Although Thor: Ragnarok teases a fiery end to Asgard, the film also incorporates elements of the fan-favorite Marvel Comics storyline "Planet Hulk," in which the Incredible Hulk is rocketed from Earth and lands on a barbaric distant planet. As Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige explains, the decision to combine those disparate story elements stemmed from a desire to bring together the two most powerful heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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"We wanted to introduce Hela in this movie, and there’s Balder and there’s Beta Ray Bill and there’s still people we haven’t done yet because he’s got such a great cast of characters," Feige explained to Screen Rant. "But in terms of other Marvel characters we kept thinking about how fun it would be if we took our two most heroic, most powerful characters, Thor and Hulk, pit them against each other and but also play the humor and the fish-out-of-water humor between Thor and Banner. And that led us to, maybe that plane at the end of Ultron did go into space, and maybe this is a chance to see gladiator Hulk."

Thor: Ragnarok is just the first part in a planned trilogy for Mark Ruffalo's Hulk. “Basically, Kevin [Feige] pulled me aside before [Thor: Ragnarok], and said, ‘If you were gonna do a … if we were going to do a standalone Hulk movie, what would it be?’" the actor revealed recently. "And I said, ‘I think it should be this, this, this, and this and this, and ends up like this.’ And he’s like, ‘I love that. Why don’t we do that in the next three movies, starting with Thor 3 and then we go into Avengers 3 and 4.’ And I was like, ‘That sounds great!’ And so we are at the beginning of this arc.”

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Arriving Nov. 3, director Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Cate Blanchett as Hela, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Jeff Goldblum as Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Karl Urban as Skurge, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/the Hulk and Anthony Hopkins as Odin.