Jason Aaron’s Original Thor Pitch For Gorr, But Didn’t Like The Name

Lots of people will be seeing Thor: Love And Thunder this weekend, as I did last night, at the London Leicester Square Cineworld IMAX screen. Though other cinemas are available. Jason Aaron, writer of many of the Thor comic books that this movie is based on has been sharing his original pitch for his run on Thor, including the origins of a character called Gorr. Though he would obviously be getting a better name than that. You can read the whole pitch here.

Young Thor encounters a new villain, a mysterious figure from deep space who’s killing gods on earth. A serial killer of gods (Don’t have a good name for this guy yet. For now, we’ll call him Gorr). Thor beats Gorr, sends him reeling into space and figures he’ll never see the guy again.

Back in the present, Thor is discovering that there are many worlds in the cosmos with missing gods. Some were killed. Some simply disappeared. Thor clashes with minions of Gorr, who seem to be at the heart of the disappearances. The serial killer of gods has apparently been very busy over the centuries.

And Jason tells us his origin story. From the original pitch, and how it played out in the comic books.

Origin of Gorr: Thousands of years ago, he was a caveman on an alien world. Life sucked. He watched his wife starve to death. His children were eaten by alien dinosaurs. It was all he could to do survive from day to day. He worked his butt off, hunting, scavenging, doing whatever he could to help himself and those in his tribe. Others in the tribe looked to the stars for salvation. They prayed to the sun and the moon, to the gods in the sky. Eventually Gorr got fed up with their prayers. “There are no gods in the sky,” he yelled. “Look around you! Life is horrible! All we have are ourselves. Stop worrying about make-believe gods.” But the others kept praying, and Gorr got so fed up that he left, headed out on his own.

Months later, he was almost dead, about to starve to death in the harsh and desolate climate. When suddenly there was a bright light in the night sky and something came crashing down to the ground. Gorr ran to discover a pair of space gods who’d been battling in the sky. One dark, one light. Both appeared to be dead. Gorr couldn’t believe it. He reached out to touch the dark god, just to see that it was real, that he wasn’t delirious and imagining things. The dark god’s weapon came alive at his touch, and leapt onto his skin. The weapon was malleable. It could become whatever its master wished. The light god stirred. He was wounded. He saw Gorr and reached out to him for help. Gorr seethed. So there were gods in the sky, it turned out. Gods who had apparently never given a damn about him or his family.

But who in their time of need, would dare ask him for help. Using his newfound weapon, Gorr hacked the light god to death. And then he looked up to the sky and wondered. Were there more gods out there? His weapon responded to his thoughts, forming wings and a spacessuit. Gorr went flying off into space, looking for more gods to murder.

He spends the next few centuries roaming the cosmos, killing whatever gods he finds, killing them by hand, in secret, like a serial killer. Young Thor is one of the first gods to defeat him. In the wake of his defeat, Gorr starts to rethink his strategy. There are a seemingly endless number of gods in the universe. He will never be able to kill them all by hand. He’ll have to devise a new plan.

I#m sure Jason Aaron will come up with a better name for Gorr shortly. But from his pen for a Marvel Comics pitch to the movie Thor: Love And Thunder, where he won’t have been paid any more than for his work than for the original comic book, royalties on the comic, and maybe a $5000 stipend for the film’s use if he’s lucky. Same with Esad Ribić…