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Thor: Ragnarok was a retcon (and Chris Hemsworth is on board with Endgame's Thor)

(note: will rework parts of this post, after watching interviews. sneak peek: it was definitely Marvel that wanted the new tone for Thor and wanted to "showcase Chris's comic abilities"; after the reshoots were done and added in and they thought the length would suffice, but the film was still a bit too short; they edited back in previously cut jokes; also, there might be so many jokes in the final film because early cuts were boring when only the first ten mins. were funny; suggesting that the film failed without the almost non-stop humor???;  also lol they brought in science consultants, so how was ragnarok such a mess with sakaar's weird time-space magically being aligned with Hela's actions on Asgard while Thor and Loki were there; despite allegedly moving slower all the other time??? https://www.houstonpress.com/film/marvel-science-meet-the-physicist-called-in-to-consult-on-superhero-movies-9443211 )

Okay, so Waititi claims, in this interview, that it was Marvel who wanted to change the franchise:

Waititi: (…) To Marvel's credit, they were very supportive, bringing me in and saying, "We can't keep doing the same thing. This is going in a wildly new direction. Let's hire a New Zealander to do this, for start", I mean, that's, you know, that's film suicide.

Hewitt: *chuckles*

Waititi: So they, really, they were turning Ragnarok the whole franchise, really.

(I still can't understand the next few things they said in the interview, though, apologies!)

I'm going to shameless copy-paste from here:

http://collider.com/thor-ragnarok-differences-from-previous-thor-movies/#marvel

"When I saw [Thor: The Dark World], I was happy with it but I thought the next one's got to be more fun," star Chris Hemsworth stated, "In the second film, the story didn't lend itself to many opportunities to have moments of humor and I've missed that."

There were two mandates, right from the outset, on Thor: Ragnarok. a) Make it funnier and b) Embrace the action-adventure aspects of the universe. Per producer Brad Winderbaum: "There were certain things that Kevin [Feige] wanted… [He] definitely wanted [to bring out] the comedic side of Chris, who's an awesome comedy actor. And [he also wanted] a big fun space epic that's not married to Earth. Just a fun adventure film that has big stakes, but also has a breakneck speed and takes you on a crazy adventure."

On Avengers: Age of Ultron, Winderbaum & Feige noted how Thor stole the biggest laughs in the film. "He won scenes even with Tony Stark," Winderbaum stated, "We wanted to base a movie around that empowered, smart Thor – who the other cosmic figures in his mythology would maybe be a little bit unprepared for."

Knowing that Thor: Ragnarok needed a far lighter touch, the producers turned to an unusual directorial hire – the New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, fresh off the indie What We Do in Shadows [Hunt for Wilderpeople was still in post-production at the time]. "When I saw Boy, [Taika] became my number one pick," Winderbaum revealed "It had a combination that we always are striving for at Marvel, which is a great sense of humor but also moments of real drama and melancholy that the characters had to deal with… His movies deal with real serious themes, but you always leave feeling uplifted."

Adds Chris Hemsworth – "[Taika] strikes this beautiful balance of humor and heart. It's all grounded in a reality, but it's fun and enjoyable.  That's what we're going to do with [Thor: Ragnarok]. This could be a flat out comedy if we wanted or we could pull it back and meet it in the middle."

For Waititi transitioning from the indie comedy world into big budget action filmmaking didn't present too much of a challenge. Instead the filmmaker stressed his main difficulty was pulling away from the other two Thor films. "For me this is my 'Thor One'" he stated, "I've seen the other films and I respect them, but I can't spend too much time thinking about this as a three-quel because then I'll get tied up too much in respecting what went before and respecting what's to come after. [Thor: Ragnarok] has to be a standalone film because this could be the only time I do this. I just want to make it [my] version of a Marvel film in the best way possible."

So what does a Taika Waititi Marvel film look like? A whole lot of improv. Waititi will often stand just off-camera, shouting new lines at actors, encouraging them to go off-book and mess with the material. "I've never improvised so much with this character," Hemsworth said "Taika will just yell suggestions while rolling. 'Try this, try that.' That has really changed the game."

