THOR BECOMES FAN BOY
SUPERHEROES GATHER IN MARVEL’S THIRD AVENGERS FLICK
He may play the almighty God of Thunder, but Chris Hemsworth felt like a fan boy when he met the Guardians of the Galaxy on the set of Avengers: Infinity War.
The highly anticipated third Avengers film brings together Marvel’s entire cinematic universe, packing a 156-minute film with more than two dozen superheroes.
They’ll need all their combined powers to stop galactic villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) from collecting all five infinity stones and destroying the universe.
Thor first meets the ragtag team of Guardians when they pick him up in space.
“There is this interesting confusion and then fascination and heightened tension between all of them because no one knows who the other one is or what they are doing. That was so much fun to play, because a lot of us came into this film as big fans of each other’s franchises,” Hemsworth says.
“To stand there amongst the Guardians was a bit of fan boy moment for me. It was also kind of nerve-racking as I felt strangely uncomfortable and wondered how I fit into this puzzle.
“We were able to improvise a bit and play around with that. It brought out the unique qualities in all of our characters purely from just having someone different involved.
“Thor ends up going on a journey separately with Rocket and Groot and that became such a fun little dynamic as well.”
While there are plenty of lighter moments, this is not a comedic adventure like Thor:
Ragnarok was for Hemsworth. “(Directors) Anthony and Joe (Russo) said that the Thor: Ragnarok Thor probably won’t fit in this film,” he says.
“You can afford to take bigger risks and be that wacky and reinvent the entire world to support your version of the character if it’s your title film. But if you come into an ensemble, like Infinity War, you need to adjust and fit into the mould and the tone of that film. And this really is Thor at his best, as Joe and Anthony described it. This is the most heroic, most vengeful, passionate, driven, committed version of Thor that we’ve seen. So, it was fun to again explore something completely different.”
Thor lost his beloved and seemingly indestructible hammer, Mjölnir, in Ragnarok.
So how will he help the Avengers to battle Thanos without it?
“We have kind of stripped him back to a point where he no longer has his weapon of choice or the thing that he believes represented his power and defined him. Everything and everyone important in his life has been destroyed. So he has quite a fatalistic attitude and gives it all he’s got,” Hemsworth says.
“That seems wildly suicidal, but he doesn’t see any other option. So that brings out something different in him again.”
Hemsworth says Thanos is more than your typical Marvel villain. If he gets a hold of all five infinity stones then he will be difficult to stop, even with the combined forces of the Avengers, Guardians and Doctor Strange.
“What I haven’t seen before is this force and this power by one single individual. And it’s not only Thanos’ intellect that manages to navigate his way through this and outsmart us, but just his sheer force and strength is something that none of the Avengers or anyone in the MCU has ever really encountered before,” he says.
“Even just reading the script, I was kind of racing to the end to work out how the hell we were going to beat this guy.”