How the 'Ghostbusters' Reboot Influenced 'Thor: Ragnarok'

06/05/2018 07:06 am EDT

Thor: Ragnarok arguably breathed a new kind of life into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it sounds like another film is partially thanks to it.

Chris Hemsworth, who stars as the franchise's titular Norse God, recently detailed the steps of his career in an interview with Esquire. As he revealed, his first real experience improvising on a film set was in the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, something that made him more comfortable with doing it on Ragnarok.

"[Ghostbusters] was some of the most fun I've ever had on set, and probably my real jumping-in point to improvisation." Hemsworth explained. "Prior to that, I'd always wanted to be very confident in the fact that I knew exactly what was on the page, and I had my options worked out and I knew where the scene was going to go. Playing it safe, to a degree. And we just threw all that out the window in that film, and it really opened up a whole other side to my sort of process, I think."

"It does [happen on the Marvel sets.]" Hemsworth continued. "From Thor 3, definitely, it became hugely improvised. And I'm so glad I've been able to work with Paul prior to that. And I've done Saturday Night Live a couple of times; I have a movie called Vacation. So by the time I got to Thor 3, I was incredibly enthusiastic to do it. Taika Waititi, the director, had the same opinion. And we carried that into [Avengers: Infinity War]."

Granted, Ragnarok wasn't the first Marvel film to involve improv, with even a large amount of the first Iron Man essentially flying by the seat of its pants. But as fans saw when Ragnarok debuted, the film went out of its way to include those more carefree moments.

"My style of working is," Waititi explained in an interview last year. "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. Mark Ruffalo would be finished shooting for the day. 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?'"

And for some of the more stubborn factors of the nerd community, this notion that Ghostbusters positively impacted Thor: Ragnarok will probably be jarring. The all-female reboot continues to be met with a deluge of backlash, despite having a generally-positive impact on those who saw it.

"Before Ghostbusters, I had this sort of lovely relationships with the Internet," director Paul Feig, who would like to direct a superhero movie, explained late last year. "If I could go back in the time machine, I just wouldn't read it ... The biggest mistake I made was I took on one of the trolls. [Women tell me] 'If I had this movie when I was a kid, I would have been an engineer right now.'"

What do you think of the relationship between Ghostbusters and Thor: Ragnarok? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Fans can see Hemsworth's Thor next in Avengers 4, which will land in theaters on May 3, 2019.

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