Thor: Ragnarok is arguably the funniest Marvel Studios movie yet, and it was a conscious decision on the part of the creative team to revamp the Thor franchise with more humor and improvisation, star Chris Hemsworth told Jimmy Fallon during a stop at The Tonight Show.
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“Look, I’d done it a few times, this character, and kind of got very sick of myself as that character, and I called up our director and I said, ‘Look, I’m sick of myself,’ and he said, ‘So am I,’” Hemsworth said of director Taiki Waititi, whom Hemsworth calls “one of the greatest directors out there.”
“We basically decided just to kind of reinvent the character and the world and do something completely different, and a lot of the film is highly improvised. It’s a lot more comedy. It’s a lot more crazy action. It’s a lot more kind of unpredictable and — there’s a great sense of pride I think with all of us, because we did want to do something different and we did, and people responded to it.”
Hemsworth, who appears as the Asgardian God of Thunder for his sixth time in Ragnarok, credits works he did in-between Marvel gigs as the impetus for bringing more humor to Thor, citing a 2015 Saturday Night Live hosting appearance and supporting roles in 2015’s Vacation revamp and 2016’s Ghostbusters reboot.
“I did Saturday Night Live, I did Vacation, I did Ghostbusters, and kind of was having fun improvising, and then thought, ‘God, we could do more of that in Thor,’ and thankfully, the Marvel guys said, ‘Yeah, go for it,’ and we did,” Hemsworth said. “And I got to say, laughing for six months, shooting the movie and mucking around with your mates, is the best way to go to work, if you can even call it that.”
Thor: Ragnarok arrived to Rotten Tomatoes as the highest-rated Marvel movie ever before dropping a bit to 94%, where it’s currently the second highest-rated Marvel Studios movie behind 2008’s Iron Man and just ahead of this summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. The rave reviews have lead the Thor threequel to reach projections of upwards of $400 million worldwide by Sunday.
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum and Anthony Hopkins, Thor: Ragnarok is now playing.
