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Natalie Portman hammers home mighty Thor: Love and Thunder plot details
Natalie Portman confirmed today that the plot of Thor: Love and Thunder is based on the comic book run Mighty Thor, where her character, Jane Foster, becomes Lady Thor while also battling cancer.
In an interview today with Fatherly, where she primarily talks about her new children’s book, Natalie Portman’s Fables, she also shared some details about what Love and Thunder will be about:
“I can’t tell you that much,” said Portman, who is currently in Australia getting ready to film Marvel's fourth Thor movie. “I’m really excited. I’m starting to train, to get muscles. If there can be all these female superheroes, the more of them they are, the better it is. I’m trying to think — it’s based on the graphic novel of the Mighty Thor. She’s going through cancer treatment and is a superhero on the side.”
Portman just confirmed what Marvel fans have long speculated — that Jane Foster’s origin story to becoming Lady Thor will pull at least some components from the Mighty Thor comic run by Jason Aaron. In Aaron’s story, Thor has become unworthy, and Foster, who is battling cancer, picks up Mjolnir and consequently gains all the power of Thor. The challenge she faces, however, is that every time she becomes Lady Thor, she loses all the benefits of her cancer treatment, which effectively means she’s slowly killing herself every time she picks up the hammer.
Portman’s statement today confirms that Love and Thunder is explicitly based on Aaron’s run, and that the storyline of Foster having cancer will carry over. Love and Thunder writer and director Taika Waititi first hinted this may be the case during the Marvel panel at San Diego Comic-Con last year, where he said that he was reading the Mighty Thor run, the first introduction of a female Thor in the Marvel comics, during the filming of Thor: Ragnarok. After revealing that Love and Thunder would also have a female Thor, Waititi introduced Portman to the Hall H stage and gave her Thor’s hammer.
Portman’s return was a pleasant surprise to Marvel fans, as she had been absent from the MCU after the second Thor movie, Thor: The Dark World except for a brief cameo in Avengers: Endgame, albeit in a time-travel scene that took place during the time of The Dark World. Based on Portman’s statement today, it seems that Jane Foster will get significant screen time in Love and Thunder. What remains to be seen, however, is whether the storyline for the other Thor, played by MCU vet Chris Hemsworth, includes the god losing his worthiness as well.
Thor: Love and Thunder is currently scheduled to premiere Feb. 11, 2022.
