Side note on Thor
I was going to put this in my original post but forgot, but several years ago I read an blog post of the core themes of Thor – as in the character/comic, not the film, in fact this may have been before the film even came out – that was super-influential to my thinking and which for the life of me I cannot find again. So I’m going to summarize it here, and if anybody happens to recognize the source I would love to know.
The post was basically asking, what is the core story of Thor? Like, the core story of Superman is about exploring what moral obligations look like once feasibility is no longer a concern, the core story of the X-Men is about coping as an outsider with a racist/classist/etc. society, the core story of Batman is about the exercise of the will to manage neuroses/psychoses, Spider-man is – huh, it’s right on the tip of my tongue – but what’s the connective tissue of Thor? Why do we tell his stories? What are we meant to relate to in the saga of a pseudo-Norse strongman with a big hammer?
The answer the writer offered was that Thor stories are about never being good enough for your father, which is such a brilliant insight that it’s stuck with me for years. After all, Thor is one of the only superheroes who has a direct superior (in the authority sense, rather than the power-level) in either Marvel or DC, which means somewhat uniquely he’s not just following his own moral compass, often a defining characteristic of a hero. I haven’t read enough (really, any) of the classic Thor comic books to specifically confirm or deny, but it feels really right.
(This also, of course, explains why Loki in this setting has to be Thor’s brother and not his uncle.)
Anyway, the Thor film, for all its flaws, really does get that core theme and executes it well. The problem, as the original writer noted, is that unlike most other major heroes’ themes, Thor’s is really only aimed at a small subset of the population, i.e. boys in their adolescence through early adulthood. And sure, that demographic composes a huge percentage of comic book readers, but when it comes to major motion pictures, Thor just doesn’t have anywhere close to the universal relatability of the other heavy hitters.
This is, I think, a partial answer but not the complete answer. @bambamramfan is right: Thor is about worthiness, as a general abstract concept, about the idea that your moral value is judged and can be found wanting.
…which is to say, Odin is a big deal in those stories, but so is the fact that “can you pick up the stupid hammer?” is a major recurring question.