Thor: Love and Thunder trailer teases Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor

After months of anticipation and false alarms on Twitter’s trending section, the first teaser for Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder is finally here! If there’s one thing that’s clear from this trailer, it’s that Thor: Love and Thunder is going to be Marvel’s fun popcorn flick of the summer. There are so many exciting things in the trailer that we need to talk about, but first, here it is in case you haven’t watched yet. Or need to watch again, for the second or twenty-second time.

Thor is on a journey of self-discovery in Thor: Love and Thunder

From the opening seconds of the trailer, where Thor waxes philosophical about his newfound desire for peace while the opening notes of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses play underneath, it is clear this is going to be a fun movie. If Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Marvel going harder in the direction of horror, then Thor: Love and Thunder seems to mark a return to form for the franchise’s fun summer blockbusters. Not only will this movie feature Thor (Chris Hemsworth), but it also has the Guardians of the Galaxy in a prominent role, and it’s directed by Taika Waititi. It feels like Marvel Studios took a bunch of the funniest elements from their movies, gave their funniest director the reigns, and said “let’s just see what happens.”

What happened looks to be pretty hilarious. From Thor using the chains that bound the skeleton of a literal giant like battling ropes at the gym to the God of Thunder trying to make eye contact with Star Lord (Chris Pratt) against his will, the trailer gave us a great tease of the humor ahead in Thor: Love and Thunder.

It also featured by far our biggest look at some of the other elements at play in the film. We got our first glimpse Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder, the goats which pull Thor’s ship (or chariot, in the comics) through space. We got a tease for Zeus, who is played by Russel Crowe, and the rest of the Olympians. We’re going to Olympus in this movie! And of course, the biggest reveal of all and the one that is sure to have the internet buzzing for the time being was the trailer’s closing seconds, which saw Natalie Portman wielding the hammer Mjolnir as Mighty Thor for the first time.

It’s kind of crazy to think about the fact that when Portman starred as Jane Foster in the first Thor film back in 2011, the female version of the God of Thunder hadn’t even originated in the comics yet. Jane Foster first wielded Mjolnir in a 1978 issue of What If?, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the character actually took up the mantle in the canon Marvel comics. Pulling her in for this fourth Thor movie is such a great move on Marvel’s part, and continues their trend of not only using classic comic characters, but more recent ones that have gone over really well with fans.

There’s just so much to be excited about with this movie, and that’s not even counting Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) and whatever misdeeds the villain is up to, which we didn’t even get a hint of in the teaser. Could that giant skeleton and the enormous frozen corpse that Korg and Thor are checking out factor in somehow?

We’ll find out when Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters on July 8.

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