The year has only just begun, but we already have our sights set on all of the awesome Marvel movies slated to hit theaters over the course of the next twelve months. One of the most exciting entries to the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe is none other than Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok -- which already sounds like nothing we have ever seen before from the Thor franchise. Marvel already has a great formula for success in place for movies like Captain America: Civil War, but according to Waititi: part of the challenge associated with Ragnarok was making sure that it felt like a genuinely otherworldly experience. The director explained:
Sometimes I would stop and think, I'm doing a movie that's got Thor and Doctor Strange and The Incredible Hulk and Loki and every character is so strange and different. Civil War it's just humans, humans with human problems. Ours is creatures and beings and all these sorts of really different characters. Again displaying human problems, but in outer space or in other worlds.
Taika Waititi's comments to The A.V. Club seem to highlight an aspect of making Thor: Ragnarok that's somewhat harder than a movie like Captain America: Civil War. While he obviously has to ensure that the drama and the stakes feel relatable enough for audiences to get on board with, he also finds himself always balancing that idea with the fact that Ragnarok is a movie chock full of entirely implausible characters and ideas. Civil War featured some outlandish concepts like supersoldiers and teenagers with spider-like abilities, but at the end of the day, the film was still a political thriller with real world inspiration. By contrast, Ragnarok is a story that will include aliens, demi-gods, mutated human beings, and even a dash of magic when Benedict Cumberbatch's Stephen Strange shows up for his cameo in the film. The movie needs to be a little weirder and make an effort to reflect that inherent weirdness.
It's a tough balancing act to achieve, but it definitely helps that Taika Waititi is pretty much known for that type of story. Although he has never really directed a major blockbuster on the scale of Thor: Ragnarok, he cut his teeth on bizarre indie films like What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople. Both of these recent cult classics are incredibly emotionally rich films that also happen to exist in their particular forms of heightened reality. If those endeavors are any indication, then we can rest easy knowing that Thor: Ragnarok is in good hands.
Just think about it. If the guy can make a hilarious dating video for a dainty vampire, then we have a feeling that he can balance aliens, gods, and monsters in an epic superhero blockbuster:
Thor: Ragnarok will hit theaters later this year on November 3, 2017. We will bring you more updates regarding the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as new details become available to us.
