Call it the Bromancing of the Stone.
Like a rock, there’s a special, unshakable kinda kinship between Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth.
Ahead of the fourth Thor installation, the duo can hardly keep from gushing about one another.
How on Earth (and Asgard) did Waititi take a guy who looks like he’s carved from stone and turn him into a squishy, lovable enormous teddy bear of a God of Thunder?
Is anyone not excited about the lead-up to Thor: Love and Thunder?
The storylines run rampant — from how Waititi rescued the franchise and Hemsworth after the dreadful Thor: Dark World and turned the main man, er god, into something much more than meets the eye.
And in turn, Hemsworth gave Waititi so much inspiration and friendship.
Is it any wonder that Waititi decided to play Korg, who is made of different muscles than Thor’s, and that the two are basically buddy-copping their way through a fourth film?
Also consider the mostly well-known fact of that there is a fourth film.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man didn’t get a part four. There aren’t four Captain America films.
There are a lot of Hulk movies by different actors but no glory of four for Mark Ruffalo’s turn.
Umm, have you seen how many interviews the two have shown up to together?
And of course there is talk of more Tom Holland turning up as Spider-Man, but for now, nobody else has four except Thor.
[Chanting intensifies: More Thor! More Thor! More Thor!]
So, we’re …
just …
gonna leave a lot of this …
… here. Enjoy!
Love and Fun-der
In one recent interview, Hemsworth made it clear he’ll keep showing up to play Thor until it’s clear the character isn’t for him anymore.
So long as Waititi is still there with more Thor in store.
“As long as I keep getting to work with Taika, if he keeps showing up, I’ll keep showing up,” Hemsworth said in an interview with Studio 10 alongside the (basically) legendary director, pointing toward him, “as long as you keep showing up, ’cause I’m not showing up without you.”
Right in stride, Waititi boomeranged the bromance back at Hemsworth.
“If you show up, I’ll show up,” Waititi said, pointing back to him.
One more bounce back:
“If I turn up to Thor Five and you’re not there, I will be pissed,” Hemsworth laughed.
The lovefest continued, with Hemsworth being sure to note that it took a lot of invested hours and revisiting what didn’t work before, and what fans wanted when they went into Ragnarok (and beyond).
“Working with Taika on Ragnarok we got to recreate the space and destroy what was there and start again, in a great way,” Hemsworth said in promotional interview shared by Australian outlet abc.net.au.
“It was nothing against what was done before, it was just, I think, that the fans insisted that we did something different.
“We did that, and the fans loved it, and then we had to do it again.”
Who wants more Thor?
More meaning more in many ways.
Just consider, Hemsworth going bare ass is a big deal in Thor, but it’s been played up incredibly playfully by the pair, making it seem as if it was the most natural thing in the universe to do because of the comfort level everyone has with both director and actor.
Not that anyone is complaining, as Waititi told Yahoo! Lifestyle.
“Everyone from the production office and accounting office happened to turn up and just need to talk to the crew members about getting their invoices and time cards [that day],” he joked.
“I mean, personally, he’s worked so hard on all of this [his body], it would be weird not to show it, don’t you think?”
Showing how relatable Waititi has made Hemsworth, and to the high regard their colleagues (and the world) revere them, they’re about the only two male actors who could joke about being naked on set without creepy machismo and cringe creeping in.
First, when you see what Natalie Portman says about Hemsworth, how can you not want to love the guy?
“[Chris] came with so much talent and confidence and presence, even before he was as known as he is today,” she told Screen Rant. “He was so incredible immediately. And then just to see 10 years later that he’s had so much success and so much popularity, and he’s still such a genuinely kind, amazing, hardworking, and obviously incredibly talented person? It’s really a beautiful, beautiful thing to experience.”
“He does a great thing where he’s also naked from the waist down. That made me feel at ease,” Chris joked.
Taika then quipped, “On set, it’s an agreement we have. I was naked too.”
But, pure, totally naked? No, no.
“A sock. Just a sock.” Hemsworth joked.
Disarming an already disarming joke, Waititi replied, in the Yahoo! interview: “He wears a sock on one ear. That’s his thing. He thinks it’s a distraction.”
How the heck did Waititi transform Hemsworth though?
If you’re familiar with his other work, the New Zealand-born director finds the heart, the humanity and soul in his characters — even when they’re undead (see: What We Do In the Shadows).
