The first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok may not have shown as much footage as the awesome and Easter egg-filled Comic-Con trailer, but it did include a joke instantly beloved by fans. The joke is yelled by Thor when he sees who he’ll be fighting gladiator style for the amusement of Jeff Goldblum (I refuse to call Jeff Goldblum’s character anything but Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum is always Jeff Goldblum. Everything is Jeff Goldblum). When Thor realizes he’ll be fighting long-lost compatriot Hulk, he shouts a joyful “Yes!” to the confusion of the audience in the arena, followed by his explanation, “I know him! He’s a friend from work!”
This already seems destined to become one of the most memorable jokes in the film, although with What We Do In The Shadows director Taika Waititi in charge, there may be even funnier scenes we won’t see until Thor: Ragnarok opens on November 3rd. And it turns out the joke was written on the spot by a kid who was on set as a gift from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Chris Hemsworth told Entertainment Weekly, “We had a young kid, a Make-A-Wish kid on set that day […] and in between the takes I was talking with him, and he goes, ‘You know, you should say, He’s a friend from work!‘ ”
Surprisingly, Hemsworth was allowed to do a take with the line the kid wanted to hear, thanks to the director encouraging the actors to improvise. Waititi has said “probably 80 percent” of the film was ad-libbed, to the point where Mark Ruffalo asked him how they were getting away with the “insane stuff” they were doing. In this case, they were not only able to make a kid’s day, but they also made the movie a little bit funnier for the rest of us.
(Via Inverse and Entertainment Weekly)