Christian Bale tried to push Thor: Love And Thunder into R-rated territory

Forget the Joker, Gorr the God Butcher is the new twisted villain in town, and his antics are apparently too extreme for the kid-friendly audience of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Christian Bale has teased some of the Gorr scenes that hit the cutting room floor in Thor: Love And Thunder—ranging from a Kate Bush dance sequence to self-inflicted harm to rid the character of his tattoos—but in a new interview with Inverse, he admits to pushing the boundaries for a Disney movie.

“With Thor: Love And Thunder, Taika [Waititi] and me, we kind of knew that some of the stuff we were doing probably wouldn’t end up in the film, but we wanted to just push it and see,” Bale explains. “Ultimately, it is and should be a film that all the family can go and enjoy. And Chris Hemsworth, a couple of times he looked at me it was like, Dude, that’s a little too far. I don’t think anyone’s gonna want to see that unless it’s an R-rated film. But it was a great joy to give it a shot. And we had a lot of fun in there doing certain scenes and takes on certain scene choices, even if they didn’t end up in the final cut.”

The final cut—coming in around two hours long—is almost anemic compared to the reported four-plus hour first cut of the film. Tonally, it must have been all over the place; Chris Hemsworth said that version was “like a Monty Python sketch,” but it apparently also included Bale’s disturbing Gorr scenes.

The eclectic mix may be like catnip for MCU fans, but Waititi has come out firmly against releasing a “director’s cut.” Not only does he think director’s cuts “suck” in general, but of his own movie, he has said, “It’s not good, at four and a half hours.” We’ll all just have to take Bale’s word for it that Gorr was like, really, really messed up, man.