The MCU’s Thor franchise has seen some major wins and disappointing failures over the years. The freshest of these was 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder, the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2017’s incredible Thor: Ragnarok.
Following two lackluster initial Thor films, both of which paled in comparison to many of their Marvel peers, Ragnarok blew audiences away. It was good enough to fully revive the Thor franchise, but its follow-up, which brought back Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, was broadly considered a flop.
It’s not the worst Marvel movie of all time, by any means, but Love and Thunder didn’t come close to the heights of Ragnarok. It was so disliked by audiences, in fact, that many of them set sights on Waititi. They blamed him for the film’s failure to meet sky-high expectations, and some even predicted the end of the award-winning director’s career.
That’s not what happened, but the fallout from Thor: Love and Thunder continues to haunt both Waititi and star Chris Hemsworth. So much, in fact, that Hemsworth was recently reflecting on the film — more than a year and a half after its release — and considering what failings led to its downfall.
Is Chris Hemsworth really to blame for Love and Thunder‘s failure?
Let’s just start this off with a clear statement: Quite a few things went wrong with Thor: Love and Thunder, and none of them can be heaped in the lap of a single individual. Chris Hemsworth is not fully at fault for the film’s poor reception, nor is Waititi, or Natalie Portman, or any of the other talented people who signed onto the film.
Waititi has largely been the target of blame for the last year and a half, but Hemsworth is shifting the target following a recent interview with Vanity Fair. He told the publication that he got “caught up in the improv and the wackiness,” and that he ultimately “became a parody of myself.”
He went onto explain that, for years, he felt a bit stuck in the role of Thor. Ragnarok changed that, but the audience response to Love and Thunder brought it all back around. In the wake of the hate hurled Waititi’s way, Hemsworth is happy to take the blame on himself instead, but he’s really not deserving of it.
Is Taika Waititi letting Hemsworth take the blame?
In the wake of Hemsworth’s interview, a user took to the site formerly known as Twitter to once again drag Waititi down. He accused the Jojo Rabbit director of “letting the lead actor take the blame for his own slop” and blasted Waititi as “embarrassing.”
It would be a fair stance to take if Waititi, rather than Hemsworth, were making the statement to Vanity Fair. But it isn’t. Hemsworth is trying to take on responsibility for something that is absolutely not his fault, but Waititi is in no way supporting Hemsworth’s self-sacrifice. He’s just no longer interested in being accused of bad directing when a single misstep trips up an otherwise decorated career as a director.
So to say he’s letting Hemsworth take the blame is a reach at best. Waititi would likely never make the claim for himself, and he’s not involved in the Vanity Fair article at all. Those words are Hemsworth’s alone, and — while we may not agree with his self-deprecation — he has every right to feel any way he wants about his own creative projects.