Thor: Love and Thunder, the God of Thunder’s fourth solo MCU movie, is now out in theatres. Chris Hemsworth is back in the title role in the Marvel Studios sequel. He is reunited with director Taika Waititi and several cast members from the first Thor movie. This includes Dr. Jane Foster, who is played by Natalie Portman and has her own powerful abilities.
Even though people were excited about this movie coming out, reactions to it have been mixed.
Many people think it’s a fun summer blockbuster, but others have said things about the tone, script, and pace that they don’t like. In fact, the way the story moves has been a big problem for audiences. The movie is just under two hours long, so some scenes and characters might not have had enough time to shine because the plot moved so quickly.
Many fans think that Waititi could almost do whatever he wanted with Love and Thunder because Thor: Ragnarok was such a huge hit. But it looks like this might not be true.
According to Joanna Robinson of The Ringer-Verse podcast (via ComicBook), the top people at Marvel Studios told Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi that he had to keep the movie’s runtime under two hours, which limited how many scenes could be in the fourth installment:
“Taika not being able to do anything about this is not the case at all. He had more freedom than he did with Ragnarok, but this movie had to be done in less than two hours. This movie is under two hours long, so a lot of stuff had to be taken out.”
Robinson also said that this rule meant that a lot of things had to be cut, like character appearances and the idea that the bad guy Gorr was supposed to “kill a bunch of other people”:
“There is proof that Taika is not in director’s cuts. Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey were all supposed to be in the movie, and Simon Russell Beale was supposed to play Dionysus. He only had two lines, but he has an above-the-line credit, so we know he was supposed to be in this more. Gorr was definitely supposed to come in and kill a lot of other people.”
Why would Marvel Studios do that?
It’s interesting to think about why Marvel would make Taika Waititi shorten the movie. There are a number of MCU movies that are much longer than two hours. Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home are two of the most popular examples.
Maybe Waititi’s first draughts of the movie were much too long?
There have been rumors that there was an early version of Love and Thunder that was four hours long.
With a shorter movie, Marvel and Disney could show it in more theatres on the same day, which would mean they would make more money. This doesn’t seem like something that Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, would do.
He probably wouldn’t tell a creator so directly that they couldn’t do what they wanted with an MCU project, so maybe the choice was out of his hands? In any
Thor 4 is exactly 1 hour and 59 minutes long, so whoever said it should be under 2 hours was serious.
Waititi has said on the record that what fans see is what they get, so there is no chance of a director’s cut. But this shouldn’t come as much of a shock. Marvel Studios has never made extended versions or director’s cuts of any of their movies.
A few years ago, on the other side of the fence, DC and Warner Bros. famously and forcefully kept the theatre version of Justice League under two hours, which many people say was a big mistake.
Thor: Love and Thunder, from Marvel Studios, is now in theatres, no matter what the situation is with the length of the movie and this rule from the higher-ups.
