In 2011, Marvel Studios released Thor, which saw Chris Hemsworth bleach his eyebrows and
smash coffee cups in a desert for 2 hours. But, believe it or not, this wasn t the only
Thor movie that came out that year. Because just a couple of weeks after Thor premiered,
Marvel followed it up with the near-forgotten, straight-to-video feature film Thor: Tales
of Asgard. But here s the surprising part. It s actually kinda good?
Let s rewind for a second. Cast your minds back to 2004. Lots of things happened in 2004.
Mark Zuckeberg launched The Facebook , there was a coup in Haiti, the tallest bridge in
the world was opened in France. But also: Lionsgate Entertainment struck a deal with
Marvel to produce a number of direct-to-video animated movies, to be known as Marvel Animated
Features. These kicked off two years later, with Ultimate
Avengers, followed a few months later by Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther. 6 other projects
followed over the next half-decade, focused on various different characters, and of various
levels of quality. And the last of these was a little picture named Thor: Tales of Asgard.
This IS a Thor movie but not as we know them today. There s no Earth, Mjolnir s included
only as a background easter egg, Loki s pretty unambiguously a hero, and, oh yeah, the God
of Thunder s a teenager. But this isn t some juvenile reboot of the typical status quo,
only teen-ified, a la Iron Man Armoured Adventures, X-Men Evolution, or, I guess, Gotham. It could
very easily have been a traditional Thor story, but de-aged, a story about a teenage Asgardian
Prince infiltrating a Midgardian high school, perhaps under the pseudonym Donald Blake,
in order to expose the evil principal Loki for some nefarious scheme, all the while falling
in love with a cheerleader named Jane Foster. Something like that would have been all too
easy to make. But instead, this forgoes a good deal of classic Thor lore in order to
go back in time, and tell a coming-of-age story that feels less Marvel and more mythological.
So Loki s still a prince of Asgard, there s never the adoption reveal, he never betrays
Thor, and our protagonist never goes through that familiar banishment, never even picks
up his famous mallet there s fun little moments referencing these future events, but the focus
remains on an original story about the princes of Asgard sneaking into Jotunheim on a quest
to prove their maturity. Naturally things go south, betrayals and plot twists occur,
and a large-scale war nearly occurs as a result of this little adventure, but this never really
feels like a superhero movie. More like a Norse-flavoured fantasy film, a distant, 2D
cousin to something like How To Train Your Dragon.
And honestly, it s a lot of fun. The animation s not, like, the best ever, but this film
s visuals do have character. The voice acting s nothing spectacular, but it has a certain
charm to it, and I do buy into some of these performances particularly Matthew Wolf as
a young, headstrong Thor, and Tara Strong as a bold and gutsy Sif a Sif, who, for perhaps
the first and last time in a Thor movie, gets to be an actual character, instead of a background
Xena photocopy. No disrespect to Jaime Alexander, she s great, but it s a little sad that Sif
gets more characterisation in a 70 minute direct-to-video feature than she did across
her entire MCU tenure. I also just love the fact that in this world, Fenrir is just, some
guy. That s the same character as this giant good
boy from Ragnarok. The guy that s prophesied to one day kill Odin. And he s just some dude
roughhousing in bar. No deep analysis here, I just think that s funny. Of course, this
film s no masterpiece. I m not sure I m fully on board with the idea that the Valkyries
are all Valkyries because they re trying to get over men who hurt them. That idea sets
up a few solid gags in the movie, but I m sure I don t have to explain why, conceptually,
it s not great. It s also wild to me that the film sets up Loki s magical training really
early on, but never really pays it off. Presumably an early draft of the script saw Loki use
this water sorcery at a critical point in the narrative to defeat or distract a foe,
but if that ever was the case, it must have been lost in a rewrite.
But while aspects like this hold Thor: Tales of Asgard back from real greatness, it s still
a pretty solid flick. I can tell you right now that if I d seen this film when I was,
like, 7 to 11 ish, I d have really liked it. And while it s clearly made primarily for
a younger audience, there are genuinely interesting aspects at play here like the way this Tale
of Asgard is itself based partly around our protagonists chasing old tales themselves,
following old stories about Surtur s defeat. This points to a concern within the film about
the trustworthiness of narratives, especially narratives of valour and manhood. For instance,
nearer the film s start we see Thor struggling to confront the fact that his publicised training
fights are staged, that this idea of his might and skill is a false one. To combat this he
stows away with the warriors three, known for their daring adventures in Jotunheim,
but it turns out that s a false narrative too they re just going to the pub to get on
the lash. Later on, the big heel turn comes as the dark elf Algrim rewrites the official
narrative of Odin s war on Surtur framing it instead as the story of his people s oppression.
