Chris Hemsworth Calls His Thor in Love and Thunder a Parody

According to the origin of Marvel’s Thor, the All-Father Odin sends his son to Earth to learn humility. It sounds like Thor actor Chris Hemsworth has had to do the same thing.

Hemsworth’s Thor was riding high going into 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder, following 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, which won over fans who dismissed his first two solo outings, as well as the strong emotional arc in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. But for many, Love and Thunder pushed the wacky sensibilities of writer/director Taika Waititi too far, resulting in a movie too glib to be funny. And Hemsworth agrees.

“I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself,” the Aussie actor recently admitted to Vanity Fair. “I didn’t stick the landing.”

It’s easy to see why Hemsworth leaned so far into Waititi’s style for Love and Thunder. Not only was Ragnarok a smash but it also put Thor in the Marvel spotlight in a way no other film before it did, especially the early Avengers films. “Sometimes I felt like a security guard for the team,” Hemsworth said of the first two Avengers movies. “I would read everyone else’s lines, and go, ‘Oh, they got way cooler stuff. They’re having more fun. What’s my character doing?’ It was always about, ‘You’ve got the wig on. You’ve got the muscles. You’ve got the costume. Where’s the lighting?’ Yeah, I’m part of this big thing, but I’m probably pretty replaceable.”

With Ragnarok and Love and Thunder, Hemsworth got to show off a quality that went beyond his muscles and good looks: his sense of humor. “I had heard he was generous, and boy is he generous, hilarious, and as hardworking and diligent as he is handsome,” said Ragnarok co-star Cate Blanchett of the actor, “but I had no idea what a goofball he is. He is a complete goofball.”

Although he’s currently taking a break from wielding Mjolnir and hopes to play more down-to-Earth roles (“Remember Hugh Grant in Notting Hill?” he asks by way of suggestion), Hemsworth will next take on a different type of odd-ball. Hemsworth plays the post-apocalyptic warlord Dementus in the Fury Road prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Furiosa director George Miller initially envisioned someone different in the part, but continues to be won over by Hemsworth’s transformation. “It was really, really weird turning up on set for several months getting used to Dementus,” the director told Vanity Fair. “When I saw Chris many months later, my first instinct was, Wait a minute, this is not Chris Hemsworth. This is a fraud!”

Miller is just one of the many big-name filmmakers that Hemsworth hopes to work with, including a potential big-screen endeavor with his Limitless collaborator Darren Aronofsky. And maybe that experience will give him the space he needs before returning to the God of Thunder. After all, Avengers 5 and Secret Wars are only a few years away…

Thor: Love and Thunder is streaming now on Disney+.