ThorHub

The hammer and the screen

The gods have always been good for cinema. They are larger than life, they fight with lightning and the sea, they fall in love with mortals and punish them, and their stories have been told for thousands of years, so that every audience already knows them a little. Hollywood dressed them in sandals and painted cardboard in the 1950s, brought them to life with stop motion in the 1960s and 1980s, and in the 2010s it gave the Norse god of thunder his own series of blockbusters, with Chris Hemsworth swinging a hammer over the New York of the Avengers. ThorHub, whose name joins that god to the idea of a meeting place, gathers 156 films of gods, myths and legends, and sorts them on twelve shelves, in three families.

Every film of the guide has an English synopsis, its cast and director and a Watch now button that opens it on JustWatch, where you can see the services that offer it in your country. The oldest film is The Mummy of 1932, with Boris Karloff as the priest Imhotep brought back to life by a scroll, and the newest is The Odyssey, of 2026, by Christopher Nolan, with Matt Damon as Odysseus. Together the films carry about 879,200 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 6.84; the most voted is The Avengers, of 2012, with about 40,100 votes, and the best rated are two Japanese animated films, Spirited Away, of 2001, and Your Name., of 2016, with an 8.5 each. The guide Start with ThorHub picks one film from each shelf, and the guide Myth on screen follows the history of the gods in cinema.

The first family, The North, holds the myths of Scandinavia and their heirs: Thor and the Avengers, the Vikings and their sagas, the trolls and northern legends, and the dragons and giants. The second, The ancient world, holds the myths of the Mediterranean: the gods of Olympus, Troy, Sparta and the voyage of Odysseus, the gods and mummies of Egypt, and the epics of the Bible. The third, Myths of the world, travels farther: the gods and spirits of Asia, the legends of the Celts and of King Arthur, the gods among superheroes, and the myths retold by animation, from Mexico to the islands of the Pacific.

The name and the look

The Wayback Machine keeps thorhub.io from November 2024 as the plan of a forum for beginners in a network of cryptocurrency called Thorchain, and thorhub.co as a single empty page; the other endings of the name are empty. With only an unrelated project in the archive, this guide has an original design, built from the god in the name.

The page is the grey of a storm sky. The header is near black, edged below by a line of lightning gold above a thin line of bronze, and the logo draws a hammer struck by a bolt of lightning. The introduction sits on a dark card topped by a band of gold and bronze knotwork, and the board of the home page, called The realms, lays out the twelve shelves in three columns, one per family, each tile with a coloured edge: gold for the North, bronze for the ancient world and storm blue for the myths of the world. Each shelf is a dark panel whose title is underlined by a line of gold fading into bronze, with an Enter the realm button, and each poster carries the rating on a gold tag and the tag of its shelf in gold capitals on a dark band at the bottom. The guide The look of ThorHub explains each detail.

How the realms work

Every film of the guide tells a myth or a legend, or takes its gods, monsters or heroes from one: the gods of the Norse, the Greeks, the Egyptians and the peoples of Asia and the Americas; the heroes of the epics, from Beowulf to Odysseus; the figures of the Bible, the knights of Camelot and the spirits of the Celtic and Japanese worlds; and the superheroes of the comics who borrow their powers from the gods. The films were chosen by hand from TMDB, and each one sits on a single shelf; each shelf keeps its thirteen most voted films and lists them by votes, so that the best known come first. 131 of the 156 films are in English, and the others in Mandarin, Japanese, Norwegian, French, Italian, Greek, Korean, Icelandic, Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Cantonese and Russian, all with an English synopsis. The guide How the realms work sums up the rules.

