Few filmmakers do droll self-deprecation either on or offscreen better than Taika Waititi, so when the Academy Award winner says that his upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel Thor: Love and Thunder is shaping up to be even better than he imagined, you’d better take notice.
A lot of fans hold predecessor Ragnarok in high esteem as one of the franchise’s best-ever efforts, and it went a long way to transforming Chris Hemsworth’s God of Thunder from a stoic, square-jawed action hero into a charismatic tour de force of hilarious comic asides and megawatt charm.
Throw in a plot that finds Christian Bale terrorizing the MCU as Gorr the God Butcher, Natalie Portman on superhero duties as Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor, the entire Guardians of the Galaxy team, and many more other key players besides, and you can see why Waititi revealed to Empire that he’d blown past his own expectations.
“It’s a fantastic film. I don’t try to control my films, or how they turn out. I sort of let them appear to me. And with this film, I’m like, ‘Hey, you’re kind of cooler than the thing I was originally hoping to make.’ Tonally it’s where I’ve always wanted it.”
As for the title? Waititi teased that he thinks “most people will assume that the love story is between Chris and Natalie, I can’t promise that what people think is going to happen in this film will happen”, which only gets us more hyped for Thor: Love and Thunder.
