Chris Hemsworth laments becoming “a parody of myself” on Thor: Love And Thunder
Chris Hemsworth feels like he didn't "stick the landing" on the fourth Thor solo film
Aux News Thor
Thor: Love And Thunder just wasn’t the home run that Thor: Ragnarok was, and Chris Hemsworth knows it. In fact, he sounds a little embarrassed by how his fourth solo outing as a Marvel hero turned out. “I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself,” he says in a new profile for Vanity Fair. “I didn’t stick the landing.”
Love And Thunder was a collaboration with director Taika Waititi, who nurtured the improv and wackiness on Ragnarok. That movie was a departure from the more serious, Shakespearean tone established by Kenneth Branagh in 2011’s Thor. It also established more of an identity for the character, whom Hemsworth felt didn’t have his own “thing” amongst the Avengers. “Sometimes I felt like a security guard for the team,” he reflects in Vanity Fair. “I would read everyone else’s lines, and go, Oh, they got way cooler stuff. They’re having more fun. What’s my character doing? It was always about, ‘You’ve got the wig on. You’ve got the muscles. You’ve got the costume. Where’s the lighting?’ Yeah, I’m part of this big thing, but I’m probably pretty replaceable.”
Surely his Avengers mates would disagree—Robert Downey Jr., for one, has nothing but praise for his pal in the profile—but Waititi’s entry to the Marvel Cinematic Universe obviously changed things for Thor. It’s clear to anyone who saw Ragnarok that the comedic take on the character revitalized Hemsworth’s passion, powering him through Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. But Love And Thunder was perhaps an overcorrection. Hemsworth previously revealed that even his kids’ friends thought there was “too much humor.” Speaking with GQ, the actor admitted. “I think we just had too much fun. It just became too silly.”
Now, Hemsworth tells VF that he’d like to do a broader range of projects with more interesting directors (next he’s in George Miller’s Furiosa), less beefy action star roles and more serious dramas or romantic comedies. However, Marvel fans will be happy to hear that he feels he owes the audience at least one more Thor after the misstep of Love And Thunder. That said, whatever they do with the character next will have to be another reinvention. “I think it would have to be a drastically different version in tone, everything,” Hemsworth previously said of returning, “just for my own sanity….”
60 Comments
Love & Thunder’s mess is more on Taika’s shoulders. He clearly wasn’t interested in doing the film and should have said no.
Yeah, it’s a director’s job to impose discipline on the actors, and Taika obviously had no interest in doing so.
To be fair, making that movie was his ticket to a threesome with Tessa Thompson.
Worth it.
I REGRET NOTHING!!!
I don’t think it necessarily seemed he wasn’t interested in the film…I think it was DEFINITELY clear that Waititi was more interested in just having fun and fucking around and thinking more professionally and creatively about the movie. There are bright spots to it. I actually argue that the third act was one of the better third acts in all of the MCU, but for the most part it’s missed opportunities substituted by “let’s just be wacky on set and see what happens.”
Honestly never felt a comic book movie have so much contempt for itself and its audience.
yep, Hemsworth’s a gentleman, taking the blame. Taika doesn’t have the respect/love for the comicbook culture that others do
Thor is perfect when he is the blend of “Awww, sweet Rabbit” AND “BRING ME THANOS!!!!!!”
Just go back to that and you’ll be fine. My worry is that by casting Roy Fucking Kent as Hercules, they are just going to lean into the “Der, stupid musclehead. Der…”
What was fresh for Ragnarok was no longer fresh for Love and Thunder. They leaned way too hard into a joke that was played out.
IMO it’s not about it feeling fresh or not, Love and Thunder is just a poorly written and directed movie that leaned into the worst aspects of Ragnarok. It had interesting subplots with Jane’s battle with cancer and Gorr’s anger at the gods but both took a backseat to unnecessary and, frankly, annoying humor like the god-awful goats. Some humor would have still been fine and welcome but he needed to give the story more depth and balance.
THIS. Part of the problem is that the decision was made to include Norse mythology, broadly, but then the series as a whole is all over the place as to what it takes seriously/reverently and what is played as a joke. So we’ve got some Heimdall and some Odinsleep and some Frost Giants and other realms in column A… and then we’ve got goat-based bullshit and bits in column B. There are plenty of things in the mythos that would be objectively funny and/or a source for comic relief when used in balance, but Love & Thunder didn’t do balance. At all. How much of that to keep and how much to cut isn’t a Hemsworth call.
This 100%.
I think part of the problem was that Love and Thunder decided to laugh at the mythic stuff. I’m not saying everything needs to be super serious, but let the awe-inspiring stuff be incredible without yet another goof.
There was so much half-assedness in the movie, even though I ultimately enjoyed it, there were so many changes that they tried to make at the last minute and the “fix it in post” mentality is on clear display.
even as a fan of him in the role…buddy you did 4 mainline movies and 4 avengers movies. you don’t owe us anything. in fact, please make extraction 3 instead.
Please, i wish he would. I could watch more extractions for years to come
those movies are bananas, but in a decent way.
