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The film that left Chris Hemsworth “disappointed”
Chris Hemsworth holds himself to the highest of standards, but, by his own admission, he doesn’t always meet them. His performance in the second instalment in the Thor franchise was a particular source of disappointment for the Australian actor.
At the box office, Thor: The Dark World was a resounding success and made a whopping $644 million while in cinemas. However, Hemsworth felt he didn’t showcase the full breadth of his skill in his performance, and ultimately, he thought he could have given more in the lead role. Director Alan Taylor was also discontent with the film’s final version and said his creative vision had been betrayed in the edit.
The general consensus towards Thor: The Dark World was that it was a Marvel film by numbers, which didn’t challenge the audience, and although it was still a solid film, it wasn’t reinventing the wheel. Taylor even called it a “particularly wrenching” experience in 2015; unsurprisingly, he wasn’t involved in the franchise’s third instalment.
Going into 2017’s Ragnarok, Hemsworth had a point to prove to himself, and he knew he needed to give more into the role than he did in the predecessor. He used his disappointment to fuel his performance as he made amends, and the Australian made sure he wouldn’t feel regret once more.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, he admitted that he wasn’t “stoked” on a personal note about The Dark World and explained: “I was a little disappointed in what I’d done. I didn’t think I grew the character in any way, I didn’t think I showed an audience something unexpected and different.”
Rather than dwell on the negativity, Hemsworth shifted his focus on bouncing back with a vengeance. He continued: “When Ragnarok came along, out of my own sort of frustration of what I had done — and this is not on any other director or anyone, this is my own performance — I really wanted to break the mould.
“I said this to Taika [Waititi], and I think the conversation we had was, I said, ‘I’m really bored of Thor.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m really bored of Thor, too,’ And then we decided not to be bored, and any time that feeling came into play, we’d go in a different direction.”
Hemsworth concluded: “We just dismantled the character, we wanted to have him be a little more unpredictable, we wanted him to be a different set of circumstances than he had been in before and also have the humour come through.”
Thanks to the capable hands of Waititi, Hemsworth successfully rectified the errors made in The Dark World and put in a performance in Ragnarok, which filled him with pride rather than disappointment.
