#WednesdayVillains: Is the on-screen God butcher any different from the comics?

Gorr, the God Butcher from the new Thor movie, has become a popular topic of discussion. Let's see how this character is portrayed differently on screen and in comics!

Since its release, Thor: Love and Thunder has been popularly discussed among MCU enthusiasts. One of the major things that caught our eyeballs was the amazing performance by Christian Bale as the God Butcher. Gorr is the titular villain of the God Butcher arc from Jason Aaron's, "Thor Run" from which the various aspects of the movie have been adapted. Gorr's adaptation is a bit different from the comics, and thus, it's worth the comparison. Many changes have been done in the origin, appearance, and circumstances around Gorr to make him a compelling on-screen villain while keeping the core of his character intact. Let's see how this Thor villain was adapted for the movie!

The appearance of Gorr the God Butcher

One of the first differences that you must have noticed between the comic's Gorr and the new Gorr must be his appearance. In the comics, Gorr had a really alien appearance with a muscular body, reptilian nose, large tentacles, white eyes, and jagged teeth which sometimes reminded me of Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean series. His appearance was scarier in the comics while in the movie, Gorr had a really normal body, and he wore really normal clothes. It was just the amazing performance by Christian Bale that made this character terrifying for the watchers. According to Taika Waititi, he did these drastic changes in the character design to avoid comparisons between Gorr and Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series.

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Origin of the God Butcher

The origin of the God Butcher was nearly the same for comics and the movie where Gorr grew up in a famine and poverty-stricken planet which had a religious culture. Gorr lost his loved ones due to famine, and in this tragic circumstance, he cursed the Gods who refused to help him. At this point, Gorr gets his hand on the Necrosword, and he swore to use this power for killing Gods and that's when he encounters Thor. The comics do a better job at exploring and building up Gorr's vendetta against Gods. In the comics, Gorr gradually lost faith in Gods after he lost his family members one after another while in the movie he is shown to be emotionally damaged by the loss of his daughter and then, he meets a God named Rapu, who refuses to help him which gives rise to his villain's origin story. Also, in the comic, Gorr was exiled from his tribe and there was no mention of him being exiled from his tribe for renouncing his faith in Gods. In the movie, he still had faith in God even after the death of his daughter. When he meets Rapu, he realizes the cruelty of God.

In the comics, after being exiled from the tribe, Gorr had an encounter with the Dark God, Knull, and a Golden God who were in the middle of combat and crashed into this planet. Being injured, the golden God asked Gorr to help him. This made Gorr furious at their hypocrisy as they were asking for help from an inferior. He used the Necrosword to kill them both but (the Dark God Knull somehow survived). Then Gorr spent centuries taking vengeance on Gods, thus he gets the name of the God Butcher. In the movie, Gorr started killing Gods to draw Thor's attention towards him as he was planning to steal Stormbreaker which later helped him to summon the Bifrost to meet the Marvel cosmic entity "Eternity".

Both of them are not driven by the same goal

The motivation of comic Gorr was different. He wanted to make a God Bomb that would explode and erase all gods from existence, while the new Gorr wanted to meet eternity to resurrect his daughter. The Gorr in the comics was driven by anger which only grew with each new God he met, while the main emotion that can define the new Gorr is sadness, he valued his family over everything. His character in the movie is much weaker than his comic counterpart. This Gorr has never been seen using the power of time travel which was one of the major highlights of the comic's Gorr.

The character depth of Gorr, the God Butcher, was not properly explored because of limited time. The movie runs for a duration of 2 hours in which the main focus was Thor's journey of finding faith in love again and establishing his relationship with Jane Foster. It was already a tough job for the studio to transition between light moments with darker tones, and a deep exploration of Gorr's character would have needed more time on screen. But the actor did a great job in making his mark in the limited screen time.

A comic reader can be easily disappointed by the changes this movie has made, but that gave us a chance to watch Gorr's character from a new perception.

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