“He brought out the immature, young, adolescent quality that I embody. And so does Thor now, which he didn’t in the original films, which was exciting and new and fresh,” Hemsworth said in a Vital Thrills article. “And not getting bogged down in the serious sort of nature that we can when making films. Personally, with these kind of films, it’s got to be fun, and that’s what we’ve done. That’s what I’ve related to. That’s what Taika’s kind of insisted upon, and it’s been fun.”
Waititi was determined to make Thor resemble Hemsworth, and not the other way around.
“When you meet Chris, he’s very hard to figure out how to make him relatable. And that was the big challenge, you know, he’s … [laughs] Chris is like … You know, I’ve become friends with Chris, and I think just his personality and his energy and who he is, is the kind of person that I’d want to be on an adventure with,” he said in the same interview.
“And yeah, [he’s] someone who, yeah, you can trust will be there, you know, to kind of look after you. Like a real-life hero. And so yeah, I just wanted to tap into those qualities that he’s got and sort of make Thor more Chris, really.”
Would The Boys be such a smash hit right now if it weren’t for Ragnarok and subsequently the whole Big Thorbowski phase we saw in Avengers appearances?
What about Peacemaker? That trope gained new legs for sure once Thor was in Waititi’s hands.
Once the stellar director met with Hemsworth and got to know him better, Waititi realized that there were worlds beneath the surface to play with and bring about a more well-rounded character, and one that people could embrace even further (Thor’s delight at coffee and smashing his cup to ask for “another” is still one of the funniest, most relatable scenes in his early showings as the superhero).
Thor 7: Thunder at 70
Even now, the two are reminiscing about what they’ve done, and what they could still do, hinting at a fifth Thor movie with both saying they need the other involved to get involved again.
Plus, Waititi wants to make a Thor when they’re both 70, because, why not?
Waititi is ready for a lifetime of more, noting that in the comics, Thor goes on and on, as he explained to ScreenRant.
“There’s all these different versions of Thor in the comics as well. There’s the sort of 70-year-old Thor, so [Chris] get comfy. This is the rest of your life.”
MCU head honcho Kevin Feig sees the director-actor collaboration that has benefited so much beyond just the two of them, including costars and other MCU projects, so clearly he is on board with more Thor, too.
“Well, there are these things called comic books that have a lot of stories in them — and that’s where all of our stories come from. And the question is, ‘Have you told all the great Thor stories from the comics in movies?’ The answer is no. There are lots of them.”
Marvel Studios president and MCU overseer Kevin Feige noticed that Hemsworth had a lighter side, but it didn’t always resonate and seem so obvious to everyone else. That’s where he opened up and listened to Waititi, and the new Thor has risen to the top of the most likeable and relatable MCU stars throughout anything he appeared in.
“There were moments, even going back to interviews between the two of them on our New Mexico set, where Chris was … I was like, ‘Is he trying to be funny? Or is it …? No, he is being funny. He’s, like, hilarious,’” Feige said in the Vital Thrills article. “And I saw a clip of [Age of] Ultron the other day, where he’s trying to make [Mark] Ruffalo feel better about smashing a bunch of people, and it’s so funny. And it’s like this expert timing. Taika was like, ‘What are you guys doing with him just, you know, holding a hammer up with lightning? Let’s do that and tap into everything Chris can do.’”
How to make a hunk huggable
Because of the kinship and camaraderie between the New Zealand-born Waititi and Australian native Hemsworth, it allowed a fourth Thor movie to be made, which is the most for any standalone MCU superhero.
We’ve been grateful to receive such insights into what will surely make the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder perhaps the most fun, most enjoyable, and even edging toward the most anticipated MCU movie in eons.
“So, I think the audience responds to that. And for so long, we said, ‘Well, he’s a Norse god. How do we make him relatable?’” Feige continued. “And spent so much time, I think, making sure that the audience connected with him, that they are so with him now that yes, we could go to a part four.”
As we know by now, Hemsworth will be joined by some new costars that range from a tad silly to quite scary in Russell Crowe’s Zeus and Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher, respectively, so while things will feature some zany antics and banter, there’s sure to be some real stakes and consequences as well.
Though it seems the Guardians of the Galaxy crew won’t be too prominent in the film (still holding out a little hope there), there’s a reason why fans have clamored for Thor to team up with them and vice versa because the interplay they showed in the Avengers films was extremely relatable, all thanks to Waititi’s direction and for sure Hemsworth’s true, genuine character and his willingness to lean in to those traits.
If not for the Waititi-Hemsworth bond, the possibility for the bromance with Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill/Star-Lord and the affectionate bond with the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy may not have ever happened.
Get James Gunn and Waititi in a room together, let them iron (man) out the long and eagerly awaited Asgardians of the Galaxy and let’s do this.