“Thor: Love and Thunder” fans petitioning online for an extended director’s cut from Taika Waititi probably shouldn’t hold their breath.
In a recent interview with NME, the “Love and Thunder” and “Thor: Ragnarok” writer and director admitted that he hasn’t liked the director’s cuts of other films that are out there, so why would he contribute to the practice?
“I watch director’s cuts of a lot of other directors. They suck,” Waititi said. “Director’s cuts are not good. Directors need to be controlled sometimes, and if I was to say, ‘Oh, you wanna watch my director’s cut? It’s 4.5 hours long!’ It’s not good, at 4.5 hours. There’s a lot of cup-of-tea breaks in there. You don’t even have to pause it.”
If this weekend’s box office is any indication, it seems that fans are still plenty happy with the 2-hour version. “Thor: Love and Thunder” raked in $143 million domestically, making it the third biggest opening weekend of the year and the fifth biggest opening weekend for a Marvel Cinematic Universe release ever.
Pressed on what his director’s cut might feature, though, and, ever the funnyman, Waititi said that he might’ve tried to squeeze a few more jokes into the script.
“I’d say my cut would probably have a few more jokes in there,” he concluded, before waxing on days of yesteryear when deleted scenes on DVD menus were a thing.
“There might be a couple of deleted scenes,” he continued. “But as I always say, a scene is deleted because it’s not good enough to be in the film. I think the deleted-scenes section on the DVD, not that they use them anymore, should just be a list of the scenes and no links so you can’t click on them.”
Waititi previously told Collider his first cut of the film — which Chris Hemsworth called “batsh-t crazy”– was four hours long, but clarified it was more of an assembly than an actual cut of the film. “Really, about five times, it just gives up on the story and just like just for like 10, 15 minutes of just telling jokes,” he said.
