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Zeus' thunderbolt is, to paraphrase Star Wars, an inelegant weapon from a less... civilised age. It was given to him by the Cyclopes, with whose help he banished the rest of the Titans to Tartarus, and the Thunderbolt became the symbol of Zeus' authority and power. The thunderbolt is so closely associated with Zeus that it can be used to identify him on pottery (much like Hermes' winged helmet.)
The myth does not really state how it was that Zeus took fire from humanity, but logically and thematically, the thunderbolt makes sense: It is the symbol of his power, which he is exercising, and also is being used to defeat a titan (or at least one of their descendants).
Plus it gives me the chance to do some fun special effects. This isn't as frivolous as it sounds - Greek myth, especially oral myth, really was mass entertainment, probably told by bards. They would, we hypothesize, make their poems up from bits of stock phrase, and in a sort of natural selection, the most popular renditions of myth were perpetuated and eventually recorded.