Myth on screen

The myths came to the screen in three great waves. The first was the age of the epic, in the 1950s and early 1960s, when Hollywood answered television with wide screens, colour and crowds: Samson and Delilah, of 1949, and The Ten Commandments, of 1956, both by Cecil B. DeMille, Quo Vadis, of 1951, The Robe, of 1953, the first film in CinemaScope, and Ben-Hur, of 1959, the winner of eleven Academy Awards, while Italy made its own cheaper myths with the muscle men of the peplum. The second was the age of the special effects artist Ray Harryhausen, who animated, frame by frame, the skeleton warriors of Jason and the Argonauts, of 1963, and the Medusa and the Kraken of the first Clash of the Titans, of 1981, his last film.

The third wave began with computers. From the 1990s on, digital effects could show anything, and the studios turned to the myths again: the plagues of The Prince of Egypt, of 1998, the sands of the Mummy films of Stephen Sommers, the battles of Troy, of 2004, and 300, of 2007, and then, from 2011, the gods of the comics, with Thor arriving in the films of Marvel. At the same time animation found the myths of every continent, from the Pacific of Moana and the Mexico of Coco to the Ireland of Tomm Moore and the China of Ne Zha, whose sequel of 2025 became the most successful animated film ever made. The guide Myth on screen tells the story.

The North

The first family, The North, gathers 52 films of the myths and legends of Scandinavia and the northern world, with about 357,800 votes, the most of the three families, and an average rating of 6.68. The Norse myths reached the modern world through the Eddas written down in Iceland in the 13th century, and through the comics of Marvel, which made Thor a superhero in 1962; this family follows both roads, from the gods of Asgard to the warriors, trolls and dragons of the sagas. The guide The North sums up the family.

Thor and the Avengers

The shelf Thor and the Avengers holds thirteen films from 2006 to 2022, and it is the most voted shelf of the guide, with about 211,700 votes. Chris Hemsworth plays the god of thunder in eight of them, and the four films that bear his name tell his story. Thor, of 2011, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who brought to it the tone of Shakespeare, sends the arrogant prince of Asgard to Earth stripped of his hammer, as a punishment of his father, Odin, played by Anthony Hopkins, rated 6.8; Thor: The Dark World, of 2013, pits him against the dark elves; Thor: Ragnarok, of 2017, by the New Zealander Taika Waititi, turns the end of the gods into a comedy of colour and rock music, the best rated of the four, at 7.6, and Thor: Love and Thunder, of 2022, by the same director, brings back Natalie Portman as the mighty Thor.

Tom Hiddleston plays his brother Loki, the god of mischief, in five of the films, and Idris Elba plays Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge, in six. The most voted film of the shelf is the first gathering of the heroes, The Avengers, of 2012, by Joss Whedon, in which Loki leads an alien army against New York, rated 8.1 with about 40,100 votes, and the best rated are the two films of the brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Infinity War, of 2018, and Avengers: Endgame, of 2019, at 8.2 each, the war against Thanos, in which Thor loses almost everything and finds a new axe, Stormbreaker. Avengers: Age of Ultron, of 2015, and Eternals, of 2021, by Chloé Zhao, a race of immortal beings who inspired the myths of humanity, complete the live films, and four animated films of Marvel close the shelf: Ultimate Avengers: The Movie and Ultimate Avengers 2, both of 2006, Hulk Vs., of 2009, in which the green giant fights Thor and his brother, and Thor: Tales of Asgard, of 2011, the young Thor in search of a legendary sword. The guide The thunder god follows Thor across his films.

Vikings and sagas

The shelf Vikings and sagas holds thirteen films from 1958 to 2023 of the warriors of the North and the heroes of their poems. Its most voted film is The Northman, of 2022, by Robert Eggers, with Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, a prince of the Viking age who swears to avenge his father, save his mother and kill his uncle, the old legend that inspired Hamlet, filmed with the help of historians and full of Valkyries, seers and the tree of the world, rated 7.0 with about 5,300 votes. Its classic is The Vikings, of 1958, by Richard Fleischer, with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis as two half-brothers who are rivals for the same princess, rated 7.0, and its best rated film is The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die, of 2023, the film that closed the television series of the Saxon and Danish wars of England, rated 7.2.

