For fans of Taika Waititi’s take on Thor in Thor: Ragnarok, the premiere of the writer-director’s latest MCU go-round, Thor: Love And Thunder, has been a long time coming. But it seems there may be yet more to come. At the Hollywood premiere on Thursday, its star, Chris Hemsworth said he hopes to continue the role for more films, especially if he can carry on working with Waititi.
“I’ll do it until someone says get off the stage. I love it,” he told Deadline.
Thor is the only MCU character to have four films focused on him. However, executive producer Brian Chapek said somewhat cryptically, “Well I would say he’s the only person so far to get four movies. That’s not necessarily a hint, but it’s not a restriction either.”
Hemsworth’s explanation for the fans’ continuing love for the character was, “There’s an adolescent quality to him, a sense of adventure. And a sort of fun immaturity.”
And, he added, it’s these alluring qualities that exist within Waititi too.
“[Working with Waititi] it’s something different each time, something fresh. And he’s a dear friend. He has the same sort of immature quality I was talking about. In the best way possible.”
For Natalie Portman, reprising her role as Jane Foster, she really appreciated Waititi’s reimagining of the character. In this latest installment Jane has become Thor, hammer and all, plus she’s 6ft tall and muscular.
“Taika imagined this change in Jane and it was a really great proposition that he had to join his wild ride,” Portman said. “It was amazing to get to be challenged with that because I don’t think there’s many people who would cast a 5ft 3 woman as a 6ft character, so it was great to be able to get to imagine how someone who’s that big walks through the world, certainly not the same as me, always looking up at people, who always feels like a kid in every situation.”
For Christian Bale though, his character’s look proved more than a little challenging. In fact, his villainous character Gorr the God Butcher’s long nail extensions almost incapacitated him.
“It rendered me completely incapable of everything. I was pathetic,” he said. “I found myself thinking things like, ‘I don’t think I can walk because I’ve got long nails.’ It affected my brain. I was like, ‘I can’t eat, I’ve got long nails.’ I was trying to type. I couldn’t do anything.”
Fans who saw the movie’s trailer have commented that Gorr looks like rocker Marilyn Manson. Pure coincidence though, because Bale said, “I hadn’t heard that. I was certainly influenced by the look of Nosferatu and I was influenced by another musician, Aphex Twin, and he’s got an incredible video called Come to Daddy, there’s a character in that that Taika and I both enjoyed and he was my reference, even though perhaps the children would have run to the exits screaming had we fully embraced that.”
