Thor: Ragnarok was a breath of fresh air for both the title character and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. The studio’s output was always heavily laced with laughs, but in the hands of director Taika Waititi, Thor’s third solo outing became the closest thing the MCU has ever made to an all-out comedy.
Fans lapped it up, with the buddy movie dynamic between Thor and Bruce Banner carrying the pic, along with the introduction of several scene-stealing supporting characters including Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, Waititi’s Korg and Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster. Even Idris Elba, who had been vocally critical of his time working for Marvel in the past, praised the experience he had on Ragnarok.
From the sounds of things, the entire cast and crew of the movie had an absolute blast making it, and you can clearly see that enthusiasm reflected in the final product. However, star Chris Hemsworth revealed in a recent interview that Mark Ruffalo raised some concerns about the new direction they were taking their characters given the heavy amount of improvisation on set.
“I remember Mark Ruffalo looking at me and saying, ‘Are we wrecking this movie? Are we destroying these characters?’. Tessa was like, ‘What am I a part of? What am I doing?’.”
Obviously, Ruffalo needn’t have worried in the slightest, as Thor: Ragnarok turned out to be one of the best installments in the MCU to date. It was a bold decision to hire a filmmaker like Taika Waititi, put him in charge of a $200m intergalactic blockbuster and give him a huge amount of creative freedom, but the decision paid off in spades and now the in-development Thor: Love and Thunder is rightly regarded as one of the most highly-anticipated projects on Marvel’s upcoming slate.