After a long wait from fans, the marketing campaign for Thor: Love and Thunder has finally begun. Marvel Studios unveiled a trailer for the film last week, and additional marketing materials and pieces of merchandise have already begun to surface online as well. Among them is a new comic book-inspired t-shirt for Love and Thunder — and it might provide the best look yet at Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), the film’s villain. The t-shirt, which you can check out below, teases Gorr standing up against both Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Jane Foster / Mighty Thor (Natalie Portman).
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“We haven’t even gotten the first official look at the movie version of Gorr the God Butcher yet,” Gorr co-creator Jason Aaron wrote shortly after the trailer’s release. “I’ve seen some concerns online about Gorr’s design, based off glimpses of the character’s action figure. As the guy who co-created him, along with Esad, I’ll just say that it wasn’t Gorr’s nose (or lack thereof) that made him the tragic and deeply disturbed God Butcher that he was. Trust in the face of Christian Bale. Need I remind you, it’s a pretty goddamn talented face.”
Thor: Love and Thunder finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor’s surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.
“[Taika] would flip through and read that run while he was doing Ragnarok.” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige previously revealed in an interview. “And I think when he agreed to come back and do another Thor, he was like, ‘How do we–?’ This is a very big movie that’ll be folding in a lot of elements. That is a hugely important part of it. He pitched it to us, and we were totally in. We loved it. We’d been in touch with Natalie. She’s part of the MCU family and we put she and Taika together. It took one meeting and she agreed to do it.”
What do you think of Jason Aaron’s reaction to Gorr the God Butcher’s MCU design? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Thor: Love and Thunder will be released exclusively in theaters on July 8th.
