before and we’re expected to accept it as if this new power suddenly makes perfect sense.
The irony is that for all the new abilities that Thor develops throughout the course of the films, he rarely uses the same power twice.
For example, in the original Thor we see the character create a stunning earthquake that shatters the ground for miles around him by smashing Mjolnir into the ground with a blast of lightning just for good measure.
I can’t recall that power ever being used again or even alluded to.
Later on we see Thor create a tornado by twirling Mjolnir around in a circle really fast high above his head. While the scene looks cool, it’s almost as random as Superman turning back time by shooting around the planet a few times.
The makers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have proved that there is room for Thor in their playhouse, but to make the character more engaging he has to be restricted in such a way so that we don’t get the feeling that he can pull out some new power out of his magical hat to save the day with little to no effort whenever he’s in a little danger.
All these new powers do is create little deus ex machina situations that can’t be predicted, and therefore aren’t plausible or suspenseful.
That’s the problem with most magic systems. We like to see our favorite characters suffer before they rise triumphant at the end, but when you have a magic system with unlimited possibilities, it’s impossible to feel any kind of dread or sympathy because just like that, the storyteller can change the rules of the game so fast that we’re left scratching our heads while wondering what just happened.
Which is partially why I’m excited for Thor’s third solo movie, Thor: Ragnarok. Ragnarok is going to do something different by separating Thor from his trusty Mjolnir for a period of time, which means we’ll hopefully get to see what Thor is truly made of since he won’t be able to rely on his magic hammer to get him out of sticky situations.
Will Thor be able to survive a gladiator match with Hulk without his trusty hammer in tow? Who knows, and that’s what makes it interesting.
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