Beating up kids is like the least offensive thing an ex-SASR trooper has done.
I liked how the beginning of the second one was basically: “Wait, didn’t I die at the end of the last movie?”“Don’t think too hard about it. Here is your next mission!”
it’s why it’s better than the first one. the first one was still trying to be a real movie, this one has fire punches.
the second one in particular is the closest a netflix movie has gotten to a proper junky canon/carolco action movie. compare it to something like red notice or the gray man and it’s night and day.
Love & Thunder is such a massive piece of shit that it broke the Marvel spell for me. I’d been a huge MCU fan since the beginning, but that movie was so fucking stupid, so insulting to its audience, and just so lazy and cheap-looking that it was like a bucket of ice water in the face. I was angry I’d paid money to see it.
Couldn’t disagree more. Movie looked fantastic outside of one weird FX shot that was taken out of context online ad nauseam. My partner and I loved it. The moon battle is gorgeous and Christian Bale is haunting in every scene. Hemsworth finally looks loose and like he’s having fun and for me it was all a huge success.
Bale was fine. His sequences were the best parts of the movie by far
Bale was haunting… he was just a white human, go look at Gorr the God Butcher, and tell me that if it wasn’t portrayed correctly that he would be scarry indeed instead of tame…
Watching Love & Thunder, along with Dr. Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 in the same year killed my remaining interest in the MCU. I foolishly decided to give Guardians 3 a go, but walked out.
I’m definitely over it.
I watched Love and Thunder and GOTG3 (which was kinda ok if inessential) but couldn’t finish Wakanda Forever or Dr. Strange 2. Totally lost interest in the characters, everything. It felt weird actually lol
I thought GoTG 3 was the only post End Game Marvel movie worth watching. Everything else has been a slog, and I was all in on the MCU up until Endgame
well you are right, Marvel blew through the universe to fast and blew the whole wad on Endgame, which should be the end of the MCU as we know it and do a soft reboot, which i hope D&W does, kill the MCU so it can continue on truer to the source material…
I wasn’t a fan of the first two Guardians, so “more of the same, but with animal cruelty!” wasn’t really my bag.Snark aside, I don’t begrudge anyone liking that movie. On paper, I should love the Guardians movies: tongue-in-cheek space adventure with a fun, 1970s soundtrack should be right up my alley. But, for whatever reason, they never worked for me.
But I agree with your larger point. Post-endgame has been a shitshow.
Reading the full passage in the piece, it does seem like Hemsworth is mostly referring to the first two Avengers movies, which I was glad to see. I thought he was really the anchor of Infinity War — he got to play all the disparate aspects of the character (the humor, the nobility, the low-grade pettiness, the sense, even in comparison to the other Avengers, that Thor is basically a god). His scene with Rocket where he kind of breaks down talking about his life is a really magnificent acting showcase. And he had the chance to do some great stuff in Endgame, weaving in humor amidst the PTSD of someone trying to grapple with the first real (and cataclysmic) failure of his life.
Love and Thunder is actually damn good movie if you aren’t huffing rotten tomatoes and troll posts online. Shame to see him say this as his performance is hilarious, charming, and darling and I loved him in this movie.
I disagree but, hey, that is why we are all different
That movie was ass and I’m glad everyone but psycho Marvel fans are saying this. It was shit.
I am not sure many “psycho” Marvel fans are left. I keep hoping for a return to the good old days but it seems like that ain’t going to happen
It’s funny that Marvels broke them when Thor 4 was way worse! Marvels was just okay.
People are listing MCU movies they disliked more than Thor, and it’s like, “Why did you watch so many of these fucking things that you didn’t enjoy?”
Can’t speak for others but, in my honest opinion as a full on comic nerd, The MCU produced 20 out of 22 really fun movies between Iron Man and Endgame. I enjoyed that ride and post Endgame didn’t want to see it end. So I gave them a a shot multiple times
i mean, you don’t know if you dislike something until after you’ve experienced it haha.
Even if that were true, how many times does someone have to pound their head into a brick wall before confirming they dislike it?
Think of how much better it would have been if Thor and Jane had even a tiny little smidgen of chemistry together.
I barely remember Love & Thunder, just like I barely remember nearly any post Endgame MCU release, except for Shang-Chi and Multiverse of Madness (especially that beautiful, wonderful moment where what I thought was going to be the most forced bit of blatant fan service ever turned into one of the best moments in the whole the fucking franchise…Multiverse of Madness does not deserve the hate it gets, at all…)I can’t remember thinking Love & Thunder was bad, just that it was enormously average, full of unbelievably annoying attempts at humour, some fucking horrendous VFX, Chris Hemsworth being so big I thought he looked ill and, as the the film was finally finishing, me getting up to leave but then just standing there, singing along to Rainbow in the Dark, thoroughly embarrassing the missus.Anyway, I hope Hemsworth gets another crack at Thor. I remember watching Ragnarok for the first time and wishing it was all set in Muspelheim, Thor just fighting his way through demons and fire giants to a heavy metal soundtrack for 90 minutes, on some Viking/Doom Slayer shit…
I get the L&T hate, I just don’t buy into it myself. It went out there much more than Dark World did, and it had some emotional beats land (not that DW didn’t; they got Frigga’s death and the fallout for that right even if the rest of the movie was mid). The gags were more out there and as such much more polarizing (looking at you, goats), but Jane’s cancer and, somehow, Stormbreaker being jealous of Mjolnir had actual, emotional payoffs.Ragnarok was lightning in a bottle, and I’m fine with the pun in that phrase. Replicating it for a second time was a hard ask but worth trying. And I feel like it’s still a significantly better effort than Dark World. But yeah, we all agree it isn’t Ragnarok.
