Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, who performed rock-like Kronan revolutionist Korg in the Thor threequel, has reprised the role for Marvel Contest of Champions’ new Revolution 2.0 motion comic.
Videos by ComicBook.com
In the recruitment video, Korg and new recruitment officer Miek enlist Valkyrie and a three-headed alien (one of those heads also belonged to Waititi in Ragnarok). Three champions are picked at random: Red Skull, Heimdall, and Original Doug, who is dead.
Korg’s fate during and after the events of Avengers: Infinity War are unknown. The easy-going alien was last seen aboard the Statesman with Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who were soon attacked by Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his Black Order.
“I think we should say that several Asgardians have escaped,” co-writer Stephen McFeely said in the Infinity War commentary.
“Several Asgardians have escaped,” director Joe Russo confirmed. “I have gone on record saying Valkyrie has escaped with some of the Asgardians.” Teased co-writer Christopher Markus, “All I can say is pray for Korg.”
The scene-stealing Korg emerged as a breakout character in Ragnarok, which deviated from the Shakespearean norm of the Thor franchise at the behest of star Chris Hemsworth, who thought the franchise had grown stale following a middling second statement.
Korg proved difficult to realize for Ragnarok Visual Effects Supervisor Jake Morrison, who told ComicBook.com Waititi’s penchant for improvisation added to the difficulties in bringing the CG-created character to life.
“Once Taika discovered that he could just come up with new punch lines and zingers in the edit suite, was when my life got a lot harder,” Morrison joked.
Comedy is even harder to pull off when gags are coming from a seven-something-foot-tall rock monster, and having Korg look and act believably as a living being came out of what Morrison called “sort of impossible tasks.”
“I think it’s one of those thing where if we’d failed… it was almost 2,700 shots in the whole film, which I think weighs in about 98% of the film went through the visual effects department,” Morrison said.
“It’s always these small pieces sort of add up on top of each other, and we were actually aware that if we failed on hopefully the realism, on anything, and popped the audience out of a story, then we basically would have lost them.”
Thor next returns in Avengers 4, out May 3, 2019.
