What kind of scene needs to be shot 20 different ways?
A big action setpiece? For "Thor: Love and Thunder," it was something a little more
emotional. Join us as we figure out what scene was so hard to get right, and chase down what else
wound up on the cutting room floor. Warning: spoilers for "Thor: Love and Thunder" ahead.
Filmmaking can be complicated. Sometimes what looks like a simple shot that lasts
just a few seconds can take days, weeks, or months to get right.
Pickup shots will happen months or weeks after a movie has wrapped, and
reshoots can sometimes take place weeks after a movie is otherwise in the can.
Movies that are technically complicated and filled with post-production work and CGI shots, like the
latest MCU entry "Thor: Love and Thunder," are sometimes broken down into hundreds upon hundreds
of different shots. There's a reason it takes months for some films to make it to theaters.
"It's been an absolute disaster, but that's just the way it is on my films."
Between the retakes, rewritten scenes, bits that end up on the cutting room floor,
and the fact that sometimes studios will demand reshoots,
there are occasionally whole storylines that can end up being lost in the editing process.
In a recent interview with IndieWire, actress Natalie Portman revealed that
director Taika Waititi shot one particular moment in "Thor:
Love and Thunder" in 20 different ways. Indiewire didn't say what scene it was,
possibly to avoid spoilers, but Portman noted that it was very emotional, saying,
"The interesting thing was how we had room to workshop them.
We filmed 20 different versions of [one key scene]. There's a few pivotal emotional scenes,
but we did really, really different things, many different times."
It's quite possible that she was referring to one emotional
part that involves Portman's Jane Foster and Chris Hemsworth's Thor breaking up.
"Quite a reunion, huh?"
Portman also described some scenes that were deleted from the movie's final cut. The actress
revealed later in the interview that certain scenes with Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie and Jane,
which help explain Jane and Valkyrie's friendship after Jane picks up Thor's mantle,
weren't included. Portman said,
"There were whole sequences, planets, characters, and worlds that didn't end
up in the movie that were hilarious and amazing and [that] we spent a lot of time and energy on,
and certainly the entire crew also designing and conceiving."
Seems like a director's cut may be in order.
While we don't know for certain just how many scenes were cut from "Love and
Thunder," we do know that at one point, there was a four-hour cut of the film.
Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth spoke about the cut to Collider, where Waititi explained,
"It was about four hours. And a lot of time on set. [...] in the moment, you're like, 'This is
the greatest thing that anyone's ever filmed in the history of filming things.' And you get into
the edit. You're like, 'I still kind of like it.' And then, after about six months of it being in
the movie, you realize it was fun on the day but it doesn't have any business being in the movie."
What kinds of things could we expect to see in a four-hour-long "Thor:
Love and Thunder?" According to Christian Bale who plays Gorr the God Butcher, there were two
previous MCU actors who made appearances that wound up getting cut. Bale told Prensaescenario,
"I got to work with Peter Dinklage. That's not in the final film, but I got to work with him.
He's fantastic. I got to work with Jeff Goldblum. He's not in the final film either. As you see,
a lot of stuff ends up on the cutting room floor even though it is beautiful, brilliant stuff."
It's unclear what kind of interactions Eitri and the Grandmaster would have had with Gorr,
but it's a good bet things wouldn't have shaken out too well for them.
Thanks to a lawsuit currently in process, we know actress Lena Headey had a role that was
ultimately cut, too. She's never appeared in the MCU before, so it's unclear who she
would've played. For our money, she would've made an exceptional Hera against Russell Crowe's Zeus.
One can only hope we'll see all of these
unseen cameos one day. It would make for some great bonus content on Disney+.
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