‘Thor’ Auto Captions Don’t Tell the Whole Story

By: David Titmus
Image from 'Thor: Love and Thunder
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The new trailer for Marvel’s upcoming movie “Thor: Love and Thunder” dropped earlier this week and garnered millions of views in its first few days.

The movie is the fourth installment of the popular comics Avenger and Asgardian god of thunder (Chris Hemsworth) whose enchanted hammer can be wielded only by those deemed worthy. The trailer’s untrained automatic captions, however, were anything but.

Taika Waititi, the movie’s Oscar-winning writer and director, took to social media to call out the auto-caption fails.

“Lol if the robots are planning to take over the world they’re going to need to learn different accents,” Waititi tweeted. “Nice one, @Twitter technology!”

Image from 'Thor: Love and Thunder" showing the movie’s villain – Gorr (played by Christian Bale) - saying “All gods must die” but wrongly captioned as “Oh gosh, well die.”

The image he shared shows the movie’s villain – Gorr (played by Christian Bale) – saying “All gods must die” but wrongly captioned as “Oh gosh, well die.”

Another still shows Thor getting back into shape with the captions noting that “He went from dad bought to Goddard” rather than going from “dad bod” to “god bod.”

A still from the movie "Thor: Love and Thunder" shows Thor getting back into shape and the captions note “He went from dad bought to Goddard” rather than going from “dad bod” to “god bod.”

And here are a few others….

Image from 'Thor: Love and Thunder" showing Thor and Valkyrie talking with the caption 'from my sensing feelings.' Image from 'Thor: Love and Thunder" showing a close up of Thor's face with the caption "could not transcribe the audio."

Though caption fails like these, at times, can be humorous, they nonetheless spotlight the frustrations that those in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community face every day with poor quality captions.

Whether it be captions for a TV show, a classroom lecture, or the latest superhero movie trailer – it’s all about accessibility, and expanding that access to everyone. We understand there are people on the other end depending on accuracy to meet their accessibility needs. As a result, we do not leave your content to chance and thoroughly test every solution to ensure the best outcomes.

Waititi further tweeted that, based on the captions, that “this movie is going to be a wild ride [for viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing],” and shared a screenshot of dialogue written as “sure we help them and eventually grape.”

Image from 'Thor: Love and Thunder" showing Jane Foster and Valkyrie talking with the captions '“sure we help them and eventually grape.'