The poem of Beowulf, the oldest long poem in English, appears twice: in Beowulf, of 2007, by Robert Zemeckis, made with the capture of the movements of its actors, with Ray Winstone as the hero and Angelina Jolie as the mother of the monster Grendel, and in Beowulf & Grendel, of 2005, with Gerard Butler, filmed in Iceland. The 13th Warrior, of 1999, by John McTiernan, with Antonio Banderas as an Arab envoy who joins a band of Vikings, retells the same poem from the novel of Michael Crichton. The rest of the shelf mixes adventure and fantasy: Valhalla Rising, of 2010, by Nicolas Winding Refn, with Mads Mikkelsen as a silent one-eyed warrior; Outlander, of 2008, an alien who crashes in the Norway of the Vikings; Pathfinder, of 2007, a Viking boy raised by Native Americans; Erik the Viking, of 1989, a comedy by Terry Jones of Monty Python; Northmen: A Viking Saga, of 2014; Viking, of 2016, a Russian epic of the prince Vladimir, and Hammer of the Gods, of 2013, the lowest rated of the shelf, at 4.4.

Trolls and northern legends

The shelf Trolls and northern legends holds thirteen films from 1973 to 2022 of the creatures, rites and winters of the northern folk tales. Its most voted film is Frozen, of 2013, by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, made by Disney from a tale of Hans Christian Andersen, in which a princess of a Norwegian-style kingdom whose touch makes ice runs away and freezes her land, and the trolls of the rocks once healed her sister, rated 7.3 with about 18,000 votes; its sequel, Frozen II, of 2019, follows the sisters north into an enchanted forest of spirits of the elements. The two films of Norway are films of trolls: Troll Hunter, of 2010, by André Øvredal, a false documentary of students who follow a hunter employed by the government to keep the trolls of the mountains secret, and Troll, of 2022, by Roar Uthaug, in which a giant troll wakes under a mountain and marches on Oslo.

The pagan rites of the North are the horror of the shelf. The Wicker Man, of 1973, by Robin Hardy, with Edward Woodward as a police officer who comes to a Scottish island to look for a missing girl and finds a community of old gods, is its best rated film with Frozen, at 7.3; Midsommar, of 2019, by Ari Aster, sends a group of American students to a midsummer festival of a Swedish commune, rated 7.1, and The Ritual, of 2017, loses four friends in a Swedish forest where an ancient god of the woods waits. The folk tales of the rest of the North are here too: Lamb, of 2021, an Icelandic couple who raise a child that is half lamb; Border, of 2018, a Swedish customs officer who can smell guilt and discovers what she really is; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, of 2010, a Finnish film of the true and terrible Santa Claus dug out of a mountain, and The Green Knight, of 2021, by David Lowery, with Dev Patel as Gawain, the knight who accepts the challenge of a green giant, from the poem of the 14th century. Hellboy II: The Golden Army, of 2008, by Guillermo del Toro, and The Huntsman: Winter's War, of 2016, with Chris Hemsworth, close the shelf.

Dragons and giants

The shelf Dragons and giants holds thirteen films from 1981 to 2025, and the Vikings and dragons of Berk stand at its heart. How to Train Your Dragon, of 2010, by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, made by DreamWorks, tells of Hiccup, the thin son of a Viking chief, who befriends the dragon he has wounded, a Night Fury he names Toothless, and teaches his village to live with dragons, rated 7.9 with about 14,800 votes, the most voted film of the shelf; How to Train Your Dragon 2, of 2014, and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, of 2019, both by DeBlois, complete the trilogy, and DeBlois remade the first film with actors in 2025, rated 7.9 too. Gerard Butler gives his voice to Stoick, the father of Hiccup, in the three animated films, and plays him again in the remake.

