When Chris Hemsworth called Thor 2 ‘meh’, Idris Elba said working on it ‘ripped my heart out’
Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba and director Alan Taylor have all had unpleasant things to say about working on Thor: The Dark World.
Before director Taika Waititi took over the Thor franchise and pushed it in a new direction, several key cast and crew members had openly expressed their disappointment with Thor: The Dark World, the second solo film to feature the God of Thunder.
With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 66%, Thor: The Dark World remains the worst reviewed Marvel Cinematic Universe film. By comparison, the first Thor film has a 77% score, while Thor: Ragnarok has a 93% score.
In 2018, Chris Hemsworth told GQ, “The first one is good, the second one is meh.” Actor Idris Elba, who played Heimdall in the Thor films, said working on The Dark World was ‘heartbreaking’. “This is torture, man. I don’t want to do this,” Elba recalled telling his agent, in an interview to the Telegraph. And his agent said: “You have to, it’s part of the deal.”
Elba had just finished up filming the Nelson Mandela biopic, and was called in to do reshoots for The Dark World the very next day. He continued, “I’m actually falling down from a spaceship, so they had to put me in harness in this green-screen studio. And in between takes I was stuck there, fake hair stuck on to my head with glue, this f—— helmet, while they reset. And I’m thinking: ‘24 hours ago, I was Mandela’. When I walked into the set the extras called me Madiba. I was literally walking in this man’s boots. [Within] six months, the crew, we were all so in love with this film we had made. I was him. I was Mandela, practically. Then there I was, in this stupid harness, with this wig and this sword and these contact lenses. It ripped my heart out.”
Actor Natalie Portman, who played Jane Foster in the first and second Thor films, and will return in Thor: Love and Thunder, reportedly didn’t enjoy working with director Alan Taylor on The Dark World. Portman is said to have championed director Patty Jenkins for the gig, but Jenkins ultimately dropped out and went on to direct Wonder Woman.
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Taylor himself hated working on the film. “I’ve learned that you don’t make a $170 million movie with someone else’s money, and not have to collaborate a lot,” he told Uproxx around the release of his follow-up, Terminator Genisys. “The Marvel experience was particularly wrenching because I was sort of given absolute freedom while we were shooting, and then in post it turned into a different movie. So, that is something I hope never to repeat and don’t wish upon anybody else.”
Thor: The Dark World was a financial success, however. It made over $650 million worldwide, around $200 million more than the first Thor film.
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