Is Thor Smart?

[MyriVerse]

I'm not sure that intelligence works that way. If I gained immortality, I still couldn't learn how to make an atomic bomb.

What about all that he did as King, with the rune magic and gaining wisdom and stuff? He should be one the three smartest Asgardians, imo. Heck, he displayed greater intelligence than Odin did.

[Panic]

One of the things I liked about Thor when I read the Simonson run was the fact that he wasn't just a thuggish strong-man. A major complaint from Thor fans is that for many years now he has been continually dumbed down to just being a barbarian with a magic club. Part of the problem is that he's so powerful and experienced he doesn't really need other Avengers, other than as specialists (tech expert, transport etc) - written at Lee/Simonson levels of intelligence and competence he pretty much makes Captain America redundant in an Avengers line-up that includes both of them. I don't think it's a coincidence that since Cap was elevated to greatest hero ever status, Iron Man has become a self-centred immoral jerk and Thor a thuggish idiot.

[Uncanny Mutie]

Well, he IS a blond...

[Michael Watkins]

What about all that he did as King, with the rune magic and gaining wisdom and stuff? He should be one the three smartest Asgardians, imo. Heck, he displayed greater intelligence than Odin did.

is that even the same guy as the current axe-wielder?

[JackDaw]

One of the things I liked about Thor when I read the Simonson run was the fact that he wasn't just a thuggish strong-man. A major complaint from Thor fans is that for many years now he has been continually dumbed down to just being a barbarian with a magic club. Part of the problem is that he's so powerful and experienced he doesn't really need other Avengers, other than as specialists (tech expert, transport etc) - written at Lee/Simonson levels of intelligence and competence he pretty much makes Captain America redundant in an Avengers line-up that includes both of them. I don't think it's a coincidence that since Cap was elevated to greatest hero ever status, Iron Man has become a self-centred immoral jerk and Thor a thuggish idiot.

Same career trajectory as Superman over at DC. As soon as Batman stands next to him at JLA he becomes a wee bit thick. To add to the misery if Flash is nearby he hecomes as slow as Herbert, my mate's pet tortoise.

[Carbon Based Stickler]

Well, he IS a blond...

I like this answer.

Seriously, isn't it more interesting if he's not that smart? I understand some fans want their favorite hero to be portrayed perfect in every way, but for a lot of us that's BORING.

[Namor'sWrath]

In the movies he thought he could ride a big dog.

[Daska]

In the movies he thought he could ride a big dog.

That is not stupidity. Thor simply had no idea what the modern animals of midgard where. The last time he visited Earth was during the Viking days. This is long before dogs were kept as pets and even long before they were selectively breed from wolves.
However, I will say that because Thor was never Donald Blake in the movies and never had to go to med school, that he is not as knowledgeable as comic book Thor.

[JackDaw]

In the movies he thought he could ride a big dog.

That is a far more sensible use of large dogs than any I 've come across before.

And certainly one Mr Fantastic would never have thought of.

Clearly the case for extreme intelligence is established.

[Namor'sWrath]

He also trapped himself in a cage in the Avengers movie.

[JackDaw]

He also trapped himself in a cage in the Avengers movie.

Another intellectual feat more interesting than anything I can remember Mr Fantastic doing.

It begins to look like Reed's no 1 rating is very suspect. I imagine that's why he never dared to play Thor at chess.

[Panic]

I like this answer.

Seriously, isn't it more interesting if he's not that smart? I understand some fans want their favorite hero to be portrayed perfect in every way, but for a lot of us that's BORING.

Well, 1) isn't it more interesting if Thor isn't so smart? My answer would be "no".

Generally lead characters who are written as being more stupid than the audience are not popular in heroic fiction. The audience basically wants their heroes to be idealised stand-ins for themselves, which is why even characters who start off as edgy anti-heroes get much of their rough edge smoothed-off - look at all the bad-guys who have turned good in Marvel. Look at Loki - once actually the Asgardian god of evil, he became much cooler and, frankly, smarter in Simonson's run where he actually played on the good-guys' side and had a few victories, and it made him more popular. Now he's a sympathetic figure with just a veneer of his old self. The more the audience becomes emotionally attached to a character, the more they want him (or her) to have the basic heroic virtues: a moral compass, resourcefulness, courage, and the power to win. Even the old "Hulk smash!" version of the Hulk actually was written in his own book as quite cunning tactically, something which his handbook entry pointed out. And that's because no one wants to read about a hero who is stupid (unless it's a comedy like Groo the Wanderer); we want to see a bit of variety in our hero's actions, sometimes winning by skill, sometimes by tactical cunning, sometimes by raw physical power, and sometimes by simply being the better man; and yeah, sometimes we want to see him make mistakes, even lose occasionally.

However, you don't make the lead of a book stupid if you want him to be popular.

Which leads me to 2) "I understand some fans want their favorite hero to be portrayed perfect in every way, but for a lot of us that's BORING."

Some people probably do want their favourite to be perfect in every way, but I think most of us would like our heroes to be slightly flawed and imperfect; enough to make it interesting, but not so much as to kill empathy between hero and reader. I like a Thor who occasionally makes the kind of mistakes I would in his position, who gets things wrong sometimes but acknowledges and learns from those mistakes. When you make a hero stupider than the other characters around him, you are actually making him a supporting character. A book needs a hero the audience can root for. So when you say you prefer a stupid Thor, I can't help wondering if you actually read Thor in his own comic. Generally when Thor is being portrayed as kind of dumb in his own comic it is because the writer has another character that they want to be the actual lead - Jane Foster's Thor, for example. I think a number of people who say they prefer a more stupid Odinson are very happy with Foster in the lead; one of the things that is annoying to long-term Thor fans is that Foster is being written pretty much how Thor used to be written: smart, competent, sympathetic. Would they be happy if she were written as stupid?

This isn't about people wanting their hero to be perfect and flawless, it's about fans not wanting to see their hero being written in a way that serves non-fans of the character (non-fans sounds so stupid, but you know what I mean) rather than the fans themselves. I mean, I used to find the Sub-Mariner boring in his own mag, but I loved him as a cool bad-guy in the early Kirby/Lee FF and Avengers; however I'd never place my preference for the character over that of true Namor fans - he's their hero, it's not fair to see him downgraded to unsympathetic douche-bag because I'd kind it more convenient that way.

And for what it's worth I'm not a huge die-hard Thor fan - he was one of my least liked Marvel heroes until Simonson's run, and I've only picked up the occasional arc since then. But there is a difference between a hero having slight flaws which make him more interesting and relatable , and a hero who is getting stuck with a crap personality as part of a shift in super-hero hierarchy.

[Coin Biter]

There is an informal hierarchy of intelligence in Marvel, memorably explored in Hickman's Avengers

On the one side are the super geniuses, geniuses, and those who are merely very smart, such as Richards, Beast, Banner, Strange, Emma Frost, and so on.

On the other side are those of above average, or average, or low intelligence, such as Thor, Cap, and at the lower end colossally thick characters such as Hawkeye (as any non-powered archer would have to be in a world of automatic firearms, let alone a superhero world). Such characters can show anger/frustration at their comparative lack of sophistication, as shown by Rogers' hilarious reaction to Hulk/Beast's trolling in their holographic chess game towards the end of Hickman's run.

Truthfully, though, much of Thor's dumb points relate to naivety, good-heartedness, or his family relationships, rather than actual lack of reasoning ability. His simplicity is to be celebrated, rather than decried.