Taika Waititi Sounds Like He Didn’t Care About ‘Thor’ At All Before (Surprise!) Directing One Of The More Well-Received MCU Movies In Existence

When Thor: Ragnarok arrived in 2017, it was a breath of fresh air for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The franchise was then 17 films deep and starting to creak under its own weight. On top of that, Chris Hemsworth’s solo films were not the strongest point following the tepid response to Thor: The Dark World. However, all of that changed when New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi delivered a wild, metal romp that reinvigorated the character.

While it seems like Waititi arrived at Marvel with a grand creative vision, the Next Goal Wins director recently revealed that working with Marvel was not on his to-do list. Waititi candidly admitted that he only took the job because both he and Marvel could have used it. Waititi needed the money and the studio needed to pull the Thor movies out of a tailspin.

“You know what I had no interest in doing one of those films,” Waititi told the Smartless podcast via IndieWire. “It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur. But I was poor and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.'”

“And ‘Thor,’ let’s face it — it was probably the least popular franchise. I never read ‘Thor’ comics as a kid. That was the comic I’d pick up and be like ‘Ugh.’ And then I did some research on it, and I read one ‘Thor’ comic or 18 pages, or however long they are.”

Waititi added that he took Marvel reaching out to him as a sign the franchise didn’t know where to go next.

“I think there was no place left for them to go with that,” Waititi said. “I thought, ‘Well, they’ve called me in, this is really the bottom of the barrel.'”

To the surprise of everyone, Thor: Ragnarok quickly earned its spot as one of the best MCU movies. However, Waititi’s follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder, was… not as well-received. The director has already signaled that he won’t be back for Thor 5, and Chris Hemsworth has stated that he’s only interested in returning to the character if the tone is “drastically different.”

Thor: Ragnarok is available for streaming on Disney+.