Marvel Studios' Thor: The Dark World is generally regarded as one of the low (lowest?) points of the MCU, but a lot of fans were still concerned that Taika Waititi would "ruin" the character when he was enlisted to helm Thor: Ragnarök.
Ironically, the threequel is now widely viewed as the best Thor movie, but Waititi remembers the online backlash when he was announced as the movie's director.
"That really propelled me into the nerdosphere, if you will," the filmmaker recalled during a new video interview with Entertainment Weekly. "I was living a really lovely, peaceful life, and as soon as I did this, well boy, did the nerds come for me. They said, 'This guy's gonna ruin this. He's gonna ruin Thor!'"
"It's like, 'What, you mean again?'" he added. "And they were like, 'He's gonna ruin this for everyone, Thor's so cool!' And I said to them on Twitter — before I left Twitter — I said, 'You don't know what you want until I give it to you.'"
Again, Ragnarök was very well-received, but Waititi's next Thor movie... not so much.
While Ragnarök injected a bit of much-needed(?) humor into the franchise and the somewhat bland Asgardian hero of the title, for many, Love and Thunder took the silliness too far. While the movie was frequently funny, the perception seems to be that an overreliance on comedy offset the more dramatic elements of the story, and some found it difficult to take the sequel seriously on any level.
The Jojo Rabbit director didn't mention the response to Love and Thunder (which did perform quite well at the box office), choosing to note some of the positives instead.
"One of my favorite things about this is that I so love Natalie [Portman]. Also, Christian Bale. I mean, it's Christian Bale. Also, Guns N' Roses, a lot of the songs. I did meet Axl Rose once, actually. He had a lot of stories to tell, which I will not share."
Marvel is rumored to be developing a fifth Thor movie, but Waititi has confirmed that he will not return to direct.
Thor: Love and Thunder finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor’s surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor.
Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.