‘Thor: Ragnarok’ Features A Whole Lot Of Improv According To Director Taika Waititi

The Thor: Ragnarok trailer delighted fans in Hall H on Saturday night at Comic-Con, introducing fans to our best look at the latest Thor adventure and just how different it stands from the films that have preceded. The trailer was full of little Marvel tidbits for fans to enjoy and it really showed how the film will balance the hefty world ending drama with plenty of laughs along the way. It takes the humor of The Avengers films and seems to turn it up a few notches.

One of the reasons is director Taika Waititi, a guy who knows a bit about being funny on the big screen and doing it with situations that might not always lend to comedy. He’s best known for Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do In The Shadows, but Thor: Ragnarok might become his big ticket prize if all works out. And one of the big reasons is because he didn’t seem to sacrifice his own style and tactics when making this film. According to an interview with MTV News, much of the dialogue in Thor is ad-libbed or tossed out on the spot by Waititi himself:

“I would say we improvised probably 80 percent of the film, or ad-libbed and threw in stuff. My style of working is I’ll often be behind the camera, or right next to the camera yelling words at people, like, ‘Say this, say this! Say it this way!’ I’ll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don’t care.”

So it’s one thing that this film will have in common with the very first Iron Man film — at least spiritually. They were kinda forced to ad-lib out of necessity on that film since they reportedly didn’t have a script. That gives Ragnarok a leg up, even if Waititi seemed to face some questions from his cast about the direction the film was going in:

“Mark Ruffalo would be finished shooting for the day,” Waititi recalled, “and he’d come up to me and he’d be like, ‘Why have we not been fired yet? We are doing the most insane stuff in this film, so where’s the phone call?'”

Considering how tight the Marvel ship runs, it’s a little surprising that things were as loose as could be now. But it seems like they’ve really loosened up in the days since Kevin Feige was given free control over the Marvel Studios projects, not just on the purse strings.

(Via MTV News)

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