‘ Thor’ is roaring like thunder
Director Q&A, hair stylin’, boffo box office.
Spoiler alert: The following discusses plot points for Thor: Ragnarok, so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
Did Thor: Ragnarok leave you wondering where those crazy cameos come from? We’ve got the answers straight from director Taika Waititi on the latest
Thor adventure (in theaters now), starring Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett and Tom Hiddleston.
Q: Let’s talk about that post-credits scene.
A: I don’t know anything about Infinity War (the new Avengers movie out May 4).
Q: That’s not even what I was going to start with! OK, we’ll start elsewhere: How much convincing did it take to get Matt Damon to cameo for the theater scene on Asgard?
A: None at all! About 30 seconds on the phone. Chris (Hemsworth) called him and he goes, “We want to do this thing, come and do it!” They’re good friends. I’d met him a couple of times, and then we sort of jumped on the phone with him. It was like three hours; it was really quick. That was so much fun. It made me so much more satisfied with that scene as well.
Q: What about Luke Hemsworth’s cameo as Thor in the same scene? I did a double-take.
A: We were talking and I was like, “Hey, man, you’ve got to get Luke in there somewhere.” Because Liam (Chris Hemsworth’s other brother) wasn’t available. That scene hadn’t been written yet. It made perfect sense.
Q: OK, so the post-credits scene: Is that officially Thanos’ ship?
A: Yep.
Q: Anything else you can tell me about it?
A: Nope. (Marvel is) so secretive! None of the directors are allowed to tell each other anything. No one reads each other’s scripts. I have no idea what
Black Panther’s (in theaters Feb. 16) about. I’m serious. I’ve never seen it.
Q: Did Marvel give you free rein on Ragnarok?
A: When I first met them, one of the things they said to me was, “If you come in here trying to reinvent everything or assuming that a Hollywood studio is the enemy before you’ve even started, then you’re in the wrong place. It is a collabo- ration. We want to make Marvel films, but we’d also like to make a Taika film.” So I had to keep reminding myself of that. Whenever I felt challenged, which was not often at all, I had to remind myself, “I’m helping these guys make a movie about source material that isn’t mine.”
It was a good lesson for me coming from the indie world, where being an auteur is supposed to be this cool thing.
Your vision. Your voice. If I hear the word “visionary” attached to a director’s name again, I swear, it drives me crazy. Because it’s all BS. Any film is a team effort.
Q: So you feel like the final film is as “you” as films like Boy or Hunt for the Wilder people?
A: This film is as Taika as any of my films. It just happens to be a giant superhero movie. I look at the film and I’m like, “I’m so surprised they let me do this stuff.” Every week I had a new triumph which was also a shock to me. Like, “Are they even watching the film? They let me put that joke in there?”
Q: What’s an example of one of your biggest triumphs?
A: All of Korg (played by Waititi). All of that character. He has no business being in there. He’s so irreverent. There’s a huge amount of irreverence in this film; if you know my stuff, it’s all I do.