It’s because on the internet, everything has to be either the best or worst thing ever.Like yeah, it’s hardly a high point for the franchise, but idk how it can be called outright bad when there’s stuff like Transformers, Shark Tale and The Room out there. People just have no perspective.
Nobody with a strong opinion of the MCU has ever seen another movie. Have you ever heard people debate which fast food restaurant has the best fries, and you can tell they’ve never eaten real food? Same thing. If they’re children it’s cute.
I think it comes down to “mid is the new worst.” If something’s entertainingly bad then it’s easier to focus on the “entertaining” part. If it’s serviceably bland, there’s very little to grab onto, positive or negative.I’m fond of noting that Dark World, as mid as it is, is only mid because Marvel was at the top of its game. It had lots of entertaining moments in it, and in a world where it was the only Marvel movie I think people would’ve loved it, but we don’t live there.The weird thing is, L&T isn’t that. Or maybe it’s because it’s out there and people have things to grab onto (again, goats) that they’re able to hate on it so much. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell sometimes.
Multiple things can be extremely bad for different reasons. The tone for this movie for example, say what you want about Transformers but that atleast that movie knew what it was trying to be. What was L&T supposed to be? Korg narrating a light hearted romp across cosmos with a larger than life post-Guardians Thor as he rediscovers his place outside of Asgard? Or was it supposed to be a serious story about the anger that comes with the feeling of helplessness in the face of death? So yes, Love and Thunder IS a bad movie that deserve to be placed up next to other movies like The Room.
It’s called juxtaposition, it’s a pretty common device.
It’s also called ludonarrative dissonance which is what happens when the two sides of the juxtaposition are completely unbalanced.
Are you trolling?Ludonarrative dissonance doesn’t even apply to film, it’s the disconnect between story and game mechanics.
L&T was such a disappointment in a myriad of levels. And while I agree that Thor really got the short end of the stick, I feel like Jane suffered the most. You bring back Natalie Portman and try to adapt a pretty great Thor run, all the while doing nothing that actually made it special. The same goes for Gorr and that storyline. Bale was great and his design was inspired, but the overall thing just was lacking. Gorr is arguably one of the best stories Thor has had and to leave its potential lying on the ground like that is just silly.My end point is that Gorr and Jane should’ve been separate movies. Give both characters their time to shine and actually care about the stories you’re telling about them. Jane’s especially.
Hemsworth was not the worst part of Love and Thunder. He was just playing the same part as in Ragnarok. It was all the rest. Russell Crowe and that whole… I don’t know what to call it. Anyway, all that was the downfall of Love and Thunder. And Portman just didn’t have any gravity to what was, I think, supposed to be a somber performance. She phoned it in as much as Waititi. Remember, Portman tried to distance herself from Marvel for several years until they showed up with the dollars.
I liked it.
It’s not even close to my favourite Marvel film of the post-2019 period but I didn’t hate it or find it incredibly underwhelming (Wakanda Forever and Black Widow in particular I did).I hope he does get the chance to do one more in the future.
I didn’t hate Love and Thunder as much as most people. I bet it was a lot less fun to watch if you weren’t stoned. There was one joke though that killed me. It’s after Gorr’s attack and the asguardians are debating what to do next. Someone suggests going on the offensive and another is like “but half our soldiers are dead!” and then a third person chimes in that “half our soldiers are always dead!” which apart from the first Thor movie is so true.
worse than the humor was the taming of Gorr in look (just a white human, no tentacles or alien feel or fearful look), also Gorr was underutilize like most Marvel bad guys…
Love and Thunder was a very very bad movie. It was a shame, because Waititi and Hemsworth saved the character, and what they did worked all the way through him meeting up with the Guardians…but then it just ran out of gas. The odd thing is that apparently there is a whole other movie L&T could have been and the whole thing was shot, with Lena Headey and a bunch of other people…I sometimes wonder why they don’t just scrounge around and find that movie, the one where they spoke the words in the script
i would definitely like to see another Thor movie, minus Taika. I’ll always love Ragnarok , though.They could do one of the more armored up versions of Thor if Hemsworth wants to skip the crazy physical regimen.I actually wouldn’t mind a more purely fantasy driven story set entirely off of Midgard with little in the way of tech, more of a LOTR type thing
There’s too much Korg in it. Besides that, it’s a good movie.