How Wonder Woman Is Like Thor

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains some spoilers for Wonder Woman

DC Film’s Wonder Woman opened this weekend and has been compared to Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger. That’s understandable since both films are wartime period pieces with idealistic and uncompromising heroes presented in an entirely sincere light.

However, fans may be overlooking another apt comparison between the latest DC Films hero and another Avenger, Marvel’s mighty god of thunder Thor, as there are several parallels that can be drawn between the two.

When examining the movie versions of Wonder Woman and Thor, certain surface similarities appear almost immediately. Thor is the son of Odin, head of the Norse gods, just as the twist in Wonder Woman makes Diana the daughter of Zeus, ruler of the Greek pantheon, and therefore makes her a demigod. Both Thor and Wonder Woman also share the godly gift of being able to manipulate lightning.

There are also similarities and how the two are characterized. Both Wonder Woman and Thor are fish out of water stories about the heroes’ first journeys outside of their own realms. For Thor, this is his first journey without Mjolnir to the Earth-realm of Midgard, and for Wonder Woman it is leaving Themiscyra for the world of man.

Both films play up the “fish out of water” routine for some laughs, and yet they go about it in opposite ways. In Thor, the joke is that Thor is overly boorish, smashing mugs in diners and being too loud. In Wonder Woman, it the world around Diana that seems boorish to her. She does not and could not, know her place in the early 20th-century society hat undervalues and women, and that just shows how much catching up that society still has to do.

The most important similarity though is the relationship between the characters and the mighty weapons they are associated with. For Thor, it is his hammer, Mjolnir, and the story is all about how the hero becomes worthy enough to wield it.

In Wonder Woman, the weapon is the Godkiller. At first, we are led to believe that the Godkiller is the sword Wonder Woman takes with her from Themiscyra. The lie is revealed when Ares easily shatters the sword and reveals the truth of Diana’s lineage: that she is the daughter of Zeus and therefore she is the Godkiller.

Ares then tempts Wonder Woman to give up on humanity. Thor needed to become worthy of Mjolnir, but Wonder Woman was already worthy. Her challenge was to decide if humanity was worthy of her, the only weapon that could protect that from the attention of a mad god.

Wonder Woman chooses to protect humanity because she sees the love within them and decides that they are therefore worthy of her own love. That same decision – although in a somewhat more personal form – is what allows Thor to lift his hammer once again.

Wonder Woman currently has an 87.76 ComicBook.com Composite Score. It also has a 4.39 out of 5 ComicBook.com user rating, making it the fourth-highest rated comic book movie ever among ComicBook.com readers. Let us know what you thought of Wonder Woman by giving the movie your own ComicBook.com User Rating below.

Before she was Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), she was Diana, Princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, Diana meets an American pilot (Chris Pine) who tells her about the massive conflict that’s raging in the outside world. Convinced that she can stop the threat, Diana leaves her home for the first time. Fighting alongside men in a war to end all wars, she finally discovers her full powers and true destiny.

Wonder Woman is directed by Patty Jenkins, from a screenplay by Allan Heinberg & Geoff Johns, story by Heinberg & Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs, and stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Lucy Davis, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner and David Thewlis.

Wonder Woman in now playing in theaters.

MORE WONDER WOMAN NEWS: Wonder Woman Director Has Not Signed On For Sequel / Does Wonder Woman Have A New Gods Easter Egg? / Where Is Themyscira Anyway? / The Comics That Inspired Wonder Woman’s Big Twist / Wonder Woman Mezco One:12 Figure Up For Pre-Order