And who better to embody these changes than Thor himself. Having now spent a couple years on Earth with Tony Stark, Thor's picked up on this thing called 'humor.' "He understands sarcasm in a way he didn't in the first film," Winderbaum revealed "We're bringing all of that personality into space with him. It's a flip on the fish out of water because now he's not the butt of the jokes, wandering around, not realizing why things are the way they are.  He's the one looking at the world and bringing a certain sarcasm and irony to this cosmic landscape."

Waititi actually looked to a completely different character as a reference point for Thor: Big Trouble in Little China's Jack Burton, joking "What's the version of Thor just wanting to get his truck back?" The most important thing for Waititi was to make sure Thor was the best character in his own franchise and that he was really tested in this upcoming sequel.

Waititi added, "I love heroes that really go through ordeals and then come out the other end completely changed. They come out the other side and they've been through the ringer.  We do a lot to [Thor] in the film… To me, Ragnarok means stripping down the establishment and then building it up in a new way. 'Ragnarok' is what we're doing to the character and to the franchise."

Waititi expresses disbelief and gratitude at how much freedom and support he was granted by Marvel with this film:

Hewitt: Absolutely. As the director coming onto the third part of a franchise, the movie seventeenth, I think, now, of the MCU, as well- Is it a struggle as well do you want to do, while at the same time you have to pay lip service and you have to pay service as well to the films that came before?

Waititi: Yeah, a little bit. You do have to acknowledge they exist, in interviews, but, um-

Hewitt: *laughs* Technically they did exist-

Waititi: Pretty much, in the moment. I was lucky enough they didn't force me to acknowledge things- there were certain things in the film, like the play, which makes fun of the scene in The Dark World where Loki dies, but there's a point to that play, sort of to recap what happened, but also to tell the audience, "This is not what you think it's going to be, this film is not going to be a continuation of that. It's its own thing, and what you think you expect from this film ends at this play."

Hewitt: *chuckles* Yeah, precisely.

Waititi: And then it goes on, off we go, we're doing our own thing, and that was really good. There's always a pressure coming into a film like this, but for me, you know, you think, well! Seventeen films! You know, they've done pretty well, and I'm the Jenga block, and I'm pulling that one Jenga block out that's gonna topple the entire empire, and I think they early on I just decided that I don't care, yeah.

Hewitt: *laughs*

Waititi: That's not my problem. I just have to make this movie possible and hope for- that they'll let me steer the ship, I mean, I'm just captaining a ship, I'm holding a ship, and just blindly steering it into whatever sorta sparkly, cool-looking thing I can-

Hewitt: *laughs*

Waititi: (cont.) -not realizing much of those things are icebergs, and Marvel are really- are the ones standing behind me, their hands on the wheel: "Hmm, I'm just gonna maybe get out of this way, just between those icebergs, how about that". So it's really kind of like being a kid and you getting your parents help you do your thing, and you think you are doing it yourself, but they're really helping you.

And:

Waititi: I mean, there are jokes in this movie that have no business being in cinema, let alone in a Thor film, and I'm astounded that they would- that they let me put in there. For instance, the biggest one for me is, the end of the film, the destruction of Asgard should be, in any of these films, it should be the most poignant, emotional and dramatic moment in the film, and my character, Korg, he comes in and says, "The damage is not too big, you know, we can come back here as the foundations are strong and rebuild this place!" *sounds of collapse* And the entire thing blows up! "Oh, you know, these foundations are gone, so…" The fact that they let me put that in and just, and the kind- the entire thing we built towards was just amazing instrument to that studio, who are like, "You know what? This just won't do what you're all expecting."

Hewitt: *laughs*

Waititi: For some they're such, "Give me cool jokes," but also just such weird tangential jokes which are very usual to what I've done in the past, that fit into my films, especially my independent films and my start-up comedy, that I'm really just so stoked that has made it into this gigantic Hollywood blockbuster.

