After the events of Avengers Infinity War put the Earth’s mightiest heroes on a futile wild goose chase, the only hero that came out more powerful than anyone else was Thor, the Norse God of Thunder and King of Asgard. He lost everything to the Mad Titan – his people, his allies and his family all fell to Thanos. He had to travel to the forbidden realm of Nidavellir to ask help from Eitri to forge him a weapon powerful enough to stop Thanos. The hammer-ax known as Stormbreaker was born purely out of Thor’s rage and vengeance, which is why Thor had such an easy time using it to cut through swathes of Thanos’ outrider army and even put a hole in his chest at the end of the movie. But did you guys know that the moment you saw Stormbreaker on screen in Infinity War was not originally planned to be the debut scene for Thor’s new weapon?
And trust us when we say this, Stormbreaker looked way different than what we saw in the movie!!! That’s right folks. The legendary axe of the God of Thunder almost had a different and simpler look in Infinity War. And it wasn’t even what you think it was. It is not just the look, the very weapon that was originally planned for Thor in Infinity war was a different one altogether!
Many Infinity War concept art images have been making the rounds all over the internet. They are supposed to be early design sketches for the various scenes and characters that would eventually star in the movie.
One of those images shows Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Thor Odinson (played by Chris Hemsworth) tag teaming the hell out of the enemies on the Wakandan battlefield. A cropped and edited version of the same image was shown in the pre-release sneak peek images for Infinity War. The full image has been uploaded online and it shows Jarnbjorn in action.
This is the pre Infinity War release image:
And this is the actual, full resolution concept art that was released by Marvel Studios a few days ago:
See the difference? The second image shows more of Thor. He is revealed to be wielding the weapon of the Gods. The weapon that (almost) killed Thanos had debuted a long time ago. We just were too dumb enough to spot it by reading between the lines. Marvel Studios – 1, Marvel fans – 0.
What is interesting is the fact that the movie shows Thor wielding the Stormbreaker ax, not Jarnbjorn. This means that Thor was originally meant to hold the former but somehow ended up wielding the latter. The Stormbreaker axe was actually a gift from Odin to a guy called Eric Masterson, who impressed the All-Father with his code of honor and bravery.
The Jarnbjorn, on the other hand, is an axe that was wielded by Thor when he became unworthy of lifting Mjolnir in The Unworthy Thor issues. Why did they make the change? It looked way better than Stormbreaker, to be honest, and frankly, has a much better backstory than Stormbreaker ever will.
Marvel studios, ladies and gentlemen!! We can never understand how they think. Let us hope the other concept arts that have been revealed do not show any signs of Marvel going for the comic book inaccuracy way and show us other painstaking edits that could have made the movie even more awesome. Here’s to hoping this phenomenon ends here. No promises though. We will keep you posted on other developments on Infinity War and beyond.
Thor last appeared in Avengers: Infinity War. The official film synopsis for the movie reads:
Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and the rest of the Avengers unite to battle their most powerful enemy yet — the evil Thanos. On a mission to collect all six Infinity Stones, Thanos plans to use the artifacts to inflict his twisted will on reality. The fate of the planet and existence itself has never been more uncertain as everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment.
