Thor: Love and Thunder Star Chris Hemsworth on Pressure to Get the Marvel Studios Sequel Right

Marvel star Chris Hemsworth is feeling the pressure for lightning to strike twice when he reunites with Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi on Thor: Love and Thunder. Set after the events of Avengers: Endgame, where Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) returned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the first time since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, the fourth Thor movie reunites Foster and the Asgardian God of Thunder (Hemsworth) on another galaxy-spanning adventure. Along for the ride are members of the Guardians of the Galaxy — among them Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Groot (Vin Diesel) — and the returning King of New Asgard, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), who made her own electrifying entrance in Ragnarok.

“There’s that same — if not more — pressure now to do that again,” Hemsworth told GQ Australia about the follow-up to the franchise-reinvigorating Ragnarok. “So there’s a little bit of exciting nervous energy that is motivating all of us to reach a little further and make sure we’re covering all bases and approaching the scene from every angle.”

It also means re-sparking the friendly rivalry with Pratt’s Star-Lord, who met Thor in Avengers: Infinity War before briefly reuniting in Endgame.

“The guy is wildly impressive with the spontaneity and the humor and the things he comes up with,” Hemsworth said of Pratt. “It’s both funny, inspiring, and intimidating.”

After Waititi reinvented the Thor franchise with the colorful and comedic Ragnarok, which paired the hammer-wielding Thor with Korg (Waititi) and work friend Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Hemsworth promised Love and Thunder would be “something different.”

“Very excited, excited to try to do something different, you know, the last three films we certainly, I think, pushed the envelope and created different versions of the character and now people expect some dramatic changes,” he said last year. “So, we’ve got our work cut out in that sense.”

With Thor and friends hounded by Gorr the God Butcher (The Dark Knight trilogy star Christian Bale), Marvel moviegoers can expect to see “some really crazy stuff in the film.”

“The next Thor film I’m doing, basically, we’re sort of launching ourselves again on this adventure film, really. That was the thing really that I loved about doing Ragnarok, it felt like we were just putting Thor on a really cool adventure,” Waititi told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “There’s always like new things to see and do, and this one, I think we’re gonna double down a lot on that and have it bigger, bolder and brighter.”

Marvel Studios opens Thor: Love and Thunder in theaters on May 6, 2022.