This weekend’s Comic-Con was full of revelations, the most exciting of which was that Natalie Portman will be reprising her role of Dr Jane Foster in the next instalment of the Marvel series, Thor: Love and Thunder – only this time, she’ll be the one wielding Thor’s mighty hammer.
The film’s director, Taika Waititi, explained that this gender shift comes from an existing 2014 comic book storyline, on which the film will be based. In it, Thor loses his abilities and his lover Jane Foster wields his powers and magical hammer, Mjolnir. Portman’s character debuted in the 2011 original, as well as 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, and will be joining forces with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, who return from the 2017 hit Thor: Ragnarok. While further details of the plot have not yet been released, Waititi did confirm that Portman’s name in the film will be ‘Mighty Thor’.
Portman took to Instagram to declare that she was ‘thrilled’ to share the news that she would be returning as female Thor and posted a photograph of her holding the hammer, joking, ‘Remember this as the before picture for when I get jacked.’
Portman’s wasn’t the only exciting female-focused announcement at Comic-Con. It was also revealed on Saturday that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow will finally be getting its own movie, seven years after the actress first portrayed the character in the Avengers series. “It’s something that we’ve talked about for probably eight years or something like that,” Johansson told the LA Times. “I don’t know why it’s taken so long. It’s happening at the right time for me though, so that may be part of it.”
Alongside this came the announcement that Angelina Jolie will be joining the Marvel universe, starring in new superhero flick The Eternals, based on the comic book of the same name by artist Jack Kirby. Jolie joins a stellar cast including Bodyguard hunk Richard Madden and Salma Hayek, and the film will centre around the Eternals, a group of beings who use their advanced skills to protect humans in the future.
From Glamour UK
