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Modern blockbuster filmmaking has relied heavily on fan appeasement to keep franchise behemoths running smoothly. But Taika Waititi had no interest in that when making Thor: Love and Thunder. He approached film from the opposite direction. What actually makes fans angry?
“We wanted to show him in a way that most Thor fans, if you talk to them, don’t really want to see him,” Waititi says. “If you were to say to them, ‘Yeah, I’m going to make you fall in love with Thor,’ that’s probably something that Thor fans really don’t want to hear.”
Thor: Love and Thunder, released Thursday, is Marvel’s fourth Thor movie and Waititi’s second after his 2017 blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok. The film was a hit with fans and critics, reinventing Chris Hemsworth’s God of Thunder and introducing a looser, idiosyncratic vibe to Marvel’s most monolithic hero.
But if Ragnarok is Waititi’s version of a Marvel movie, Love and Thunder may very well be just Taika Waititi’s movie. Of the 29 films that have appeared in the Marvel cinematic universe to date, none may stand out as this filmmaker’s work.
“Love and Thunder” features things that would normally never make it into the MCU, like children and cancer. It is shabby, unruly, and surprisingly human in scale. Manly courage is almost a joke. Thor isn’t actually even Thor. His hammer, Mjolnir, turned Natalie Portman’s Jane into Thor. By the end of his relationship with Waititi, Thor’s biggest battle is convincing his child to wear proper shoes before leaving the house.
“For me, it’s good to give the fans something I don’t know if they want,” Waititi said in a recent interview via video conference from Los Angeles. “Especially with Ragnarok, when I signed a lot of fans were surprised by that. They were like, ‘Who is this guy?’ He’s going to take our precious Thor and ruin it. ”And I thought, “Yeah.” that’s right. That’s exactly my intention. And I’m going to improve it, you just don’t know it yet. ”
When Waititi was handed the reins for Ragnarok, the 46-year-old New Zealand director was a stranger to most Marvel fans and was the first indigenous director to direct a major superhero film. But there was. For Waititi, this was a huge leap in scale. After spending years drawing in his late 20s, he began producing comic independent films (The Boy, Hunt for the Wilder) with deadpan absurdism and freewheeling tonal shifts. People”).
But since Ragnorak, Waititi has emerged as a Hollywood dynamo, working both in front of and behind the camera with several major studio franchises and more outlandish projects. Jojo Rabbit, a children’s film about Nazi Germany in which Waititi plays the fictional Hitler, was nominated for six Academy Awards in 2020 (Waititi won for Best Original Screenplay). He has another film coming soon, “Next Goal Wins,” for Searchlight Pictures, as well as two Willy Wonka series for Netflix, the “Flash Gordon” series for Disney 20th Century Studios, and “Flash Gordon” for Apple TV+. We are planning a “Time Bandits” series. He plans to write a Star Wars movie soon.
Hollywood is eager for Mr. Waititi to dismantle it, and has promoted every intellectual property it can find in Mr. Waititi.
“I’m surprised that I never wanted to. I always wanted to build something small, just with friends,” says Waititi. “The idea of working with a studio didn’t appeal to me at all. Then I worked with Marvel and realized there was a way to work with a studio without the pain.”
“My job is to go in and have as many ideas as possible and not think too much about the outcome and just keep it in the Marvel world. It’s not my job to go see every movie,” Waititi said. added. Or read all the comic books. I’m sure that goes against what many people think filmmakers should do. ”
In last year’s “Free Guy,” the actor parodied the business-driven demand for sequels and once cringed at the thought of spending long hours in post-production at Marvel Studios in Burbank, Calif. For some, this is a somewhat ironic development. .
“It’s more about the idea of Burbank as a place,” Waititi clarifies. “If you close your eyes and ignore the fact that you’re in Burbank and you’re eating Burbank food for lunch, you’re fine going out there.”
But how far can Hollywood’s biggest franchise stand up to Waititi’s anarchic ethos? “Ragnarok” grossed $850 million worldwide, and “Love and Thunder” has similar expectations. His ability to connect with mass audiences is surpassed by few current filmmakers, despite his best efforts to subvert expectations. But films like Star Wars are particularly resistant to adjusting to a comedic tone. Waititi is keenly aware of this.
“My tone has to feel authentic,” he says of the “Star Wars” movie, which was first announced two years ago. “I don’t think my films are just comedies. I’ve never made over-the-top comedies. I’ve never made films that are just jokes. It’s always about things that resonate, or human issues. They’re all about family. I don’t think blood makes you family at all.
“A family is just a collection of people who are somehow drawn to each other,” Waititi added. She was raised by a Jewish mother, a mostly absent Maori father (they separated when Waititi was five), and a wide range of relatives. “My family is very big. There are thousands of people.”
Among them are Jemaine Clement (who worked with Waititi on “What We Do in the Shadows”) and Rhys Darby (who is currently teaming up with Waititi on the HBO Max series “Our Flag Means Death”). Contains collaborators. The other was Starlin Harjo, whom Waititi met years ago on the festival circuit, where the two bonded as Native artists with a similar sense of humour. Waititi helped Harjo launch the acclaimed FX series “Reservation Dogs,” about four Native American teenagers in Oklahoma.
“The way Taika directs, the way he does things, spontaneity is important,” says Harjo, whose second season of the series debuts next month. “It’s all about magic tricks. Having everything going at once is where his creativity comes from. He seems to operate at this level where he has to make everything come alive.”
The love in Love and Thunder, which Waititi co-wrote, applies most directly to the relationship between Thor and Jane, but Thor also includes a heartbreaking villain played by Christian Bale, a kidnapped child, and more. It also relates to other aspects of the sequel. Waititi, who has two daughters with film producer Chelsea Winstanley (he separated in 2018), relies on his children and others to design the monsters in his films. In the movie.
“It’s just nepotism,” Waititi said. “And why wouldn’t you? This is a movie about parenting and about putting others before yourself.”
The preponderance of children in Thor: Love and Thunder is also very much in line with Waititi’s other films. “Boy” is loosely based on his own childhood in the 1980s growing up in Waihau Bay. His first short story, the Oscar-nominated “Two Cars, One Night,” tells the story of a girl and a boy who become friends while waiting for their parents at the hospital. Parking outside the pub. The army of kids who save the day in “Love and Thunder” is just the latest uprising in Waititi’s ongoing war against adults. In the end, even Thor couldn’t compete with him.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
