MY SUPER Ex GIRL FRIEND
At Marvel Studios, there’s a tradition for a film’s opening day. President Kevin Feige and the film’s key creative team head out to a public screening at a cinema, watch the film play with a crowd, and go out for dinner afterwards. “And at that dinner on [Thor: Ragnarok’s] opening night, Chris and Taika and I and much of the team sat around, and Taika and Chris immediately started spitballing ideas for the next one, ” Feige tells Total Film. “Many of those ideas that came up on that first discussion, on that opening-night dinner of Ragnarok, are in this movie.”
If writer/director Taika Waititi and star Chris Hemsworth were buzzing with the possibilities, that’s understandable. Ragnarok was the third solo film for the Asgardian God of Thunder, completely revitalising a character at risk of going stale. Waititi was best known for smaller, idiosyncratic films in his native New Zealand, but he brought his distinct sense of humour to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a rowdy, vibrantly hued adventure that gave Thor a literal and figurative makeover, teaming him buddy-comedy style with Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and introducing him to louche bounty hunter turned ally Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson).
When TF and Waititi last spoke, he referred to Ragnarok’s post-production as a baptism of fire. “Is it possible to be baptised more than once?” he deadpans of his upcoming sequel, Thor: Love And Thunder, when TF catches up with him again in April 2022. “It feels like everything I do, every movie, every project, is a new baptism of fire.”
Ragnarok was a wild ride tonally and visually (with the distinction of being the first Marvel film to make a joke about Hulk’s penis), and a huge box-office and critical success to boot. So presumably that gives Waititi further licence to go off the leash in his follow-up, co-written by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and taking place after the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Can lightning strike twice?
“[] and then some, ” says Hemsworth over Zoom, chiselled and sharply groomed, wearing a linen shirt over a grey t-shirt with aviator shades
