Thor: Love and Thunder star Christian Bale recently confirmed that two major Marvel Cinematic Universe characters were cut from the upcoming sequel.
The Oscar-winning actor revealed that Gorr the God Butcher's scenes with Avengers: Infinity War's Eitri (Peter Dinklage) and Thor: Ragnarok's Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) were both trimmed from the final cut. "I got to work with Peter Dinklage, that's not in the final film," he said. "I got to work with him and he's fantastic. I got to work with Jeff Goldblum, he's not in the final film either. As you see, lots of stuff ends up on the cutting room floor, even though it is beautiful, brilliant stuff."
Bale's comments echo similar remarks by his co-star Natalie Portman, who recently mentioned that director Taika Waititi had removed entire worlds from Thor: Love and Thunder in the editing bay. "The joy and the sorrow of a Taika Waititi project is that he creates so much brilliance and so much material that the movie could be like an infinite number of things," she said. "And it like inevitably means that incredible, hilarious, moving comedy and drama ends up not there. So, there's a lot. I mean, there's full planets that are not there anymore."
Waititi himself recently confirmed that the first cut of Thor: Love and Thunder was four hours long before it was whittled down to its current 119-minute runtime. The filmmaker explained that many of the scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor were excised because they played better on the set than they did within the context of the overall movie itself. Star Chris Hemsworth added that the original four-hour version of Thor: Love and Thunder was "batshit crazy, wild" and likened it to a Monty Python sketch.
One thing both versions of Thor: Love and Thunder apparently have in common is that neither included Tom Hiddleston's Loki. Waititi and Hemsworth recently discussed the God of Mischief's absence, initially joking that the character was omitted following a rift between themselves and Hiddleston. Hemsworth then confirmed that the real reason why Loki isn't in the upcoming sequel is that he died in Avengers: Infinity War.
Waititi also dashed hopes that Thor: Love and Thunder will feature the multiverse, either. The director confirmed that the film takes place entirely within the MCU's core reality in a recent interview, which sets it apart from the last two MCU big-screen blockbusters, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Thor: Love and Thunder arrives in theaters on July 8.
Source: Prensaescenario, via YouTube