Ragnarok's Waititi Tried To Break Thor To Save The Franchise

Most film studios wouldn’t look at Taika Waititi’s wildly quirky resume and immediately think, “Why, he’d be perfect to direct the next ‘Thor’ movie!” But most studios aren’t Marvel, who somehow knew only a filmmaker as both shrewd and comedically skilled as Waititi could give the Asgardian Avenger’s sub-franchise the creative kick in the pants it needed.

The New Zealand native – best know for fast-paced and hilariously funny projects like last year’s acclaimed Hunt For the Wilderpeople, his prior films Eagle Vs. Shark and What We Do In Shadows and the cult comedy Flight of the Conchords – was granted license by Marvel to radically renovate Thor’s particular corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Thor: Ragnarok. Moving beyond the godly take on the fish-out-of-water premise of the first film and the fantasy-genre grandeur of the second, Ragnarok sets shooting the hammer-wielding hero on a rollicking journey across the cosmos with stops on Earth, Asgard and the alien gladiator world of Sakaar. It’s a fresh and consistently amusing semi-reboot that makes great use of Thor’s previous cast of characters and place in the universe, while never stepping so far into absurdity that the sanctity of the MCU seems compromised.

And, as Waititi reveals to CBR, it was a feat that involved heavy lifting akin to hoisting Mjolnir from a resting position. Fortunately for fans of the Son of Asgard, he proved to be worthy.

CBR: What a fun project this must have been – but also hard work, too! Tell me the balance of fun and work for you making this enormous motion picture?

Taika Waititi: Sure – I'd say it's 74% fun and, whatever the rest of that makes up 100%, with that number. What is it – 26? 26% hard work! It's very hard work. 26% excruciating hard work. So very fun, most of the time, but when it was actual work it was really painful.

And painful because the way stress manifests itself when you're doing these films. It's in different parts of your body, and you start aching in places, and you've got the big shoulder problem, and pains in my neck and stuff. And that's just sort of, I feel like, just is what it is, and I accept that, because it was so much fun, so I could live with it.

Once you started working on the film, how did you find that this movie was not really any different from any other film you've made, and how was it incredibly different from every other film you've made?

It was not different in that I got to ad-lib a lot with my actors, and we got to approach each scene in a new way for shooting, and sometimes rewrite in the moment and explore and not have to pre-plan anything too much.

It was also different in that it was 85 days, when my other shoots have been about 25. And so the length of time that you're concentrating on the same story and the same characters is three or four times what you're used to and therefore you creatively have to really watch out for your energy and make sure that you're constantly giving the best stuff and that you're not getting too complacent or that you're not forgetting the focus of the film – and the focus for me was the tone. It was the main thing, it was just capturing a certain tone that I thought would be enjoyable and fun for the audience.

I think the most notable thing about the film is how you got that tone, how made everything so fast, fun and funny, but you didn't step over the line and make it feel out of context: you kept the tone within the Marvel Cinematic Universe zone, but you also got to do your own thing. How tricky was that balancing act for you?

It was very tricky. We spent a lot of time in post-production, actually, figuring that out. It's a very hard thing to strike that balance throughout two-hours and thirty minutes, however many minutes this thing is, for that much time that you're engaging in a film.

And sometimes it would be funny in the beginning of the film and then not funny at all for the rest of the film. Or sometimes it was funny in the wrong places and in the end, we had to just keep testing jokes and testing parts of the film sometimes. So we failed miserably and had a funny first ten minutes and then a super boring rest of the movie. But that's luckily why you have such a long time in post-production, because you can test all these things out and get the very best film that you can.

You had a great accomplice in Chris Hemsworth, who seemed game to do just about anything you asked of him, and still do his established Thor thing. Tell me about working with Chris and finding out how far you could sort of bend Thor without breaking Thor.

The secret was, we tried to break him. Tried to completely demolish him, and it's where we were able to find some really new approaches to the character and to the way Chris played him. Because Chris didn't want to do it the same way as he has done before. So we felt, “Okay, look – there are no rules here, that's the number one rule. So we're trying to do something new and something that's fun that and adventurous, and we want to do something that Chris will find fun and adventurous so that he can be able to turn up in the morning.

So it was really with that in mind that we felt like we could just do anything we wanted, and that we had Marvel looking over us, who could make sure that we weren't pushing it to too crazy a direction. But it turns out there wasn't, really – it was sort of almost like there was nothing that was too crazy for us to do.

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In a similar vein, you've got to work with Mark Ruffalo to bring this fresh version of the Hulk, a version that I've always loved: this very child-like, more talkative and a little petulant Hulk, which is an evolution from what we've seen before in the previous movies. Tell me about running a little freer with the Hulk than we've seen before.

Yeah, that was really, just like with Chris, just wanting make it more interesting for Mark to play that character, because in the films he just said one or two words and just destroyed everything, and that was the version of Hulk I think that everybody knows. But this version, the smarter version -- it's just become so much more interesting and engaging, because he's been the Hulk for two years. He's a hero on this planet and he's had more time to just sit with himself and feel comfortable in his own skin.

And now you can see Hulk sitting still and being kind of like a big silverback. There's there's this moment when he's in the hot tub in his apartment – he just feels like General Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” He's just sitting there, just contemplating things and you can feel him probably ruminating over all sorts of stuff inside his head. And that introspective, that very still version of Hulk, I think is way more fascinating than the guy that just destroys everything.

Tell me a little about your learning curve, both with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and then the Thor lore, from comics and mythology, in general. How conversant with all of it were you? And how conversant did you feel you needed to get to make this movie?

