Thor (2011)

Thor (2011) Full Recap

Strange storms keep lighting up the night sky over the New Mexico desert. And one young scientist has spent months chasing them. Her name is Jane Foster. And even her old mentor thinks she's wasting her time. She's an astrophysicist, and tonight she drags that mentor, Eric Selvig, out in a van to wait for the next one.

Her intern, Darcy, is along for the ride. Eric reminds her she's a scientist, not some stormchaser. Right then, the sky lights up. Jane steers the van straight into the swirling lights. Darcy films through the window and yells that she's not dying for six college credits. Something drops out of the storm and the van slams right into a man.

Jane jumps out and kneels over him in the dust. To answer that, the story jumps back more than a thousand years to a Norwegian village in 965. Frost giants pour in from a world of ice and darkness, and they want to plunge the Earth into a new ice age. But humans don't face them alone.

Warriors from another world called Asgard ride down to fight for them. Led by their king, they drive the giants back to their own frozen world, Yotenheim. Their king goes down and the Asgardians take the thing that gives the giants their power. It's a glowing blue box called the casket.

Asgard itself is a city of gold, hanging out in space. Its king, Odin, walks his two young sons through the royal vault, where the casket now sits under guard. The boys ask. One of them promises to hunt down every last monster once he's king. Odin says a wise king never looks for war, but he has to be ready for one, and only one of the boys gets the throne, even though both were born to be kings.

Years later, that day has come. The great hall is packed for a coronation. The older son, Thor, walks in, grinning, and spins his hammer, Muolnir, while the crowd roars. His younger brother, Loki, watches from beside the throne. Odin tells everyone the hammer was forged in the heart of a dying star.

Thor kneels in front of his father. Odin asks him to swear to guard the nine realms and to keep the peace and Thor swears each time. Just as Odin is about to name him king. He stops and looks up. Down in the vault, frost giants have broken in, freezing the guards and they're reaching for the casket.

A giant metal guard called the destroyer wakes up and burns them to nothing. The coronation is over. In the vault, Thor wants Yotenheim to pay for this. Odin says they already have and the casket is safe. He has a truce with the king of the frost giants and he won't break it over a handful of thieves.

Thor starts to say what he'd do as king. Odin cuts him off. Thor storms off and flips a long feast table. Loki sits down next to him and says he thinks Thor is right. There's nothing Thor can do without defying their father, though. That's all Thor needs to hear. He tells his friends they're going to Yotenheim.

His friends are the warrior Cif and three fighters known as the Warriors 3. They all know this is forbidden, but Thor reminds them of every battle he's led them into and of how Cif proved a woman could be one of the fiercest warriors in the realm. She points out that she did that herself. Then they all follow him anyway.

They ride across a rainbow bridge to a golden dome at its end. Its guard, Heimdoll, says no enemy has ever slipped past his watch until today. Loki tries to talk their way past him, and it doesn't work. Silver tongue turned to lead. But Heimdoll wants to know how the giants slipped by him, so he lets them through.

He warns them that if their return puts Asgard in danger, he'll leave them to die in the cold. Then he opens the bridge and a beam of light throws them across space. Yotunheim is a dead world of ice and broken stone. The friends walk through the ruins and blue giants with red eyes start to rise out of the shadows all around them.

Their king, Lof, sits on a throne of ice. He tells Thor he came a long way to die. Thor demands to know how the giants got into Asgard. Lo says the house of Odin is full of traitors. Then he calls Thor a boy trying to prove he's a man. Loki begs his brother to look around because they're badly outnumbered.

Loafy lets them go and they turn to leave. Then one giant calls after him. Run back home, little princess. Thor smiles. He swings Mujolnir and knocks the giant across the ice. The giants make blades out of ice right on their arms, and the fight is on. Thor throws the hammer through one enemy after another and laughs like he's having the time of his life.

That's more like it. One giant grabs Loki by the arm. His skin turns blue where they touch, but Loki doesn't freeze. He just stares at his own arm. The friends run for the bridge with a huge beast tearing after them. Thor stays behind and keeps swinging until the giants close in around him.

A beam of light hits the ice and Odin appears. Thor yells that they can finish the giants together and Odin tells him to be quiet. He asks Lof to treat this as the act of a boy. Lof refuses. He says Thor will get what he came for, which is war. Odin pulls his sons and their friends out of there in a flash of light.

Back in the dome, Odin turns on his son. Thor says he was protecting his home and the giants need to learn to fear him. Odin calls him a vain, greedy, cruel boy. Thor shoots back that his father is an old man and a fool. Odin goes quiet for a moment. Odin strips Thor of his armor and his power in the name of his own father.

Then he opens the bridge behind him. Thor is thrown out of Asgard and falls toward a world far below. Then Odin whispers to the hammer, "Whoever holds it, if he is worthy, will have the power of Thor." He throws it after his son. That's the man Jane hit with her van. Thor gets up and yells at the sky for Heimdoll to open the bridge.

