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In Thor - The Dark World we see Thor's hand cut off by

Loki.

There is a tiny bit of blood, but the stump on his arm doesn't really seem to bleed. Is this some trait of Asgardians? Or just the directors keeping the movie a bit less graphic?

I'm assuming it's not because (big spoiler)

the whole cutting off the hand thing was an illusion by Loki, because he still would need it to look real to convince Malekith.

Image: warning - graphic

Thor's cut off arm/stump.

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Short (and meta) answer - and this is the same answer as for some similar questions on movie gore - the MPAA rating system is whacked.

Visible gore, i.e. blood, tends to get an R rating, which cuts down on the allowed audience. There could be whole articles written on the nonsensical nature of the MPAA's rules for assigning various ratings, and what producers will do to maximize viewership. What it boils down to is the fact that in order to get as many butts in seats as possible, production companies will edit movies to skirt just within that PG-13 rating.

So you won't see blood spatter in a PG-13 movie, or female nipples, or really creative swearing. But you will see everything else they can get away with. Which, in the case of Thor 2, includes a cut-of-meat view of the bones of his wrist stump.

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    Normally, a better case needs to be made that this has nothing to do with the story's own in-universe rules. But in this case I think we can dispense with all that... you're undoubtedly correct. Thanks alot, MPAA.
    – John O
    Dec 24, 2013 at 5:02
  • The film "This Film is Not Yet Rated" goes into the topic of the MPAA in depth. For those interested.
    – DampeS8N
    Dec 24, 2013 at 15:05
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    Oh, truly creative swearing will be seen
    – Izkata
    Jun 10, 2014 at 23:56
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Also, you can see the arm bones in the wrist, and they appear to be glowing orangish-yellow, maybe from heat? So I just assumed that Loki's blade had some sort of magical aspect to it. If it was a super-heated blade, it would have cauterized the vessels and arteries

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  • Looks that way to me as well.
    – LogicDictates
    Jun 28, 2021 at 20:34

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