Well, with a kind of respectful irreverence, I approached this film knowing that I was not going to do any research into Thor and what had gone on before I came along, and really because my job really was to try and make something that was a good film, a good story, and something that was really fun to watch. Knowing that Marvel knows everything that there is to know from the source material, and that if there's anything there, that is vital for the audience, or for our understanding of Thor or where he comes from, his backstory and stuff, then we'd put it in there, and we'd be able to draw on that.

But personally I felt like there were certain moments, that I knew from the Thor comics, and little things from the storylines, like, once Thor was turned into a frog. I knew his history, I knew his backstory and stuff, but that was really all I had needed to know. I didn't need to do any more research than that, and I felt like that's why we have this version of Thor, which is very close to Chris in personality and in energy.

And it wasn't because any disdain or anything that had gone before. It's just that in order for us to embrace this idea of Ragnarok, and destroying what had gone on before us, we just had to kind of think, “Okay, if there's anything that we feel has been done before, we have to do the opposite,” and I feel that that's been the main approach to this whole thing.

It must be interesting to come into a project and work with actors as revered as Sir Anthony Hopkins and Cate Blanchet, and yet also got to work with some old friends, like Rachel House and Karl Urban. So tell me a little bit about the balance: coming in and finding your comfort level with these hugely important big name actors, and then also having some friends there to make you feel at home.

I've always worked with all my friends in all my films, and that's how we get, a sort of, casual style of being creative, and having fun whilst doing it. My aim really was just to try to ignore that these other actors were so revered and had such rich histories. Because if you let yourself get caught up in that, it can become intimidating, and you don't know how to communicate with them, and you're in danger of not really asking for what you want.

So my whole focus was just to become friends with them as best I could, to the point where I could just be straight up and get to the point, and just talk to them how I talk to all the people I usually work with. Because on the shorthand there, you can cut around all the bullshit, and just get straight to the point, that you work faster, there's less ego, and people are less scared about protecting their image, or feeling insecure or feeling that you're out to make them look bad.

My job really, at the end of the day, is just to make every actor look as good as possible. Once they know that – that you're on their side – then everyone will play ball.

And you got to act in it yourself. Did you go full performance capture technology to do your role?

So that was all mo-cap, and it was very fun. It was my first time doing that, and it was very freeing, and I was able to embrace that technology and what you could do with it. But also use it in a way where it was never an obstacle in the way of our creative process, so I could ab-lib and that stuff, and we could talk over each other, and we could basically just do the scene how I would normally work with any other actor, or any other character, and all of the CG stuff and that character just came in later. It was a little catch in just how I normally would do stuff. And so that was very cool, it didn't feel at all stifled, didn't feel stale or too controlled or too rigid.

Are you excited to see your first Korg cosplay the next time you go to a comic con?

[Laughs] Yeah, good luck to them! I don't know how the hell they'll pull that off!

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I'm not going out on a limb to say I think this movie's likely to be a pretty major hit, and I’m curious: going forward, how much ownership do you feel now toward the Thor corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I know some directors, like James Gunn, want to continue to work in the territory they’ve staked out, and really love it, while some come in and do a Marvel movie and then move onto something else. Where do you fall in that mix?

I want to do both. I've got my own things that I've written and things that I want to do, and I'd love to come back and do more, because – not take away at all from those other films, because I wouldn't be here without them building that foundation – I really feel like this is a very different version of Thor, and it's almost a reboot where we didn't have to recast.

What was your favorite day of shooting?

My favorite days of shooting were anything where Chris and Mark were working together, and anything where Jeff Goldblum was there. Because every time, with all three of those guys, we were constantly riffing and having fun, and making stuff up on the day. And just with those guys in particular, it was such a great process, and it really was like working with all my friends again.

There was really some magic going on with Jeff's performance – there always is, but I thought the two of you seemed really well suited to each other. What were the fun discoveries working of with Jeff Goldblum?

I think just how receptive he is, and open he is to ideas, and to trying to create something in the moment. And there are moments, and there are things where we've just discovered it on the day. And they had people at Marvel supporting you and saying “Yeah, that's cool – we're into that,” which was very surprising, but also a huge relief to know they had faith in you.

Are there some things the sharp-eyed fan should look for? Some Easter eggs or kind of quick visual gags that you put in that people might want to look for on the second or third time they check the film out?

There are a couple little Easter eggs for people who really know the comics, and I think they've already been talked about, just because some of them were already in the trailers and stuff. But the things that I consider Easter eggs are probably lines of dialogue, or there's only certain things that no one would get from any other comics, because they're not really comic book Easter eggs, they're more just Taika Easter eggs. I wish I had actually put real Easter eggs in there somewhere.

How did you come out of this experience, sort of a changed filmmaker? Do you feel that there was an evolution in your own approach to your work?

I feel like I've become a better communicator with ideas that I want convey, or things I want to see screen. Usually in my films, I feel like I'm doing most of the stuff by myself and sort of feel, “Oh, no, don't worry about it, I'll just do it and then you'll see what I meant.”

But something this scale, you can't really work like that. You have to come into it knowing that you are constantly working with other people, and you have to get them to understand what's going on in your head, and what you want. It can be very frustrating, but then you realize, “Well, it's only frustrating because perhaps it's your communication skills, Taika. These guys are doing their best, so you've got to work with that.” I found I got better at communicating.

What were some of the surprises for you – the revelations, the unexpected learning experiences – of working with Marvel and the way they make movies? What did you walk out saying, “Oh, that was not what I expected.”

I feel like the main things were just what they allowed me to put in the film, in terms of jokes and strange little moments. And the main one really being most of Korg's dialogue, which was so weird and doesn't really have any place belonging in this movie. But then, having said that, it's almost like that's why it's perfect for this movie – it's because I feel like it doesn't really belong. It's almost like none of the elements in this movie belong together, but the combination of all those things, are just sort of like a perfect storm.