Taiki Waititi divided opinions with his very jokey Thor: Love and Thunder, and recently Marvel’s Director of Visual Development, Andy Park, has been discussing some of the extreme ideas that the director had put forward that were ultimately pulled back a little. The latest outing for Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder proved to be a little disappointing for Marvel Studios, with critics mauling its disjointed feel and tone, audiences not quite on board and the box office failing to hit the highs of other Marvel movies. It seems that as wild as Thor: Love and Thunder was, there was scope for it to have been even wilder.
Many Marvel fans had high hopes for the pairing of Hemsworth and director Waititi after Thor: Ragnarok delivered one of the best movies in the entire MCU franchise back in 2017. However, their second run at the character fell a little flat, seeming like a jumble of ideas and scenes rather than a fully planned-out story. The reason for this seemed to become apparent when it was revealed that over four hours of footage was shot for the two-hour movie, with many of the scenes being shot in multiple ways, all leading to different plot outcomes. In a new interview with SyFy, Andy Park revealed that Waititi was always trying to push things to extremes. He said:
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“It was really fun to get back into the Thor world with Taika because I know when I work with him, I’m in for a ride. He’s so much fun. He’s constantly joking around and he’s really just entertaining [Laughs]. But his ideas are very extreme and out there. He’s not scared to try something. There might be times when we’re scared [and say] ‘Ahhh, I don’t know…that might be a little too far design-wise.’ So he’ll like push us to be like, ‘Hey, let’s go there.’ Whether that becomes the design or we pivot back a little bit, we wouldn’t have found this pivot without going to the extreme. That’s Taika pretty much in a nutshell.”
Taiki Waititi May Not Return for Thor 5
Thor: Love and Thunder ended with the promise that Thor will return. While this means that there are more adventures guaranteed for Chris Hemsworth’s mighty hero, it may not mean that Taika Waititi will be back in the director’s chair. Although there had been very little mentioned about how and when Thor will return, rumors have already been circulating that Waititi has decided not to return to the franchise following the lukewarm reviews of Thor: Love and Thunder.
However, if that was the case, Waititi is certainly not going to be short of work with the writer/director now heading into the Star Wars franchise. Although there has been little detail revealed about his upcoming foray into the galaxy far, far away, it seems like he will be one of the big names heading up the future of the Star Wars franchise’s big screen presence.