The other dragons of the shelf are older and fiercer. Dragonslayer, of 1981, the oldest film of the shelf, made by Disney with Paramount, sends a young apprentice of magic against the dragon Vermithrax; DragonHeart, of 1996, gives the last dragon the voice of Sean Connery and the friendship of a knight played by Dennis Quaid; Reign of Fire, of 2002, with Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey, wakes the dragons under modern London; Eragon, of 2006, from the novel of Christopher Paolini, follows a farm boy who finds a dragon's egg. Raya and the Last Dragon, of 2021, rated 7.8, a warrior princess of a kingdom inspired by Southeast Asia who looks for the last dragon of her world; Damsel, of 2024, with Millie Bobby Brown as a princess thrown to a dragon by her new family; Pete's Dragon, of 2016, by David Lowery, a boy raised in the forest by a green dragon; The BFG, of 2016, by Steven Spielberg, from Roald Dahl, a girl and a big friendly giant, and Jack the Giant Slayer, of 2013, the giants at the top of the beanstalk, close it. The guide The dragon films follows the dragons of the guide.

The ancient world

The second family, The ancient world, gathers 52 films of the myths and sacred stories of the Mediterranean, with about 170,400 votes and an average rating of 6.61. It holds the oldest films of the guide, the sword and sandal epics of the 1950s, and the great blockbusters of the age of computers, from Troy to The Mummy, and it ends with the stories of the Bible, the most filmed of all the old books. The guide The ancient world sums up the family.

Gods of Olympus

The shelf Gods of Olympus holds thirteen films from 1950 to 2014 of Zeus, Hades and the heroes born of them. Its most voted film is the Hercules of Disney, of 1997, by John Musker and Ron Clements, a comedy with songs of gospel in which the young son of Zeus must prove himself a true hero to return to Olympus, against Hades, with the voice of James Woods, rated 7.5 with about 8,200 votes, the best rated of the shelf after the Orpheus of Jean Cocteau. Hercules returns three times more: as Dwayne Johnson in the Hercules of 2014, by Brett Ratner, as Kellan Lutz in The Legend of Hercules, of 2014, and as the young Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York, of 1970, his first film, the lowest rated film of the guide, at 4.1.

Perseus and the Medusa appear in the two Clash of the Titans, the film of 1981, with the creatures of Ray Harryhausen and Laurence Olivier as Zeus, and the remake of 2010, with Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades, who return in Wrath of the Titans, of 2012. Jason and the Argonauts, of 1963, rated 7.2, sails for the Golden Fleece; Immortals, of 2011, by Tarsem Singh, sets Theseus against the mad king Hyperion; the two films of Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, of 2010, by Chris Columbus, and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, of 2013, bring the gods into the America of today through a boy who discovers he is the son of Poseidon. The myth of Orpheus, the poet who goes down to the underworld for his love, gives the shelf its two finest films: Orpheus, of 1950, by Jean Cocteau, rated 7.7, set in the Paris of its time, with mirrors as the doors of death, and Black Orpheus, of 1959, by Marcel Camus, set in the carnival of Rio de Janeiro, the winner of the Palme d'Or and of the Academy Award for the best foreign language film. The guide The gods of Olympus follows them.

Troy, Sparta and Odysseus

The shelf Troy, Sparta and Odysseus holds thirteen films from 1954 to 2026 of the wars and voyages of the Greek epics. Its most voted film is 300, of 2007, by Zack Snyder, from the comic of Frank Miller, with Gerard Butler as King Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae, rated 7.2 with about 15,200 votes, followed by Troy, of 2004, by Wolfgang Petersen, with Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector and Orlando Bloom as Paris, rated 7.2, and by 300: Rise of an Empire, of 2014, the sea battles of the same war. Its best rated film is the newest film of the guide, The Odyssey, of 2026, by Christopher Nolan, the long return of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, shot entirely with IMAX cameras, rated 8.0.

