Thor: Ragnarokdirector Taika Waititi has broken his silence on the conflicting reports of theruntime of Thor: Ragnarok. During San Diego Comic Con, the movie was said to be 100 minutes long, but the final cut is officially at 130 minutes. The news comes afterRagnarokcrushed the international box office, earning a whopping $107.6 million dollars, ahead ofThe Dark WorldandThor, which earned $85.7 million dollars and $65.7 million dollars, respectively. The big opening weekend also beat the recently releasedGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2as well asDoctor Strangeand it’s expected to have a massive domestic opening later this week.
Director Taika Waititirecently sat down with Collider when the runtime question came up. The interviewer asked what happened regarding the runtime discrepancies. Waititi explained that they had just wrapped the reshoots at the time of San Diego Comic Con, mentioning that he knew thatThor: Ragnarokwas going to be longer in the back of his mind. He explains.
“When I said it was going to be 100 minutes, we had just done our reshoots, so we knew it was going to come up from there.”
The director added, “but there was a world where I thought ‘Yeah, it’s going to maybe sit at 100 minutes, definitely no more than 2 hours’ and now it’s just like, what, 2 hours 10 minutes?” Waititi also revealed that his first cut of the film was much longer, about 30 minutes longer than the runtime of the final cut. “My first cut was about 2 hours and 40 minutes,” he said. “That was a cut I was happy with. The assembly was about 3 hours 15 minutes.” 3 hours and 15 minutes would probably have been a bit much, and this is theMCUwe’re talking about here, not the DCEU.
Taika Waititi also confirmed that the additional 30 minutes to the Comic Con cut contained no key scenes, only jokes.
“We cut out a lot more. When people asked me ‘How long do you think the film is?’, there was a time when it was going to be around 100 minutes. Well, afterComic-Con, we decided to put lots of the jokes back in.”
After Taika Waititi cut out a lot of footage fromRagnarokand as it turns out, a lot of it had to do with jokes that went on for too long. Waititi had this to say.
“No, it was all humor. Like jokes that went on too long.” I knew if I put in more stuff, then it would be, it’d increase my chances of keeping a lot more of the other jokes."
All of the initial reviews forThor: Ragnarokhave praised the MCU movie for its fun and humorous take on the character this time around. Some fans were originally not happy with the comedic tone, but even those detractors are starting to come around now.
Thor: Ragnarokopens in the United States on November 3rd, so the wait is almost over. The movie stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk,Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Cate Blanchett as Hela, Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, and Karl Urban as Skurge. You can check out more of the interview with Taika Waititi courtesy ofCollider.
