See First Look At Christian Bale’s Villain In Thor: Love And Thunder
We've got our first look at him as Gorr the God Butcher!
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Christian Bale will finally be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe this summer with Thor: Love and Thunder. Like Michael Keaton before him, the iconic Batman actor will join the MCU not as a superhero, but as a villain. We’ve recently gotten sneak peeks at the new costumes for Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor, and now we’re finally getting our first gander at Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher.
The bad news is that the look we’re getting isn’t of Christian Bale himself, but from Thor: Love and Thunder merchandise. Specifically, we see the villain in the promotional image for an upcoming “Goat Boat” LEGO set. The image below from 9to5Toys shows not only the boat, but the goats driving it — Toopthgnasher and Toothgrinder. There are also figures for the OG Thor, Korg, and Valkyrie. Above the boat, flying at each other, are Jane Foster aka the Mighty Thor and Gorr the God Butcher.
Below is a closer look at the Mighty Thor and Christian Bale’s Gorr. Just as a weapon accessory to the action figure for the Mighty Thor revealed something interesting about the upcoming Thor 4 last week, the new LEGO set offers an intriguing bit of news. As you can see, Gorr wields a black sword as he clashes with Mighty Thor. In most likelihood this is All-Black the Necrosword — one of the most feared weapons in Marvel Comics, with a big connection to the symbiote Venom.
While Gorr is the first ongoing character we see wielding the Necrosword in the comics, it would turn out that the blade was created by Knull, the god of the symbiotes. Along with Gorr and Knull, we see the blade wielded by Malekith — played by Christopher Eccleston in 2013’s Thor: The Dark World — in the 2019 line-wide Marvel comics event War of the Realms. Not only is it very interesting to see the Necrosword show up in the MCU, it would seem like a very strange coincidence if this doesn’t have something to do with the itty-bitty drop of symbiote that Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock leaves behind in the mid-credits scene for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
In spite of the image coming from merchandise, this is the most comprehensive look we’ve gotten of Christian Bale’s villain from Thor: Love and Thunder so far. Some set images did leak last August of the actor in full costume, but the photo quality wasn’t the best and it wasn’t clear if what we were seeing wouldn’t be enhanced digitally later on. In some of the photos, Bale is in white from head-to-toe — looking almost like an ancient marble statue — though in one we see a billowing black cloak.
It remains to be seen whether or not Christian Bale will be made to take on the full, alien visage Gorr the God Butcher has in the comics. Imagine Voldemort, but make him one of the Twi’lek from Star Wars, and give him some black, billowy clothing — that’s the Gorr of the source material.
In most likelihood we’ll get to see Christian Bale’s Gorr in his full, god-hating glory whenever the Thor: Love and Thunder trailer drops if not sooner. If not, we’ll see him when the fourth Thor film finally hits theaters. Gorr’s god-hunting crusade begins Friday, July 8.
