In between his feature-length directorial debut on 2007’s Eagle vs. Shark and last year’s Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi had never directed anything to have scored lower than an 80 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
As an on-camera talent, the 63 percent of Chris Hemsworth’s fourth outing as the Odinson marked the worst-reviewed of his acting appearances since he played Ryan Reynolds’ best friend and erstwhile “guy in the chair” Tom Kalmaku in Green Lantern, even if neither of them are keen to acknowledge its existence.
Even on the small screen, the Academy Award winner has never played a role, written, directed, or produced anything to have fared worse than 90 percent on the aggregation site, so it’s a turn-up for the books and then some that his upcoming feature Next Goal Wins – in which he also has a small cameo as a priest – holds a current rating of 55 percent to rank as the weakest directorial effort of his entire career.
Not only that, but it’s the second lowest-rated credit in his entire filmography ahead of only the aforementioned Green Lantern, so maybe those prognosticating that Love and Thunder was when the wheels really started to come off his signature stick were onto something after all.
Naturally, a couple of consecutive misfires doesn’t mark one person’s inevitable downfall, but it’s a huge comedown after the previous decade and a half saw Waititi drowning in nothing but acclaim regardless of which position he was holding on either side of the camera.