In a truly ironic turn of events when superhero blockbusters are regularly lambasted for running way longer than they needed to, there’s a belief sweeping the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom already that Thor: Love and Thunder would have benefited hugely from giving itself more time to breathe.
At a lean, mean, 119 minutes including credits, the Odinson’s landmark fourth solo movie never once stops to catch breath, and as a result many character arcs, plot points, and action sequences feel rushed and unhurried. Chris Hemsworth and Taika Watititi already teased that there’s a “batsh*t insane” four-hour version of the film out there somewhere, with Christian Bale admitting to Collider that there’s so much more footage he wishes audiences would have been able to see.
“There’s an awful lot that I wish was in this film, which you can’t have a four-hour long film because there’s so much gold that’s on the cutting room floor, hilarious stuff, and creepy as hell stuff, but that was perhaps pushing it to a realm where maybe it wouldn’t have been able to be family friendly, which we always wanted it to be.”
We know that Bale’s scenes opposite Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster and Peter Dinklage’s Eitri were excised in post-production, while Natalie Portman has hinted that there’s a voluminous amount of footage that never made it into the version of Thor: Love and Thunder playing in theaters around the world.
Once upon a time, the scenes would have been included in their entirety as part of a bumper DVD/Blu-ray special edition, but when Thor 4 comes to Disney Plus in just a few weeks, subscribers may end up with little more than scraps to feed on.