You wouldn’t know it watching Thor: Ragnarok, but Taika Waititi hasn’t been a long-time fan of the character. In fact, he really had no interest in Thor or Marvel as a whole before being tapped to direct Ragnarok. He wasn’t very familiar with the character’s lore, and superhero movies were never something he really wanted to do. He’s always fancied himself an auteur director.
In a recent interview with SmartLess, he talked a bit more in-depth about what his motivations were for hopping into the series.
You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films. 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.
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“Thor, let’s face it — it was probably like the least popular franchise,” Waititi added. “I never read Thor comics when I was 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. I was still baffled by this character.”
He made it clear that he thought Marvel was taking a risk on him for Thor because they didn’t have any other ideas for the character. Moving forward, he’s going to work on other films long before doing another Thor film. He technically has a Star Wars movie in the pipeline, but it’s likely he’ll continue doing personal projects for a long while before it sees the light of day.
Waititi’s new film, Next Goal Wins, is now playing in theaters.
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