‘You don’t know what you want until I give it to you:’ Taika Waititi slams MCU fans as angry nerds who ruined his ‘peaceful life’

Taika Waititi took iconic Marvel superhero Thor, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the MCU and turned him into a laughing stock. That fact is not even up for discussion. All anyone has to do is take a look at the 2017 film Thor: Ragnarok and the disastrous 2022 follow-up Thor: Love and Thunder to witness the departure from the more grounded storytelling that endeared Thor to fans in the first place. But the director doesn’t see it that way.

“That really propelled me into the nerdosphere, if you will,” Waititi told Entertainment Weekly while reflecting on Ragnarok. He then launched into a sarcasm-drenched tirade about fans, who, at the time, expressed concern about how the source material would be handled. “I was living a really lovely, peaceful life, and as soon as I did this [movie], well boy, did the nerds come for me. They said, ‘This guy’s gonna ruin this. He’s gonna ruin Thor!'” he said.

“It’s like, ‘What, you mean again?'” Waititi continued. “And they were like, ‘He’s gonna ruin this for everyone, Thor’s so cool!’ And I said to them on Twitter – before I left Twitter – I said, ‘You don’t know what you want until I give it to you.'” That’s a pretty arrogant way to approach concerns about a film that turned out to be completely accurate. While the earlier Thor films portrayed the God of Thunder with gravitas and occasional humor, Waititi leaned heavily into comedy, which destroyed it.

While Ragnarok may have received some praise for its vibrant aesthetic and lighthearted tone, by the time Love and Thunder rolled around, the formula had quickly worn thin. That’s probably why the New Zealand-born filmmaker didn’t have much of an opinion about the 2022 movie. “Look how jacked Chris got,” Waititi said, referring to the poster. “One of my favorite things about this is that I so love Natalie [Portman], also Christian Bale. I mean, it’s Christian Bale.”

But Waititi wasn’t done insulting the very people who buy the movie tickets that pay his bills. He went on to talk about Star Wars and his work on the popular Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian. “Speaking of angry nerds, Star Wars, Mandalorian,” he said. “This is what brought the nerds back. They were like, ‘Okay, you get a pass on this one.'” Thankfully, he only directed one episode and voiced the droid assassin IG-11. Who knows what would have happened if he stayed on for an extended time?

It’s easy to see why Waititi might be defensive about his Thor movies. The guy was dragged all over the internet after Love and Thunder was released. The social media hostility became so intense that Hemsworth attempted to take the heat off the director by blaming himself for getting “caught up in the improv and the wackiness,” which led to becoming “a parody of myself.” According to the actor, he embraced the shift toward comedy because he felt stuck in the role of Thor. The biggest takeaway from both films is, don’t try to fix something that’s not broken.