He asks what realm this is and Jane tells him it's New Mexico. When he starts to threaten them, Darcy pulls out her taser and drops him. He was freaking me out. They load him into the van and drive him to the hospital. At the hospital, a nurse tries to take some blood and Thor shouts that nobody can attack the son of Odin.

He fights off a whole crew of orderlys before they jab him with a needle and strap him to the bed. Back at Jane's lab, she lays out the pictures from that night. She thinks the storm was a bridge between two places in space, a wormhole. Then Darcy finds a picture of a man standing right in the middle of the storm.

Jane drives straight back to the hospital, but Thor has already broken out. As she pulls into the parking lot, she hits him with the van a second time. She swears she isn't doing it on purpose. Out in the desert, the hammer sits in a crater and people from the town are throwing a party around it.

They take turns trying to pull it out. One man hooks it to his pickup with a chain and floors it. The back of his truck rips right off. Then a black car pulls up and a man in a suit makes a phone call. The next morning, Thor wakes up at her lab. Jane hands him the only clothes she has that fit, which belong to her ex.

He looks down at the t-shirt and jeans and says they'll do. Then he announces that his mortal body is weak and he needs food. Up in Asgard, Thor's friends are upset. They want to know how Odin found them in Yotenheim so fast. Loki admits he told the guard to warn their father. He says he saved their lives.

He asks them if a reckless man like Thor is what Asgard needs on the throne. When he walks away, Cif remembers what Loy said about traitors in the house of Odin. Loki goes down to the vault alone and lifts the casket. His hands turn blue. Odin walks in. Loki asks him what he is. Odin tells him the truth.

After the war, he found a baby left to die in a temple in Jotunheim. It was La's son. Loki screams that he's just another stolen relic. Halfway through the argument, Odin falls to the floor and Loki calls for the guards. On Earth, Thor eats a whole box of PopTarts at a diner. He likes his coffee so much that he smashes the mug on the floor and orders another.

Jane tells him he could just ask nicely. A man at the counter says a satellite came down out in the desert and nobody could lift it. Thor asks which way. He's going to get back what belongs to him. Jane wants the answers he promised her, but Eric pulls her aside. He knows these names from the Norse stories he heard as a kid, and he thinks the guy is crazy and dangerous.

Thor says goodbye to each of them by name and walks away. Back at the lab, men in black suits are carrying everything out. Their leader is Agent Pulson from an agency called Shield. He takes Jane's computers, her data, and even the notebook with all her research. He hands her a check and tells her they're the good guys.

When they're gone, Eric says he knew a scientist who ran into these people once, and nobody heard from him again. In Asgard, Odin has fallen into a deep sleep, and nobody knows if he'll ever wake up. The friends rush into the throne room and find Loki sitting on the throne with his father's spear. They kneel and ask their new king to end Thor's exile.

Loki refuses. He says his first order can't be to undo his father's last. Thor walks into a pet store and asks for a horse. The clerk tells him they only have dogs, cats, and birds. They give me one of those large enough to ride. Jane pulls up outside and offers him a ride. On the drive, he tells her she's far more clever than anyone else in this realm.

What she's looking for is a bridge, he says. A rainbow bridge. In Asgard, Loki sits by his sleeping father. His mother tells him Odin kept the truth from him so he would never feel different. She tells him he's their son. Thor and Jane reach the crater in the rain. Shield has built a whole base around the hammer.

Jane asks how he plans to get his stuff back out of there. Thor says he's going to fly out. He climbs the fence and walks into the base. He takes down guard after guard in the mud. Coulson watches the fight on the monitors. He sends an archer up high with his bow, ready to shoot, but Coulson tells him to wait.

He wants to see this. Thor walks up to the hammer and smiles. He wraps his hand around the handle and pulls. Nothing happens. He pulls with both hands and still it won't move. Thor falls to his knees in the rain and screams at the sky. Then the agents drag him away. That night at a diner, Eric shows Jane a children's book of Norse myths.

He wants to show her how silly the story is. Jane says that if there really is a bridge, someone could have crossed it. People like the Vikings might have worshiped them as gods. At the base, Koulson questions Thor in a locked room. He wants to know where Thor got his combat training.

Thor doesn't say a word. Koulson leaves him there. Then Loki appears in the room. He tells Thor their father is dead and the fighting and the banishment were too much for him. He tells Thor the truce with Jotenheim only holds if Thor stays away and their mother won't let him come home.

Thor begs for a way back, but Loki says this is goodbye. Thor tells his brother he's sorry. That night, Eric walks into the base. He tells Coulson the man is a coworker named Donald Blake who went crazy because his research was taken. Coulson lets them go. Eric takes Thor to a bar.

Thor tells him he had it all wrong. His father was trying to teach him something and he was too stupid to see it. Eric says he doesn't care if Thor is crazy. He only cares about Jane and he's seen the way she looks at him. He tells Thor to leave town tonight. Meanwhile, Loki shows up in Yotenheim.

Lafi's guards grab him, but Loki tells them he's the one who showed them the way into Asgard. He let them in to ruin his brother's big day. Now he offers Lafi a new deal. He'll sneak Lafy and a few soldiers into Odin's room so Lafi can kill him in his sleep. Then he'll give the casket back.

