Thor: Love and Thunder Director Teases Film’s “Ridiculous” Norse Mythology Roots

Thor: Love and Thunder is on the cusp of being released, bringing a wild and highly-anticipated new story into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The trailers and marketing materials for the film have indicated that its tone will be undoubtedly silly and campy, with larger-than-life interpretations of both Marvel lore and Norse mythology. During a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Thor: Love and Thunder director and co-writer Taika Waititi dove into some of those references, and argued that they combine into a film that feels like everything “a bunch of six-year-olds” would want out of a movie.

“When you look at this film, it’s like we asked a bunch of six-year-olds what they wanted in a movie, and we just said yes to everything,” Waititi explained. “It is so ridiculous. There’s a Viking ship, being towed through space by two giant goats, and that’s what Thor rides around on in this movie. And that’s from the mythology! So I get people who are like ‘It’s too much, Taika.’ But no, we took it from the mythology.”

Waititi also cited an incredibly specific example of how Norse mythology portrayed Loki, and joked that it should have made it into the MCU already.

“Loki at one point turned himself into a female horse, had sex with a serpent, got pregnant, and gave birth to an eight legged horse,” Waititi explained. “Why was that not in Avengers? We’re gonna start a petition, we need to see Tom Hiddleston pregnant with a horse.

Thor: Love and Thunder finds Thor on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor’s surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.

“[Taika] would flip through and read that run while he was doing Ragnarok.” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige previously revealed in an interview. “And I think when he agreed to come back and do another Thor, he was like, ‘How do we–?’ This is a very big movie that’ll be folding in a lot of elements. That is a hugely important part of it. He pitched it to us, and we were totally in. We loved it. We’d been in touch with Natalie. She’s part of the MCU family and we put she and Taika together. It took one meeting and she agreed to do it.”

Are you excited to check out Thor: Love and Thunder? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Thor: Love and Thunder will be released exclusively in theaters on July 8th.