In 2017, director Taika Waititi was commissioned by Marvel Studios to take over the “Thor” saga. He thus stages “Thor: Ragnarok”, considered by many to be the best opus of the trilogy. Did you know that the filmmaker had the idea of highlighting totally incongruous flashbacks?
Thor Ragnarok: three different films
In Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World, Thor Odinson is a very down-to-earth character, quite limited, and above all much too serious. Kenneth Branagh and Alan Taylor indeed wanted to treat the character as a sacred and brutal Norse God. But in 2017, when Taika Waititi took over the reins of the saga, he decides to take a totally different approach.
He chooses to present Thor Ragnarok with lots of humor and to make him a funny and quirky character. A bias that did not please everyone but which, however, is much more effective than in the first two films centered on the Asgardian God.
Still worn by Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Anthony Hopkins, Thor: Ragnarok introduces many other characters. Thus, spectators can find the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Hela (Cate Blanchett), or even The Grand Master (Jeff Goldblum). On the box office side, the film was a hit with over 853 million dollars in revenue (for a budget of 180 million).
Thor Ragnarok: totally crazy flashbacks
Thus, Taika Waititi, famous for his caustic humor, decided to tackle this new Thor through the prism of humor. A true comedy in power, the feature film can count on the comic talent of Chris Hemsworth. Indeed, the actor, accustomed to muscular roles, is in fact an excellent comic as Taika Waititi recalled when the film was released:
He is so good at it. But it is paradoxically under-exploited. He’s one of the funniest things in the movie.
It must be said that his hilarious performance in Ghostbusters confirms the filmmaker’s statement. Moreover, the latter, always in his desire to make his audience laugh, had totally crazy flashbacks in mind.
At the time of the release of the footage, Taika Waititi explained on the microphone of comic book that he would have liked to go even further in humor by proposing flashbacks that would have shown Thor, Loki, and the Valkyrie as children. An excellent idea that immediately brings to mind the anecdote of the snake between the two brothers.
I wanted to go back in time for a few sequences to show Thor Ragnarok as a child. He was a little big guy who moved around in an 1980s version of Asgard where everyone wore shoulder pads and mullets (laughs). We had thought of including that during the meeting between Thor and Valkyrie.
He would have said ‘Oh, but I know you!’, she would have answered ‘Yes, I remember you’ and then we would have gone back in time to show this chubby little man with a mule heckling with the other kids. And Loki would have been there, this little goth emo all alone in his corner. Sort of like Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter, you know?
Finally, the relationship between Thor Ragnarok and Loki is present on the screen. Taika Waititi refers to their shared past without ever directly staging it. Perhaps, in fact, this idea will be taken up in Thor: Love and Thunder expected on July 13.
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