Surface Echoes, Ancient Roots: How Marvel Breathed New Life into the Norse Myths
摘要
If there is a consensus among critics of the Thor movies within Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is that the film-makers get almost everything about Norse mythology wrong—from the colour of Thor’s hair to his style of speech, from the parentage of Loki to his role as a trickster, from the portrayal of Sif to the entire existence of the Warriors Three. Leaving aside the question of what could possibly constitute ‘authentic’ use of myths that predate the earliest surviving written versions of the stories by hundreds, if not thousands, of years, it is certainly true that the MCU has felt little need to engage in the kind of conventional retellings that became increasingly popular with audiences following the rediscovery of the material outside Iceland. Yet, despite the many changes made by generations of creatives, these ‘Marvelised’ versions of the Norse myths remain rooted in medieval storytelling to a remarkable degree. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how the combined effects of 60 years of Thor in Marvel Comics and now the films and TV series of the MCU have combined to present stories that not only deserve a place on the ‘line of descent’ in the reception history of the myth, but also have much to say about ways in which earlier versions may have been appreciated as part of the oral tradition of the pre-modern North.