‘Thor: Ragnarok’ director Taika Waititi on finding Chris Hemsworth’s funny bone

For Thor’s third solo outing, Marvel wanted to lighten things up – and not just a smidge.

Out with the stoic seriousness, in with a bucket of colour and a script that shows moviegoers how funny the God of Thunder can be.

So the studio turned to New Zealand director Taika Waititi, who made a name for himself with What We Do in the Shadows – the vampire mockumentary horror comedy that won a People’s Choice Award at TIFF in 2014 – and 2016’s coming-of-age festival fave, Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

“[Marvel] wined and dined me and treated me really romantically in the opening stages of our relationship,” Waititi jokes during an early-morning interview in a Toronto hotel.

The studio, which has made unconventional choices with its big screen takes on Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn), Ant-Man (Peyton Reed) and the new Spider-Man (Jon Watts), as well as its sequels to Captain America and the Avengers (Joe and Anthony Russo), wanted Thor: Ragnarok to feel nothing like its predecessors – 2011’s Thor and 2013’s Thor: The Dark World.

“Right from the beginning I could tell they were supportive of the idea of my style and my sensibility coming into this film,” Waititi says. “They wanted to take Thor in a new direction, not just the character, but the franchise itself. Chris [Hemsworth] wanted to do something new with the character. And for me, coming in as the third director, I wanted to have some sort of ownership over it and feel like it could be my unique thing. To do that, we had to change the character and almost reboot the franchise without the hassle of recasting and rebranding everything.”

Ragnarok finds Earth’s mightiest hero teaming up with his slithery brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), his Avengers mate Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), a hard-drinking ass kicker named Valkyrie (Creed’s Tessa Thompson) and a chilled out CGI rock creature dubbed Korg (voiced by Waititi) to battle his evil sis Hela, played by Cate Blanchett.

With the movie now in theatres, Waititi spoke with Postmedia Network about giving one of Marvel’s oldest heroes a fresh coat of paint, revealed why he wishes he put a real Easter Egg in Ragnarok and told us the reason a movie should be two hours (or less).

You come from an indie-film background. Why did you pick Thor to make your grand entrance into the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
To be honest, coming into it, Thor wasn’t the obvious choice for me as a superhero film. I never read Thor when I was growing up. I wouldn’t say he was one of my favourite characters. But… Chris is one of my favourite actors and I knew for this thing to become something else and have the energy I thought it needed, we had to tap into some of his best qualities, which are: he’s funny, he’s charming and he’s the kind of person you want to follow on an adventure. That’s what I concentrated on. Let’s make this character as close to Chris as possible because it’s his qualities that will be what sells this.

The movie has a great beginning, there’s lots of fun stuff between Thor and Hulk on planet Sakaar with Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster, there’s an awesome battle at the end. What was your favourite scene to film?
I think my favourite stuff has to be the scenes between Chris and Mark. We ad-libbed a lot of the film and you can really tell that they enjoyed that. You can see them smiling and cracking up. There’s a scene where Thor is talking to Hulk on a bed about who’s more like fire and Chris starts laughing, and he really was. Those human moments helps get the audience onside. If you look at the poster it’s outrageous. You look at that and think, ‘How am I going to connect with all of these elements?’

What convinced you that Cate could be such a badass villain?
Me looking at Hela, she has this kind of swagger where you think, ‘She’s seen it all. She’s got nothing left to prove.’ That’s very much like Cate. She’s seen it all, she’s won all the awards. She doesn’t have to prove herself anymore. She can just saunter into the film and do her thing. And the audience is left believing she can take over Asgard and she can wipe out an army.

Your character Korg is like the Rocket Racoon of this movie. Any chance he shows up in Avengers: Infinity War?
I don’t know. Potentially… they’re still shooting.

Why did you want to play him?
I’m in all of my films and I like carrying that tradition on. I’m better suited to these smaller characters who, for a lack of a better way of putting it, are kind of pointless.

There was a rumour going around that this was going to be a 90-minute movie. What did you add in to make it over two hours?
I was toying with the idea of making it 95 minutes because I like movies that are short and leave you wanting more, but there are so many things going on in this movie it had to be two hours. Look, audiences have a short attention span and their bladders have an even shorter attention span. You have to remember in the third act, people want to go to the bathroom. There are only so many things you can put in that final battle before people are looking at their watches and thinking, ‘Please wrap it up.’

You mention wanting more. Audiences are going to want more Thor after this. Will you be back for Thor 4?
Whatever expectations we satisfy with this one, we’d need to go in a completely new direction and do something unpredictable. Who knows, maybe that means it would be a black and white silent film. Thor 4, black and white.

I heard you might be interested in making a funny Black Widow movie with Scarlett Johansson.
Don’t believe anything I say. I think I said, ‘I’d love to see that.’ I’m not sure I’d be suited to it. I kind of feel like it should be a female director. But that’s a character that I’ve always loved.

Just where is Ragnarok in Marvel’s movie timeline?
I guess in the timeline – actually I’m not an expert – I have a feeling this has happened just after Civil War. This is two years after the end of Ultron. Thor has been on the road that whole time looking for the [Infinity] Stones and now it’s catching up with him. Banner has been in Hulk form for two years now that’s why we’ve got this great personality for Hulk.

How many Easter Eggs should Marvel fans keep their eyes peeled for in Ragnarok?
I have no idea [laughs]. There’s a Beta Ray Bill Easter Egg on the side of a building [in the
Grandmaster’s tower] to suggest he was one of the great gladiators at one time. But Easter Eggs? I don’t know. I wish I had put a real Easter Egg in there somewhere.
Twitter: @markhdaniell
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