Thor's weapons. Phase Zero

Two objects, and the difference between one that decides whether you deserve it and one that does not ask.

The first is famous for a condition. It cannot be lifted by anyone the enchantment does not consider worthy, which turns a weapon into a running judgement on its owner and gives an entire film its best scene: a party where everybody tries and nobody manages.

The second has no such condition. It is made when the first is gone, by someone who has lost almost everything, and it does exactly what he needs without asking anything of him.

Show detailsWhat the pair is actually about

The character spends two films being told, by an object, that he is enough. Then the object is destroyed, and he builds one that has no view.

The films are quietly clear that the second is the sadder weapon. A hammer that judges you can also tell you that you passed; an axe just works.

Mjolnir

A hammer enchanted so that only those who are worthy may wield it, which makes it less a weapon than a standing verdict.

The enchantment is the entire design. Odin placed it there as a punishment that could be undone, so the hammer is simultaneously a weapon, a sentence and a way back. Thor spends his first film unable to lift it, which is the only time in the run that the protagonist is powerless for a structural reason rather than a plot one.

It is destroyed in his third film, by somebody with a better claim to it than he has, and the loss is played as a relief rather than a tragedy.

Show detailsIt comes back, and to somebody else

Reference material records that the hammer was remade, with visible cracks, and that it is later wielded by Jane Foster, who is deemed worthy.

That is the enchantment doing exactly what it was written to do, and it takes thirteen years for a film to use it on anyone but him.

Stormbreaker

An axe forged at a dying star to replace a hammer that no longer exists, by a man who had run out of other options.

It is made on Nidavellir, at a forge Thor has to restart with his own body, which is the most physically punishing thing the character ever does and the only time the films let him earn something through endurance rather than worth.

What it can do is stated plainly: it summons lightning, it allows flight, and it calls the Bifrost, which means it can put him anywhere in the Nine Realms. Reference material goes further and says it has the power to defeat even the Infinity Stones.

Show detailsWhy it is the more frightening object

Mjolnir was limited by a rule. This is not limited by anything, and the film that introduces it uses that: he arrives with it at exactly the right moment and it is not enough, because the problem was never the weapon.

That is the point of the whole set. He spends years trying to be worthy of a tool and then discovers that the better tool did not fix the thing he actually needed to fix.

Thor's weapons

Mjolnir

Stormbreaker

Sources