Warning: spoilers ahead for Thor: Ragnarok! Read forward at your own risk!
By now many of you have likely heard that Thor: Ragnarok is hilarious. Director Taika Waititi has made no secret of the fact that he considers it a comedy, and much of the film is played for big laughs, in addition to the big hero moments. One of the funniest moments in the entire movie is Matt Damon's cameo as an actor recreating Loki's Thor: The Dark World death scene, and it now seems that it actually came about because it just made sense for Loki to want a star to play him. Waititi addressed the cameo and said:
Well Matt and Chris are very good friends. We were looking for someone to play Loki and it felt like if Loki was going to write a play about his death he'd want the star of the Asgard theater scene to be in the play.
It turns out that Matt Damon and Chris Hemsworth are actually buddies in real life, so it likely wasn't difficult for the latter to convince the former to pop in for a quick cameo. And, per Taika Waititi's comments to EW, from there it was just a matter of realizing that Loki would probably want an A-list superstar like Matt Damon to portray him in a highly-altered recreation of his supposedly selfless sacrifice during the last Thor outing.
Weirdly enough, this is Matt Damon's second unexpected cameo in the last few years. In addition to his role as one of the Asgardian performers in Loki's bastardized depiction of Thor: The Dark World, he also pulled a similar move with his role as Dr. Mann in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar -- a secret part used in practically none of the film's marketing material and teased by nobody related to the project.
Of course, in the realm of Thor: Ragnarok, Matt Damon's appearance is a cameo in the most real sense. It has no tangible impact on the overarching plot, but it makes for a great surprise and offers up some of the movie's best laughs. With Asgard now officially destroyed, we will have to keep our fingers crossed that this Matt Damon character made it out to perform in one of the other eight realms.
Those of you who have seen Ragnarok (which should be all of you, did you not read the spoiler warning?) already know that Matt Damon's appearance in that riff on Thor: The Dark World is only one of several cameos. The Asgardian actor playing Thor is actually Chris Hemsworth's brother, Luke, and the narrator who portrays Odin is actually Sam Neill -- reuniting the Jurassic Park alum with Taika Waititi after their work on Hunt for the Wilderpeople. One thing is pretty clear: if being a supervillain doesn't work out, Loki may have a future ahead of him as a Hollywood casting director.
Thor: Ragnarok is now in theaters, and making an insane amount of money in the process. Make sure to check out the God of Thunder's latest adventure, and start gearing up for next year's release of Avengers: Infinity War on May 4, 2018. Until then, you can use our 2017 movie premiere guide and our 2018 movie premiere guide to keep yourself in-the-loop on anything and everything set to debut on the big screen over the next year!
