Taika Waititi Says His Work on Thor Was for the Greater Good

Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love & Thunder may have tipped the scales for Marvel fans who thought it leaned too far into comedy, but the director doesn’t seem to have any hard feelings about it.

During press for the Sundance premiere of Fing!, which is unfortunately a David Walliams adaptation co-written by and co-starring Walliams, Waititi was on hand to chat about Star Wars and Marvel, describing his work on the franchise as “for the greater good”.

“Thor was around before me,” Waititi said (via Variety). “The stuff that Chris and I did and how we shaped him into that new version… that was for the greater good of the franchise as a whole. I can’t wait to see these Avengers movies. I was just watching Infinity War and Endgame two weeks ago. They’re so good. I’m good friends with the Russos and will love to see what they’re doing.”

Like the sport at the heart of his 2023 movie Next Goal Wins, Waititi’s Marvel experience ultimately seemed to be a game of two halves. After the release of Thor: Ragnarok, the cheeky Kiwi was riding high as franchise fans responded well to his more comedic take on the God of Thunder, but a follow-up movie that saw the character bickering with his old hammer, being stripped naked in front of Zeus, and coping with a midlife crisis fared less well with critics and fans alike, although the movie made a profit at the box office (personally, I enjoyed Love and Thunder, but appreciate I’m in the minority).

Post-mortem, Thor star Chris Hemsworth has also shared some thoughts on the divisive Marvel fourquel, telling Yahoo that he and the rest of the Love and Thunder gang were “having so much fun” making the movie, and “that’s sometimes too much of a good thing.”

“I still love the film,” Hemsworth stressed. “You have to critique and look at what worked in case you do it again on a different film. The lesson I took was have fun with the comedy and so on, but what’s the emotional drive and component here? Is this something relatable? Then you can add on all the jokes and the fantastical special effects and the elements. But if there’s not a strong enough throughline, sometimes you’re just having too much fun.”

Hemsworth’s Thor will return in Avengers: Doomsday later this year, while Waititi’s next directorial project, the Jenna Ortega-led sci-fi movie Klara and the Sun, is still without a release date after wrapping production back in April 2024.