Thor: Love & Thunder changed the VFX of Heimdall’s son talking to Thor for Disney+, and somehow made them worse. Idris Elba’s Heimdall memorably met his demise in Avengers: Infinity War at the hands of Thanos. But the Asgardian character’s legacy lives on in Love and Thunder through his son Astrid aka Axl.
Heimdall fans who felt the character was wronged by Infinity War naturally were thrilled to learn in Love and Thunder that his son was still alive and thriving in New Asgard (now going by the name Axl in honor of his favorite front-man, Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses fame). But happiness soon turned to concern when Astrid and the rest of the village’s children were kidnapped by Gorr the God Butcher. Fortunately, Axl was able to call upon the powers passed down from his father and communicate across space with Thor, allowing the God of Thunder to project himself into the children’s cage and reassure them. Unfortunately, the VFX used to depict Axl’s ghostly presence communicating with Thor in the theatrical version of Love and Thunder were laughably awful.
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But the era of streaming releases means that movies like Thor: Love and Thunder get a do-over when it comes to VFX. Indeed, when the latest MCU movie hit Disney+, fans noticed that the embarrassingly bad disembodied-head Axl who talks to Thor had been redone. Unfortunately, the new VFX are actually worse than the original ones. Twitter account @comicxbook posted a side-by-side comparison which can be seen in the space below:
With a reported budget of $250 million, Thor: Love and Thunder is one of the most expensive movies ever made. But $250 million still wasn’t enough to pay for a decent special effect of Axl’s head floating in space talking to Thor. Perhaps the problem then isn’t with execution as much as conception. Ultimately, a floating head is always going to look a little awkward and weird, and no amount of VFX wizardry can possibly fix that.
A more effective move for Thor: Love and Thunder upon its Disney+ release might have been to redo the scene with a Force Ghost-like full-body Axl, to alleviate the goofiness of just having his head talking to Thor. Of course Love and Thunder is supposed to be a goofy and very consciously “comic booky” movie, so perhaps the head is meant to look weird. But there’s a fine line between weird and off-putting, and Thor: Love and Thunder crossed that line with Axl’s floating head. Another redo of that particular effect may be in the offing now that fans are grumbling online. Although, at this point perhaps Disney is sick of spending money on this particular movie, whose budget was astronomical to begin with.