Axl's Apparition

About

Axl's Apparition refers to a scene in the 2022 Marvel Thor movie Thor: Love and Thunder where Thor is seen communicating telepathically with an apparition of Heimdall's son, named Axl. Screencaps of the scene surfaced on Twitter shortly after the film's release with meme creators making fun of the VFX and CGI, citing the film's $200 million budget. Axl's face soon became an exploitable image macro as it spread across social media via memes.

Origin

The Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder was released in theaters on June 23rd, 2022.^[1] The film was the 29th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and was directed by Taika Waititi.^[1]

On July 8th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user kamalakhanstan tweeted a screencap taken from the film during a scene where Heimdall's son Axl is telepathically brought into the room and is talking to Thor. Kamalakhanstan captioned it, "I try to defend this movie but this was fucking terrible," and over the course of five days, the tweet received roughly 27,300 likes (shown below).

Spread

As kamalakhanstan's tweet^[9] went viral, other Twitter users started to react to the screencap. For instance, on July 9th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user ybtoren tweeted the same screencap, captioning it, "this is from a $200 million dollar movie." Over the course of four days, the tweet received roughly 188,100 likes (shown below, left). Then, Twitter^[3] user vangard128 posted a reply on July 9th, attaching a screencap from Fellowship of the Ring captioning it, "This film won an academy award for best VFX," and earned roughly 4,600 likes in four days (shown below, right).

Later on July 9th, the screencap of Axl's apparition was shared to Reddit's /r/moviecirclejerk^[4] subreddit by Redditor LinguaEggers who received over 360 upvotes in four days.

On July 10th, 2022, an anonymous 4channer posted a full screencap of the scene to the /co/^[5] imageboard (shown below), simply captioning it, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." Later on July 10th, 2022, another 4channer reposted Twitter user ybtoren's tweet^[2] to /tv/^[6] with a similar caption.

Later on July 10th, Twitter^[7] user cleoofffilm tweeted the screencap shown above with the caption, "i never actually saw the full shot and it’s even funnier than I imagined 😭." The tweet received roughly 48,600 likes in three days (shown below, left). Many memes surfaced about Axl's apparition going into the month of July. For instance, on July 11th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user PatriotsGun7798 referenced the "Uncle Terry" meme in a tweet that received roughly 86,900 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Developments

Disney+ Patched Version

On September 7th, 2022, Twitter^[10] user comicxbook revealed in a tweet that Disney+ patched and updated Axl's Apparition in an attempt to quell the backlash, however, comicxbook reiterated that the patched version looked even worse in comparison. Over the course of one day, the tweet received roughly 109,100 likes (shown below).

Additionally, on September 7th, 2022, Twitter user comicxbook tweeted a video of the updated scene in a reply to his own tweet, earning roughly 399,100 views and 6,900 likes in one day (shown below).

Multiple reactions surfaced based on the update. For instance, on September 7th, 2022, Twitter^[11] user hashira95 edited in Matt Mii as the "updated" apparition, earning roughly 9,500 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References