Odysseus has sailed through cinema before. Ulysses, of 1954, an Italian film by Mario Camerini, gave the role to Kirk Douglas; Contempt, of 1963, by Jean-Luc Godard, follows a writer hired to rewrite a film of the Odyssey directed by Fritz Lang, who plays himself, with Brigitte Bardot, rated 7.0, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, of 2000, by the Coen brothers, sends three escaped convicts across the Mississippi of the Great Depression, meeting sirens and a one-eyed giant on the way, rated 7.3. The Greek director Michael Cacoyannis made three films of the tragedies of Euripides, Electra, of 1962, The Trojan Women, of 1971, with Katharine Hepburn, and Iphigenia, of 1977, the daughter that Agamemnon sacrifices to the gods to sail for Troy. Helen of Troy, of 1956, by Robert Wise; The 300 Spartans, of 1962, the film that inspired the comic of Frank Miller, and Alexander, of 2004, by Oliver Stone, with Colin Farrell as the king who believed himself the son of Zeus, complete it. The guide The voyage of Odysseus follows the hero.

Gods and mummies of Egypt

The shelf Gods and mummies of Egypt holds thirteen films from 1932 to 2017, and four of them share the same title. The Mummy of 1932, by Karl Freund, with Boris Karloff as the priest Imhotep, brought back to life thousands of years after he was buried alive for the love of a princess, is the oldest film of the guide; the British Mummy of 1959, by Terence Fisher, gave the bandages to Christopher Lee for the studio Hammer; the Mummy of 1999, by Stephen Sommers, with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, made the old horror an adventure in the manner of Indiana Jones and is the most voted film of the shelf, rated 7.0 with about 10,500 votes, and the Mummy of 2017, with Tom Cruise, tried to start a series of monster films and stopped at one. The Mummy Returns, of 2001, introduced Dwayne Johnson as the Scorpion King, who earned his own film, The Scorpion King, of 2002, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, of 2008, moved the curse to China.

The gods of Egypt appear in their own forms in Gods of Egypt, of 2016, by Alex Proyas, with Gerard Butler as Set, and in Stargate, of 1994, by Roland Emmerich, in which a ring found at Giza opens onto a planet ruled by an alien who plays the god Ra, rated 7.0. The great epics of the shelf are its best rated films: The Ten Commandments, of 1956, by Cecil B. DeMille, with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the pharaoh, at 220 minutes the second longest film of the guide, rated 7.8, and Cleopatra, of 1963, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, at 251 minutes the longest, rated 7.1. The story of Moses returns twice: The Prince of Egypt, of 1998, the first hand-drawn film of DreamWorks Animation, rated 7.3, and Exodus: Gods and Kings, of 2014, by Ridley Scott, with Christian Bale. The guide The curse of the mummy follows the mummies of the guide.

Bible epics

The shelf Bible epics holds thirteen films from 1949 to 2018 drawn from the Bible and from the early Christian world. Its most voted film is Noah, of 2014, by Darren Aronofsky, with Russell Crowe as the builder of the ark and stone giants who help him, rated 5.7 with about 6,800 votes, and its best rated is Ben-Hur, of 1959, by William Wyler, with Charlton Heston as a Jewish prince of Judea sent to the galleys by his Roman friend, whose chariot race remains one of the great scenes of cinema, at 212 minutes the third longest film of the guide, rated 7.9. The life of Jesus is told in many ways: The Passion of the Christ, of 2004, by Mel Gibson, spoken in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, rated 7.5; The Last Temptation of Christ, of 1988, by Martin Scorsese, with Willem Dafoe, from the novel of Nikos Kazantzakis; Jesus Christ Superstar, of 1973, by Norman Jewison, the rock opera of Andrew Lloyd Webber filmed in the desert of Israel, and The Gospel According to St. Matthew, of 1965, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, with a cast of non-professionals of southern Italy, rated 7.4.

