Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: film, marvel, Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok – Taika Waititi Explains Why Hela's Entrance Was Changed [SPOILERS]

Sometimes reshoots happen and we don't even notice. Sometimes reshoots happen, and it's very, very obvious. In the case of Thor: Ragnarok was pretty obvious something was amiss when Hela (Cate Blanchett) destroying Mjolnir went from a New York alley to a field.

Director Taika Waititi explained why they decided to make the change to Yahoo! Movies UK; however, it will require a spoiler warning. This is a first act spoiler, so not huge, but still a spoiler.

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So Odin (Anthony Hopkins</b) dies in the scene before Hela shows up. His death is the reason she's able to escape at all. The early reports had Odin dressed like a hobo and wandering the streets like a crazy person. It turned out that wasn't exactly the tone Waititi ended up wanting by the time the movie started to really come together.

"We wanted the scene to have more of an emotional resonance around Odin and the sons," Waititi tells Yahoo. "We wanted it to be a very special moment between them, where Odin (Anthony Hopkins) acknowledges Loki (Tom Hiddleston) as his son, and the three of them [are] together, there in that moment.

"It's the first time we've really seen them all together in the same room alone, connecting, and you just can't f***ing do that in New York, you know? You can't even do that in real life in New York, have an emotional connection in an alleyway, so that was a very distracting environment in the end. In the end we thought it's actually better to give more weight to it, and give it the sort of time that it deserved, and give it the sort of quietness that it really deserved because everything up until then had been such a fast-paced journey."

The movie does hit the ground running and doesn't have very many moments, at all, where we slow down.

"Thor was on Muspelheim, he gets up to Asgard, then suddenly they're in New York, and [with] Doctor Strange, and then they're in an alleyway," Waititi adds, "We just needed to chill out for a second, and have that moment, because the rest of the film basically just runs at a clip. The audiences get to relax and have some emotional connection to some of the characters. It was very important that we took it away from New York."

It turns out that test audiences agreed that the scene didn't entirely work.

"[Odin] was originally in New York, and people couldn't understand why – rightly so. It just didn't feel very authentic that Odin was wandering around New York, he's one of the most powerful beings in the universe, and he's wandering around New York, kind of lost. What we wanted to do, I guess, was to honour that he was a powerful king and he had taken himself to Norway, to the cliffs and was waiting this whole time, whereas before it seemed too sand and too tragic that he was there, and dying in New York. I thought, what a pitiful end, you know?"

Thor: Ragnarok is a moving that really lacks an emotional heart and if they turned the death of Odin into a joke would really hurt the movie.

Summary: Imprisoned, the mighty Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must fight for survival and race against time to prevent the all-powerful Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.

Thor: Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi, stars Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Idris Elba, and Mark Ruffalo. It is out now in the UK and will be released on November 3rd in the US.

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