Taika Waititi, director of the film “Thor: Love and Thunder.” (photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons)
TUPELO, Miss. | The latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Thor: Love and Thunder,” by Academy Award-winning director Taika Waititi has the anti-LGBTQ One Million Moms pushing for a boycott over the film’s LGBTQ themes.
The notorious group, headed by AFA’s Monica Cole, is a division of The American Family Association, which is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
“Love and Thunder,” which opened in theatres July 8, is the latest target for the ire of Cole’s group which complains that the film has too much “blatant” LGBTQ content, writing in an online petition and in email blasts to boycott the film.
“One Million Moms needs your help to make sure as many people as possible are aware that Marvel Studios is pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families in their newest superhero movie rated PG-13, ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ includes many LGBTQ innuendos and an abundance of euphemisms, but a few scenes are not downplayed at all.”
To drive home her point Cole then lists the queer themes in the film as such:
“The alien character named Korg mentions having two dads, and he has hand sex with another member of his species.”
“The bisexual goddess, King Valkyrie, kisses another woman’s hand to show interest.”
“An Asgardian kid insists on going by a gender-neutral name.”
“And the gay romantic tension between Thor and Star-Lord is apparent but played off as a gag.”
IndieWire, the film industry and review website, reported that one of the film’s stars Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie in the franchise, previously told Yahoo! Entertainment that representing Valkyrie’s bisexuality was a “big topic of conversation” with Waititi.
“I feel really good, personally, about where we got to. I hope that she’s a character that fans continue to connect to, that we have a lot of time to explore her, in all of her humanity,” Thompson said, referencing the Marvel character’s origins. “But whether or not she finds love in this movie doesn’t mean she’s not still a fabulous queer character that is open to finding love when it makes sense.”
Thompson added, “I think rightfully there’s this real want in audiences to see characters be very clearly queer or LGBTQIA+ inside these spaces. And I think it’s hugely important to have representation. And also as humans I think that we are not defined by our sexuality, and by who we love. And so sometimes I think to hang a narrative completely on that is a way of actually diminishing the humanity of the character. Because you don’t allow them to be anything else.”
Waititi exclusively told IndieWire that sexuality in Marvel films shouldn’t come as a shock to viewers.
“It’s the idea that these things just are, in a Marvel film, in a mainstream film that young, queer people will see,” Waititi explained. “They’ll watch this film and be like, oh, it’s a Thor film about a heterosexual, very Aryan-looking space Viking, but there are other characters in there and it’s normalized. No one bats an eyelid and there’s no monologue about it. Nobody ever stands up and says ‘This is OK!’ It just is OK. I think that’s very important.”
“Thor: Love and Thunder” has earned more than $233 million domestically and more than $700 million worldwide in its first 10 days of release.