The rest of the shelf gathers the epics of the studios and the films of faith of recent years. Samson and Delilah, of 1949, the oldest film of the shelf, with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr; Quo Vadis, of 1951, with Peter Ustinov as Nero burning Rome; The Robe, of 1953, with Richard Burton as the tribune who wins the robe of Jesus at the crucifixion; Risen, of 2016, a Roman tribune who searches for the missing body after the resurrection; Son of God, of 2014; The Nativity Story, of 2006, the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, and Mary Magdalene, of 2018, with Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, complete it. The guide The epics of the studios follows the great productions of the 1950s.

Myths of the world

The third family, Myths of the world, gathers 52 films of the myths of Asia, of the Celtic lands, of the comics and of the many peoples retold by animation, with about 351,100 votes and an average rating of 7.22, the best of the three families. It holds the best rated films of the guide, most of them animated, and it shows how the old stories of every continent have found a new audience in the last thirty years. The guide Myths of the world sums up the family.

Gods and spirits of Asia

The shelf Gods and spirits of Asia holds thirteen films from 1987 to 2025, and it is the second best rated shelf of the guide, after Animated myths, with an average of 7.47 and four films rated 8 or more. Its most voted and best rated film is Your Name., of 2016, by Makoto Shinkai, in which a boy of Tokyo and a girl of a mountain town find themselves swapping bodies in their sleep, joined by the red thread of fate and the rites of a Shinto shrine, rated 8.5 with about 13,100 votes. Princess Mononoke, of 1997, by Hayao Miyazaki, rated 8.3, sets a young prince cursed by a boar god between the people of an ironworks and the gods of the forest, among them the great Forest Spirit, a deer by day and a giant of the night.

The gods of China fill most of the rest. Ne Zha, of 2019, by Jiao Zi, the boy born of a demon pearl who fights his destiny, rated 7.9, and its sequel, Ne Zha 2, of 2025, rated 8.2, which became the most successful animated film ever made; White Snake, of 2019, the legend of the snake spirit who falls in love with a young man, rated 7.7; Big Fish & Begonia, of 2016, a girl of a world of spirits who saves a boy turned into a small fish; and the Monkey King of the novel Journey to the West, the great trickster of Chinese myth, in four films: The Forbidden Kingdom, of 2008, with Jackie Chan and Jet Li together for the first time; Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, of 2013, by Stephen Chow; Monkey King: Hero Is Back, of 2015, an animated film, and The Monkey King, of 2014, with Donnie Yen. Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds, of 2017, a Korean film of a firefighter judged in seven trials of the afterlife, rated 8.1; Kubo and the Two Strings, of 2016, by the studio Laika, a boy of old Japan with a magic shamisen, rated 7.6, and A Chinese Ghost Story, of 1987, the oldest of the shelf, close it.

Celtic and Arthurian legends

The shelf Celtic and Arthurian legends holds thirteen films from 1959 to 2020 of the old tales of Ireland, Scotland and Britain. Its most voted film is Brave, of 2012, by Pixar, in which Merida, a Scottish princess who wants to choose her own fate, asks a witch for a spell that turns her mother into a bear, rated 7.0 with about 14,500 votes. Its best rated films belong to the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon of Kilkenny and its director Tomm Moore, whose three films, drawn by hand in the shapes of Celtic art, are all here: Wolfwalkers, of 2020, rated 8.2, a girl of the English hunters of the 17th century who befriends a wild girl who turns into a wolf in her sleep; Song of the Sea, of 2014, rated 8.0, a boy whose little sister is a selkie, a woman of the seals of Irish legend, and The Secret of Kells, of 2009, rated 7.4, the young monk who helps to finish the Book of Kells.

King Arthur and his knights have filled the rest of the shelf for sixty years. The Sword in the Stone, of 1963, the Disney film of the boy Arthur and the wizard Merlin; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of 1975, by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, the quest for the grail as a comedy of coconuts for horses and a killer rabbit, rated 7.8; Excalibur, of 1981, by John Boorman, the most mythical of all the films of Camelot, with Nicol Williamson as Merlin; First Knight, of 1995, with Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot; King Arthur, of 2004, by Antoine Fuqua, with Clive Owen as a Roman commander of Britain; King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, of 2017, by Guy Ritchie, with Charlie Hunnam, and Tristan & Isolde, of 2006, the old love story of Cornwall and Ireland. The Last Unicorn, of 1982, from the novel of Peter S. Beagle, and Darby O'Gill and the Little People, of 1959, with the young Sean Connery among the leprechauns of Ireland, complete it. The guide The legends of Camelot follows the knights.