(Transcript of the Empire Podcast interview here, shameless plug:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XejZY5P7z4W9qQ1Z4CY9zL1XikG4wAEtlCjmJHwyfHg/edit)

Chris Hemsworth did express, back when Ragnarok came out in theaters, that he enjoyed his work in the first Thor movie, but then he felt like there were walls in terms of what he could do with his character afterwards, and expressed relief at letting loose in Ragnarok.

More recently, with Endgame finally out in theaters and the spoiler press embargo completely lifted, Vanity Fair published their interview with Hemsworth, made while he was filming Endgame.

In it he repeated how he had felt happy about playing Thor in Thor, but supremely unsatisfied with the next films, and explained that it was him who approached Kevin Feige (chief of Marvel Studios) and asked him to be allowed to revamp Thor's character, and happily expressed that he felt that in Endgame he was finally playing Thor as he was meant to be instead of how he was expected to be.

So it seems that the chronology was:

1. Hemsworth approached Kevin Feige and asked/begged to revamp Thor's character.

2. Feige agreed because Thor 1 and Thor 2 underperformed financially compared to the rest of the MCU, barely making back twice their stated budget. And because Thor 2 was at the time "the MCU film with the lowest rating on either Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, finding few genuine champions among critics. In spite of that film featuring Hemsworth as well as the always-charming Tom Hiddleston as Loki, The Dark World felt literally and metaphorically dark and grim, a far cry from the generally colorful and exciting Marvel movies."

3. Waitti was brought aboard, and given relatively large amounts of creative freedom? "Yes, yes, you can do your own thing, you don't have to pick up from where Thor 1 and Thor 2 left off, sure".

4. Infinity War's drama-thon rolled in, requiring the more serious Thor, so they had to tone new Thor down and give us back the more serious Thor.

4a. If Endgame was filmed simultaneously as alleged, Endgame's time-skip did allow for new Thor to return. Edit: Correction, IW and Endgame weren't filmed simultaneously, but rather back to back.

5. All of these three films (Ragnarok, IW, Endgame) were massive successes, so Thor 4 is greenlit.

I don't know how much and when the script writers (Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher L. Yost and Stephany Folsom) played into this, though.

Eric Pearson's take:

There were tons of challenges. I came in when there were so many puzzle pieces already there. When I got there, they were kind of finalizing Cate Blanchett for Hela. They wanted to use Skurge, they wanted to use Valkyrie. They knew the Hulk was going to be in there. They dumped all the puzzle pieces out in front of me and said, "Build a puzzle," basically. Things that stuck out from the very beginning, the meeting with Kevin and Taika and Brad was, Taika was very much like, "I want this to be fun. I want Thor to be the coolest character. It's a Thor movie. He should be the coolest character." And, "Do not be restrained by anything from the previous two movies." We talked out the logic of it, too. Even Thor's voice. He's been hanging around Earth a lot, he's been around Tony Stark a lot. He's going to be picking up other stuff and have a different way of talking. Where they left off in The Dark World, he was kind of going off to do his own thing, and we were picking him up an indefinite amount of time after that. He's been out there on his own, finding himself, and we find what he found basically. This was the new, Thor 2.0, I guess.

(Pearson seemed on board with making Thor "fun again", for what it's worth.)

We also know that Pearson was struggling with making the script engaging, and that he decided to make Hela Thor's sister to give the story the weight it needed, and because that seemed to fit better with her relationship to Odin and Asgard:

Pearson was nearing the climactic showdown between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the indomitable Asgardian goddess of death, Hela (Cate Blanchett), and the stakes didn't seem high enough. That's when the idea struck: What if Hela was actually Thor's blood relative? Specifically, his sister.

In the comics, Hela is "allegedly" the daughter of Loki, Thor's shape-shifting, trick-loving brother played by Tom Hiddleston in the movies, and the sorceress Angrboda. But that had never been the plan for the screen treatment. "We had decided that she's like this ghost of Asgard's past that's come back," Pearson explained to Yahoo Entertainment. "She represents the kind of violent way that they won their kingdom that Odin's been trying to cover up."

