After breaking local box office records and earning international critical and audience acclaim for Hunt for the Wilderpeople, director Taika Waititi is turning his attention towards production of Thor: Ragnarok, the third of the Marvel fantasy series.
A report this morning from the AAP questioned if Waititi would be able to make Thor funny, despite the fact the last two films were full of humour: the first had plenty of fish out of water jokes as Thor was introduced to earth, while the climactic battle in the second was as much about the jokes as it was about the world ending.
I think the bigger challenge Waititi faces will be making all the pieces in the film work. Of all the upcoming Marvel films, Thor: Ragnarok is the biggest question mark. The title Ragnarok refers to an event in both Norse mythology and the comics that spells the end of the Asgard and the deaths of various gods. The event was predicted in Age of Ultron in Thor's Scarlet Witch-influenced vision, and he left earth at the end of that movie.
Yet the end of the world is the least of Thor's upcoming problems. He's got to tend with Tom Hiddleston's Loki, who faked his death in The Dark World and is currently masquerading as Odin - with no word on what he did with dear old daddy. Then you've got Mark Ruffalo showing up as the Hulk, Samuel L. Jackson rumoured to return as Nick Fury; Cate Blanchett will allegedly fill the role of villain as Hela, the Queen of Hel.