Gods among heroes

The shelf Gods among heroes holds thirteen films from 1994 to 2022 of the superheroes who borrow their powers, their origins or their enemies from the myths. Its most voted film is Black Panther, of 2018, by Ryan Coogler, with Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, the king of Wakanda, who gains his powers from a herb blessed by the panther goddess Bast and meets his ancestors in a spirit world, rated 7.4 with about 24,100 votes; its sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, of 2022, brings in Namor, the king of an undersea people drawn from the myths of the Maya. Wonder Woman, of 2017, by Patty Jenkins, with Gal Gadot as Diana, an Amazon of an island hidden by Zeus who leaves it during the First World War to find and kill Ares, the god of war, rated 7.2, and its sequel Wonder Woman 1984, of 2020, give the shelf its Greek gods.

The other heroes of the shelf take from every myth. Shazam!, of 2019, gives a boy of fourteen the powers of six gods and heroes, from Solomon to Mercury, by a single word, and Black Adam, of 2022, with Dwayne Johnson, the powers of the gods of Egypt; Aquaman, of 2018, by James Wan, with Jason Momoa, rules the drowned kingdom of Atlantis, and Man of Steel, of 2013, by Zack Snyder, makes Superman a god among men. Constantine, of 2005, with Keanu Reeves, fights the angels and demons of Los Angeles; Hellboy, of 2004, by Guillermo del Toro, raises a demon to fight for humanity; Ghost Rider, of 2007, binds a stunt rider to the devil; Hancock, of 2008, with Will Smith, turns out to be one of the last of an ancient race of gods, and The Mask, of 1994, with Jim Carrey, owes its chaos to a mask of Loki, the Norse god of mischief, rated 7.0. The guide The gods of the comics follows the heroes.

Animated myths

The shelf Animated myths holds thirteen films from 1989 to 2024, and it is the best rated shelf of the guide, with an average of 7.56. Its most voted film is Coco, of 2017, by Pixar, in which a boy of a Mexican village who dreams of music crosses into the Land of the Dead on the Day of the Dead and meets his ancestors, rated 8.2 with about 21,600 votes, and its best rated is the best rated of the guide, Spirited Away, of 2001, by Hayao Miyazaki, in which a girl must work in a bathhouse of the gods and spirits of Japan to free her parents, turned into pigs, rated 8.5, the winner of the Academy Award for the best animated feature. Soul, of 2020, also by Pixar, sends a jazz pianist to the world before birth, rated 8.1.

Walt Disney Animation has six films on the shelf, two of them by John Musker and Ron Clements, who also made the Hercules of the shelf of Olympus: The Little Mermaid, of 1989, the daughter of the sea king Triton, rated 7.4; Moana, of 2016, a girl of the Pacific who sails beyond the reef with the demigod Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, rated 7.6, and its sequel Moana 2, of 2024; Encanto, of 2021, a Colombian family whose house gives each child a gift, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, of 2001, the search for the drowned city. DreamWorks brings The Road to El Dorado, of 2000, two swindlers taken for gods in the city of gold, and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, of 2003, the sailor and the goddess of chaos Eris, and the shelf closes with Brother Bear, of 2003, the sixth film of Disney, an Inuit boy turned into a bear by the spirits, Onward, of 2020, two elf brothers in a suburb where magic has faded, and The Book of Life, of 2014, a love story of the Day of the Dead. The guide The myths of animation follows the shelf.

