About

Captain America Lifting Mjölnir refers to a series of memes featuring scenes from the films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Avengers: Endgame in which the character Captain America attempts to lift Thor's hammer "Mjölnir," which has magical properties preventing others from lifting the hammer.

Origin

On October 28th, 2014, Marvel Studios released an extended trailer for the film Avengers: Age of Ultron.^[1] In the trailer, the various Avengers attempt to lift Thor's hammer. When the character Captain America (portrayed by Chris Evans) makes his attempt, Thor (portrayed by Chris Hemsworth) appears concerned that Captain America may lift the hammer. The clip received more than 5 million views in less than six years.

The following day, on October 29th, 2014, Tumblr ^[5] user sushigrade posted two images from the scene with the text, "Mjolnir bby no what are you doing" and "Oh crap it's moving what do I do I can't do that to Thor gotta pretend I can't move it." The post received more than 37,000 notes in less than six years (shown below). It is the earliest known usage of the scene in a meme.

Spread

Over the next few years, variations of the scene were meme'd in different contexts, primarily focusing on one's strength or power over another. In 2015, Imgflip^[2] user CastielsPizzaman posted a variation highlighting Thor's concerns. The post received more than 19,000 views as of February 2020 (shown below, left). The trend continued since then. On November 20th, 2017, for example, Redditor ^[3] GoodDayBoy shared a version in which the characters are labeled different video game consoles and computers. The post received more than 15,000 points (66% upvoted) and 430 comments in less than three years (shown below, right).

On February 9th, 2020, Redditor^[4] NOT-A-WISEMAN posted the image from Age of Ultron and compared it to a scene from Avengers: Endgame in which Captain America lifts the hammer. They labeled the two images "my friend when asked if he studied for the exam" and "my friend during the exam," respectively. The post received more than 26,000 points (90% upvoted) and 230 comments in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

Not available.

External References