With the onslaught of the Marvel Cinematic Universe content in the form of both shows and movies this year, we have gotten to see new dimensions of the characters. Most of the new movies are gonna explore characters that existed in the MCU. The shows are built upon spinoffs dedicated to characters we have known for quite a while now. This has allowed us to know plans about these characters that had to be dropped due to the various limitations of the movies. Amongst these dropped plans it was recently revealed that there was probably gonna be a Director’s Cut of Thor 2.
Before Ragnarok
Thor was released in 2011 and it introduced us to Asgard and the characters like Loki and Thor who later contributed massively to the MCU. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Thor was an okay debut for these characters. Thor: The Dark World, the sequel to the 2011 one took from the events of Avengers with a massive opening sequence and with various turns for the characters. Thor returns to Asgard along with his brother. Jane Foster, portrayed by Natalie Portman, is almost affected by the Aether as Thor battles with the Dark Elves. It ends with a CGI-fest of a battle against a somewhat important antagonist as Malekith.
While Thor: The Dark World performed well at the box office, it is still amongst the most poorly-reviewed movies belonging to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie has a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is behind 2008’s The Incredible Hulk with a rating of 67%. While fans would say that this poor rating was due to the serious tone of the movie. At the same time, it had a bad balance in terms of the antagonist in the form of the character of Malakith. Some also agreed that another one of those hoax death scenes from Loki added to that.
Director’s vision
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Director, Alan Taylor, the director of Thor: The Dark World, talked about the original plans he had regarding the movie. He says:
There was weird stuff going on back on Earth because of the convergence that allowed for some of these magical realism things. And there were major plot differences that were inverted in the cutting room and with additional photography – people [such as Loki] who had died were not dead, people who had broken up were back together again. I think I would like my version.
This is not the first time Alan Taylor has opened up about his original plans regarding the movie. In the interviews over the months leading to the release of the sequel, Taylor spoke up about changes that took place during the post-production phase of the project. Apparently, he had a Director’s Cut which was different from the original film. It had more magic.
Here’s what he said:
We’re doing full scenes, scenes that were not in the movie before. We’re adding scenes, creating scenes, writing scenes for the first time. The one [involving Loki] was a fun connective scene… We realized how well Loki was working in the movie, and we wanted to do more with him. So it was that kind of thing, it was like, ‘Oh, we could do this, we could jam this in here’ because he’s such a wonderful guy to watch do his stuff.
It is clear from his words that he wasn’t able to materialize much of his vision. This would have been a version that he would personally have assured to be a better version than what we were served with. Fans would wish to see this version be realized on screen. He clearly points out that the “magical realism” that he was trying to aim for was eliminated from the final product.
Was it worthy?
Another essential point that he mentioned was the original plans regarding Loki’s fate in the movie were intended towards assuring his demise. It was also supposed to show the split between Thor and Jane Foster at the very end. While this may be something acceptable at that time, presently it cannot be even taken into consideration since the entire MCU would have seen a massive shift if it was realized.
Taika Waititi redeemed the Thor movies with his epic Ragnarok with a massive shift in tone and making one of the most awesome movies of MCU. Meanwhile, Loki’s death is something that cannot be even imagined considering what we got to see in the Disney+ show Loki. It is very clear that the character had more than it was meant to be. Though Jane Foster was abandoned for a while in the movies, we are going to see more of her as she wields Thor’s hammer in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder.
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