I’m a sap. We saw Thor: Love and Thunder today and I cried…a lot.
Somewhat necessarily, Marvel is killing off more and more of their earliest on-screen heroes and the survivors are dealing with grief. Avengers: Endgame and WandaVision used grief as a central motivation for key characters and the latest Thor installment carries on Marvel’s skillful handling of this emotion.
By “skillful,” I mean “fucking triggering.” The Marvel Cinematic Universe(MCU) was born in 2008. Mary and I were newlyweds a year out from becoming parents. I wasn’t a huge Iron Man fan as a kid, but we both loved movies and it looked like there would finally be a great super hero movie that wasn’t another Spider-Man (okay, we liked the X-Men flicks too).
Not long after, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor hit the big screen and Mary found her favorite super hero. We had two babies by then and had to wait for the DVD release. Date nights were rare and we watched most of the MCU from our couch.
Eleven years later and Thor is in the theaters again. Our sons are huge fans and my girlfriend joined us for a matinee.
I won’t spoil anything, but there was a lot of loss throughout the film. This fictional world still has a strong connection to Mary and my fears regarding death.
My body didn’t feel right after an active weekend and my head was swirling with a resurrected grief. I was drained and not ready to create, or do anything, for that matter.
I pushed myself to the Lego table to try to focus on something simple. Lego is the oldest therapy I know and just the sound of pieces being moved around takes me back to a carefree time.
Spaceships are a comfort build as all my sets as a kid were space themed. They are also a mental torture as so many have been made by Lego, fans, and myself.
The balance of challenge and familiarity worked. I put my hands to use and found calm in creating.