Back in Asgard, Heimdoll tells Loki he couldn't see him in Yotenheim. Something was hiding him the same way the giants were hidden. Loki orders him to open the bridge for no one. Late that night, Thor carries Eric home over his shoulder. They drank, they fought, and Eric made his ancestors proud.

Jane takes Thor up to the roof. Thor gives Jane back her notebook. It's the only thing he could get back from the base. He says she can't give up now. She's right about all of it. Then he talks about nine realms hanging off the branches of one huge tree. By the end, that tree is drawn in her notebook.

Earth is one realm. Asgard, his home, is another. In Asgard, Volstag has put away four wild boars and two casks of ale while Thor is in exile. His friends are furious, and he tells them not to mistake his appetite for not caring. Then they all agree to bring Thor home, even if it's treason.

Heimdoll calls them to his post. He says he's bound by honor to the king, so he can't open the bridge for them. Then he walks away from his post. The friends get the hint and travel to Earth. Loki finds out where they've gone. He walks down to the vault and wakes the destroyer. He orders it to make sure his brother never comes back and to destroy everything.

Cyph and the Warriors three walk down the main street of the little town in full armor. Thor is thrilled to see them. They've come to take him home, but Thor tells them he can't go back. His father is dead because of him. They tell him Odin is still alive. In Asgard, Loki strips Heimdoll of his post.

Heimdoll raises his sword to strike him down, but Loki uses the casket and freezes him solid. The destroyer lands in the desert outside the town. Coulson's agents ask it to identify itself. It answers by blasting their cars into the air. Thor tells his friends he's only a man now, but he can still help people get to safety.

Cif and the warriors three take on the destroyer while Thor and Jane lead people out of the buildings. The destroyer throws them around like toys. Cif is ready to die there, but Thor tells her to live and tell the stories herself. He sends his friends back to Asgard to stop Loki. Thor walks out alone to meet the destroyer.

He talks to his brother through it. He says he's sorry for whatever he did to wrong him, but these people are innocent, so Loki should take his life instead and end this. The destroyer stops. Then it swings its arm and sends Thor flying across the street. Jane runs to him. He tells her it's over and she's safe.

Then his eyes close. Out at the crater, the hammer starts to shake. It tears out of the rock and flies across the desert into Thor's open hand. Lightning hits him. Thor stands up in his armor again with his red cape and his hammer. Thor spins up a tornado and drives the hammer straight down through the destroyer's face.

The metal giant falls apart in the street. Thor walks back to Jane and she asks if this is how he usually looks. He tells Koulson they fight for the same cause and he can count Thor as an ally, but first he has to return everything he took from Jane. Koulson says they only borrowed it.

Thor and Jane drive out with the others to the spot where the bridge first landed. He calls up to Heimdoll again and again, but no one answers. Thor tells Jane he has to go back to Asgard, but he gives his word that he'll come back for her. In Asgard, Loki brings Lof and his giants into Odin's room.

Thor (2011) Ending Explained

Lay stands over the sleeping king. Then Loki shoots him with Odin's spear. He tells Luff his death came by the son of Odin. Their mother tells Loki he saved his father. Then Thor walks in. He tells their mother that Loki sent the destroyer to kill his friends and to kill him. Loki claims the destroyer must have been following their father's last order.

Thor tells him he's always been a talented liar. Then Loki says he's going to destroy Yotenheim. Loki has left the bridge firing into Yotunheim, and it won't stop until the whole world is torn apart. He wants to prove to Odin that he's the worthy son. Thor tells him he can't kill an entire race.

Loki screams that he only ever wanted to be Thor's equal. He's not Thor's brother, he says, and he never was. Then Loki says that when this is over, he might pay Jane a visit himself. Thor knocks him down and pins him under the hammer. The beam is still tearing Jotunheim apart, and the only way to stop it is to break the bridge.

But if the bridge breaks, Thor will never get back to Earth. "Forgive me, Jane," he says, and he brings the hammer down again and again. The bridge explodes, and the two brothers fly off the edge. Odin catches Thor and Thor holds on to Loki by the spear. Loki looks up at his father and says, "He did it for all of them." Odin says, "No, Loki." Loki lets go and falls into the dark.

On Earth, Jane, Eric, and Darcy stand in the desert as the sun goes down. The storm in the sky is gone, and nothing comes down out of it. In Asgard, the hall is full again. Cif asks the queen how Thor is. His mother says he mourns for his brother and he misses the mortal woman. Thor finds his father looking out over the city.

He tells Odin there will never be a wiser king or a better father. He admits he still has much to learn. Odin tells him he's already made him proud. Thor stands at the broken edge of the bridge next to Heimdoll. Heimdoll says there's always hope. Thor asks him if he can see Jane. Heimdoll says yes.

She's looking for him. Thor fell to Earth as a spoiled prince who wanted a war. And he came back as a man ready to give his life for strangers. Loki got the throne he always wanted. But he lost his family on the way. Thor broke the bridge to save a world of giants, even though it cost him the woman he loves.