One of the pieces of Avengers: Age of Ultron that struck a chord with audiences wasn’t the bombastic climactic battle, an unexpected death, or new character introduction, it was a seemingly small moment where the team sits around Avengers Tower and plays a rousing game of "Who can lift Thor’s Hammer?" It was fun to see who wasn’t worthy to wield Mjolnir, and who almost was, but some enterprising, and technically advanced pranksters, took this scenario to the streets. Check out the footage of what went down.
This video comes from YouTube user Allan Pan, on his channel Sufficiently Advanced, and not only is it a pretty damn entertaining prank to play on unsuspecting passersby, it’s an ingenious contraption that he’s created as well. And it does deliver what the title promises, a "Real Mjolnir."
As you can see in the video, Pan built his very own version of Thor’s trademark mystical hammer that he uses to clobber everything from Ice Giants to Chitauri warriors. According to the rules of the Marvel universe, only someone who is worthy can wield this handy little weapon, but in the real world, some other tricks are necessary.
Using an electromagnet and fingerprint scanner set to recognize his own print, Pan crafted his own Mjolnir, and set about attaching it to random metal objects, like a manhole over or sheet of metal covering road construction, and filmed people looking silly as they battle with the forces of physics. And it’s all rather entertaining. He even finds a dude who looks a little bit like Thor to take the challenge, to no avail—we should have known, Thor doesn’t wear flip flops.
This is a clever, crafty prank, and if we’re being honest, it actually seems more inline with Loki and the way he usually operates rather than his beefy sibling. Then again, we’re willing to let such quibbles slide in the name of entertainment.
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, none of the titular team is able to even budge Mjolnir—Black Widow doesn’t even try, which is probably the right call—no one, that is, except the Star Spangled Avenger himself, Captain America. While he cant’ lift it, he does at least shift it a few scant centimeters, which Thor appears to find entirely disconcerting, though no one else seems to pay it much mind. Thank god for alcohol.
As we learn later on in the film, however, there is at least one being in the universe who is up to the task of wielding the legendary hammer: new kid on the block the Vision. That has to be a nice feeling. And it must be pretty nice to have the skillset that allows you to build an electromagnet just for the hell of it.