On one of those late nights, Pearson encountered Brad Winderbaum, VP of production and development at Marvel Studios who himself had climbed company ranks, first as a unit producer on Iron Man 3, then as a co-producer on Ant-Man, and now as an executive producer on Ragnarok. "I was like, 'We're getting to this moment, and it just doesn't have the impact,'" Pearson recalled telling him. "I'm like 'With all this stuff, she should be Thor's sister. And that should be the thing that [represents] what it is to rule Asgard, his family, what he's been told, what he hasn't been told.'"

Winderbaum offered Pearson, who had previously contributed rewrites on Ant-Man and worked on various Marvel One Shot shorts but was getting his first go at a full feature, some sage advice. "Brad told me, 'Don't tell anyone. Just write it into the script. If we pitch it, it's so much more likely to get shot down. Just write it into the movie.'"

Pearson initially gave the reveal to the scarred and indifferent Asgardian warrior Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), who told Thor in Hulk's suite, 'She's your sister.' The script, mythology-busting twist included, then made its way to the desk of Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige.

Pearson was terrified. "When they did that first read, I was like, 'Oh man, if they don't like it, we're screwed.'"

Obviously, they liked it. "Brad showed me Kevin's note and [the reveal] was circled with "WHOA!" [spelled out next to it]," Pearson recounted proudly. Eventually the revelation would be delivered via Odin (Anthony Hopkins), the cinematic father of Thor and Hela, because, as Pearson explained, they wanted to make the most out of the Asgardian king's limited screen time and make Valkyrie's role in the film less Thor-reliant (more on that below).

In the end, it was well worth the gamble. "I was just so happy that it played out because we were taking a risk," said Pearson.

So it seems that Pearson wrote the script (which might or might not be what Jim McCann then adapted into the Junior novel version of Thor: Ragnarok?), but the retconned Thor and retconned Loki with their retconned backstory that we see in the film seem to be mostly the product of TW and CH's improvisations.

After all, Waititi said that roughly 80 percent of the film was improvised:

(video here)

"Why come to work and stress out?" Waititi told MTV News' Josh Horowitz of the "very loose and collaborate mood" he fostered on the set of the third Thor movie. "I'm trying to bring my tone and sensibility from my other films."

In doing so, Waititi would encourage his cast to play music on set, dance, eat together, and, most importantly, improv. According to the acclaimed indie director, 80 percent of Thor: Ragnarok was improvised, or ad-libbed.

"My style of working is 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!'" he said. "I'll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don't care."

It's that kind of attitude and loose style that landed Waititi the job in the first place, and given the film's rapturous reception in Hall H, it's clearly paying off for Marvel — even though in the moment, there were numerous times when Waititi and the cast thought they were all going to be fired.

"Mark Ruffalo would be finished shooting for the day," Waititi recalled, "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?'"

Waititi explicitly set out to reboot the MCU franchise:

Hewitt: I know, this is- The thing's just planned ahead too much, it's ridiculous. But it's a movie as well that has- as well as the hilarious tone, it has a lot of death in it. Odin dies-

Waititi: Yeah.

Hewitt: -the Warriors Three are unceremoniously dispatched-

Waititi: And buildings are razed.

Hewitt: Absolutely.

Waititi: Within seconds.

Hewitt: *laughs*

Waititi: I think poor Fandral doesn't even get a line.

Hewitt: He doesn't. He doesn't, no.

Waititi: Ah-

Hewitt: Can you talk about that?

Waititi: I think he just squealed.

Hewitt: He does, yeah.

Waititi: Yeah, I kinda really talked about that, other than we just wanted to get rid of the old and, you know, usher in the new.

Hewitt: Hmm. Yeah.

Waititi: And I feel like, that's really Ragnarok, isn't it? That's the destruction of the old, and the rebirth-

Hewitt: Mm-hmm.

