Among all the crazy things Taika Waititi has packed into his long-awaited sequel to Ragnarok, the goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr have managed to garner particular attention since the first trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder came out yesterday. Because after 28 movies and years of character development, what better way to send the God of Thunder to war than his iconic chariot and its bearers from Norse mythology? According to Zack Stentz — who co-wrote 2011’s Thor — this is also a testament to how far the MCU has come in terms of unhinged creativity.
The screenwriter took to Twitter to reveal that he’d originally pitched the goats for the first movie in 2009, but the producers didn’t think it was such a great idea back then.
“A big way I know Marvel has loosened up creatively since Phase I is that we proposed Thor riding to battle in his goat chariot pulled by Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr back in 2009 and Feige and company looked at us like we were nuts. Now there they are in the Love and Thunder trailer,” he wrote.
Stentz also went out of his way to let everyone know that Thor kills and eats the goats whenever he’s on the road to ensure his sustenance, using Mjolnir to bring them back to life the next day. While it’s not clear if Waititi will also go down this path with Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, we’ve grown to expect anything from the eccentric creative, especially since it’s something that would fit Chris Hemsworth’s humor all too well.
If nothing else, it seems that Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel creative ensemble are pulling out all the big guns to make sure Phase 4 and beyond is as compelling as the Infinity Saga. That, combined with Waititi’s famous and peculiar storytelling tendencies, is enough to turn Thor: Love and Thunder into one of the MCU’s most hyped projects to date.