The faces of the gods

Chris Hemsworth is the face of the guide, in nine films: Thor in the four films of his name and the four Avengers, and the Huntsman of The Huntsman: Winter's War. Gerard Butler follows with eight films across the realms, from Leonidas of 300 and the father of Hiccup in the four films of the dragons of Berk to Set in Gods of Egypt, Beowulf in Beowulf & Grendel and a dragon hunter in Reign of Fire, and Stellan Skarsgård appears in seven, five of them as the scientist Erik Selvig beside Thor. Anthony Hopkins is Odin in three films, Methuselah in Noah and the old king Hrothgar in Beowulf; Dwayne Johnson is Hercules, Black Adam, the Scorpion King twice and the voice of Maui twice; Idris Elba is Heimdall in six films, and Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes are Zeus and Hades in the two Titans films. Among the directors, John Musker and Ron Clements have three films, Hercules, The Little Mermaid and Moana; Tomm Moore has three too, his Irish films, and Dean DeBlois four, all of the dragons of Berk. The guide The stars lists the actors who appear most often.

ThorHub in figures

The 156 films of the guide carry about 879,200 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 6.84; thirteen of them reach 8, and the collection Rated 7.5 or more gathers the 32 films rated 7.5 or more, best first, from Spirited Away and Your Name., at 8.5, to Princess Mononoke, at 8.3. By decade, the guide holds one film of the 1930s, one of the 1940s, eleven of the 1950s, seven of the 1960s, six of the 1970s, eight of the 1980s, nine of the 1990s, 32 of the 2000s, 61 of the 2010s and twenty of the 2020s, and the busiest year is 2014, with eleven films, from Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings to the two films of Hercules and How to Train Your Dragon 2. The collection Before 1970 gathers the twenty films made before 1970, oldest first, from The Mummy of 1932 to the Greek tragedies of the 1960s, and the collection The 2020s the twenty films made since 2020.

Together the films last 18,009 minutes, more than 300 hours, or twelve and a half days in the company of the gods; the longest is Cleopatra, with 251 minutes, followed by The Ten Commandments, with 220, and Ben-Hur, with 212, and the shortest is the animated Ultimate Avengers: The Movie, with 72. The United States is the first country of production of 92 films, the United Kingdom of thirteen and China of eight. The most voted films are The Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther, and the lowest rated is Hercules in New York, at 4.1. The guide The figures gathers every number.

Where to begin

For a first journey through the realms, start with one film from each family: Thor: Ragnarok for the North, Jason and the Argonauts for the ancient world and Princess Mononoke for the myths of the world. Then follow the gods you love. For the Norse, The Northman and The Green Knight; for the Greeks, Troy, Orpheus and The Odyssey; for Egypt, The Ten Commandments and Stargate; for the Celts, Wolfwalkers and Excalibur; for a laugh, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and O Brother, Where Art Thou?; for a fright, The Wicker Man and Midsommar; for the family, Coco, Moana and the first How to Train Your Dragon. The guide Start with ThorHub picks one film from each shelf.

How to use ThorHub

The home page opens with an introduction on a dark card with its band of knotwork and the board The realms, with the twelve shelves in three columns, one per family: gold for the North, bronze for the ancient world and storm blue for the myths of the world. Each tile shows the family, the shelf and its number of films, and leads to its row. Each row sits in a dark panel, with its title underlined in gold and an Enter the realm button that opens the full shelf. The menu in the header leads to the three families, and the search box finds any film by its title; the guide Search tips explains how.

Each poster shows the year in a dark tag, the TMDB rating in a gold tag and, on a dark band at the bottom, the tag of its shelf in gold capitals, for example Asgard or Olympus; under the poster come the title, the first genre and the running time. The film page has the English synopsis, the cast, the director and the genres. The Watch now button opens the film on JustWatch, which shows the services that offer it in your country, and the list button keeps it in My list, stored in your browser. The guide How to use ThorHub explains each part, and the guide The Watch now button explains how JustWatch works.

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