While it s not explored with particular depth, the recurring idea here is that tales, stories,
narratives are never as simple and straightforward as they may appear; that even culturally accepted
ones may hide suppressed nuances or silenced voices behind normative viewpoints. And I
think that s a good idea to explore - especially in a film whose plot revolves around a quest,
a cultural tradition, to prove a boy s manhood. Implicitly, the reliability of such a tradition,
and the values it enshrines, is questioned. When victory is reached by our protagonists,
it s victory over self-deception, and over blind faith in these narratives. And I think
that s cool. It s cool that this movie explores ideas like
this, and it s cool that it does so in a fun, well-designed fantasy setting that doesn t
really feel like a standard Marvel world. But what s less cool is that this was the
last chance the people over at Marvel Animation had to do something like this. Because Thor:
Tales of Asgard was the last Marvel Animated Feature, the 8th and final film, despite that
Lionsgate deal being for up to 10 pictures. Now it s very possible that the end of these
Marvel Animated Features was due simply to declining sales, and the figures do support
that, to a degree. But the collapse of this straight-to-video arm coincided with a wider
shift in Marvel Animation. Almost precisely a year before Tales of Asgard released, Marvel
Animation confirmed the cancellation of Wolverine and the X-Men, and within a year or so of
this final movie s release, the announcements were made for Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers:
Assemble announcements which doubled as confirmations that Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers:
Earth s Mightiest Heroes were dead in the water. Following these announcements, Marvel
Animation became primarily focused on TV shows like those mentioned above which told stories
set in more recognisable, more MCU-like settings, starring characters a great deal more alike
to their big-screen counterparts than had been seen in the previous wave of animated
properties projects like Tales of Asgard, or EMH, or the other animated features. This
shift in direction toward new continuities, new shows, and brand cohesion stung even more,
though, because in the last few years, Marvel Animation had increasingly been tying all
it s projects together. I ve talked about all this before in greater detail check out
the video onscreen now for more info but this so-called Yostverse was cut down just as it
was coming together. And here s the thing - Tales of Asgard, supposedly, was part of
this shared universe. The Thor we see in Earth s Mightiest Heroes, the Thor I made a video
on a few days ago that s this guy. Not everything lines up perfectly most notably the design
of Asgard but officially, these are both set in Earth 8096, the Yostverse. And we ll talk
more about that in a minute but let s forget about it just for a second. Because honestly,
that s of secondary importance here. The real shame about the end of these Marvel Animated
Features isn t that it coincided with the death of the Yostverse. It s that it meant
no more projects like Tales of Asgard - fun, independent, charming stories which take these
established properties in less-travelled directions. After the death of these features and the
Yostverse, we had a slate of shows which stuck ever closer to the MCU in terms of tone and
characterisation and now, we don t even have those. It seems Marvel s opening another animation
branch, but under the umbrella of Marvel Studios, the MCU people. And maybe there s room there
for more unique, different stuff, but given the projects they ve announced so far, it
s not looking too likely. But! We might be in a position to change that!
This video, you see, is my second and final entry into the collaborative playlist I m
running, Earth s Mightiest Playlist. You should check it out, there s some really cool entries.
But the point of this playlist is to promote the #SaveTheYostverse trend event happening
tomorrow at 12PM utc so if you re watching this video as it goes live, or the day after,
there s still time to join in. All you have to do is tweet with this hashtag, and you
ll be helping to show Marvel Studios that there s still an audience for animated content
like these shows, like these animated features, which take things in different directions.
And that s that! Thanks for watching. If you re curious about tales of Asgard yourself,
I believe it son Amazon Prime in many regions, so maybe give it a look. But I hope you enjoyed
this video, and that you remembered to like and to hit that MF subscribe button. And before
I go, I ll say the customary thank you to all my patrons onscreen now, particularly
Kevin Douglas and Ian Fyfield.