Waititi: (cont.) -of the old world, and what this entire film is what it was, as the destruction of Thor 1 and 2, and everything you really felt like you knew from those films, and the recreation of this thing which I feel stands alone, by itself, even though, you know, watching the first two films, it gives you something to come into, that you can, you know, have some cool little things to reference.

Hewitt: Yes.

Waititi: (cont.) In Ragnarok, I feel like – for me, at least – this is like a new Thor 1, that's like a reboot but without having to recast everyone.

Hewitt: *laughs* Were there more scenes with the Warriors Three? Or was that- [TN: They speak over each other in the next few lines.]

Waititi: Nope.

Hewitt: (cont.) -was that a lot-

Waititi: Nope.

Hewitt: That was it for the Three-

Waititi: Yeah, there were never any other scenes.

(He also mentions that they wanted to get Lady Sif in, but Alexander's TV show conflicted in schedules.)

He and Hemsworth share credit for the improvisations to the script:

Hewitt: Absolutely, and your secret weapon, your biggest weapon, I get, is Hemsworth as well.

Waititi: Yeah.

Hewitt: Who we've known for a while, he can be funny, you know, in the original Thor when he walks into the pet store and demands a horse, he's just always been funny; he's great in Ghostbusters, but in this one you seem to really let him cut loose.

Waititi: Yeah, and I'd like to say some crazy big secret, but all it was was just letting him be more like himself, 'cause he is that charming, very caring, and magnetic person who you want to follow into battle and you know will take care of you on a space adventure and, yeah, he just hasn't really had the chance. I'm surprised that the filmmakers hadn't really explored that and used it because it's such an asset to the film, having his natural sense of humor and charm 'cause he is very smart as well – he'll come to set and have new ideas. The "get help" gag.

Hewitt: Oh, really?

Waititi: That's his idea, yeah.

Hewitt: Wow.

Waititi: He came and let me know, "No, let's do some something else at the elevator, you know, when it comes out." So there's lots of things in the film which come straight from Australia import, and so yeah I think it's- he's a very, very lucky to have someone like that who's very invested in the emotionality of the scenes but also wanting to have fun and make sure the audience- he understands audience very well, he's always "the audience will love this right now, you know, when this happens, they'll be happy", you know, so.

Hewitt: That's fantastic, 'cause I-

Waititi: He's a good partner in crime to have.

edit:

I can't believe I forgot this super important bit:

Hewitt: You have this idea in the film as well of the timeline, which is interesting, see how this timeline with Hela essentially being Thor's- Thor and Loki's sister, which is a departure as well from the comic books-

Waititi: It is, yeah.

Hewitt: (cont.) -and that's the idea of the timeline before Thor really knew what was going on, the idea the institutions seeking up to grow, to know and revere as he was growing up, were essentially a lie- that's a big introduction at that late stage at the end, see, could you talk about that?

Waititi: Yeah, well, I think that the character about Thor, he is essentially a rich kid from outer space, isn't he?

Hewitt: *chuckles*

Waititi: He's had it all, so how do you get the audience to relate to someone like that? You've got to strip him down and you've got to take everything away from him, like the hammer and his world, eventually, his family, and I think it's a really good Hero's Journey to find out that everything he's held dear were being a lie and he isn't the firstborn and he's not even officially, technically, not the next in line for the throne.

That last paragraph… doesn't that sound familiar?

You've got to strip him down and you've got to take everything away from him, like the hammer and his world, eventually, his family

to find out that everything he's held dear were being a lie and he isn't the firstborn Odin's blood, and he's not even officially, technically, not the next in line for the throne.

edit 2:

If you wonder why the insistence on so many jokes, sometimes even out of place right on the heels of serious moments as Waititi himself admitted?

It might be because the early cuts of the film were boring when they didn't time the jokes right.

What does it say about the strength of this film if it's boring without the near-constant stream of jokes?

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Source: https://alstee.tumblr.com/post/186387236199/thor-ragnarok-was-a-retcon-and-chris-hemsworth

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