Thor: Love and Thunder was originally four hours long, and Marvel fans are calling on the studio to release it in its entirety.
As director Taika Waititi confirmed (via Collider (opens in a new tab)), the upcoming Marvel movie, which hits theaters on July 8, was originally double its official length of one hour and 59 minutes. . Had Thor: Love and Thunder been released as a four-hour superhero movie, it would have blown the running time of the current longest MCU movie, Avengers: Endgame, out of the water by an hour.
Obviously, though, the film's final running time was shortened significantly, likely due to some scenes not matching the story Waititi and company are trying to tell. And that appears to be the case, with Waititi revealing that several scenes were left on the cutting room floor.
"It was like four o'clock [in total]," he told Collider. "And a lot of time on set... We used to talk about it before, like when, in the moment, you're like, 'This is the best thing anybody's ever shot on filming stuff. And you enter the edition. You're like, 'I still like that.' And then after about six months of being in the movie, you realize that it was fun that day, but it has nothing to do with the movie."
Christian Bale, who plays the villainous Gorr the God Butcher, lamented the removal of certain scenes from the film's final cut in a separate conversation with Collider (opens in a new tab).
“There are so many things that I wish I had seen in this movie,” he said. "You can't have a four hour movie because there's so much gold on the cutting room floor, hilarious and scary as hell stuff, but maybe that was pushing it into an area where it might not have been family friendly, which we always wanted it to be."
Christian Bale's Gorr almost danced to a Kate Bush number in Thor: Love and Thunder. (Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Some of the scenes that were cut sound like, to use Thor's own phrase, they deserve to be included. For one thing, Bale told Total Film (opens in a new tab) that Gorr was originally going to dance to a Kate Bush song, certainly in demand after Stranger Things season 4 used the track. Bush's Running Up That Hill, which continued to mark hers. a late-breaking number one hit.
Meanwhile, another dance scene would have seen Thor make a move or two to an ABBA song (according to TV critic Kevin McCarthy (opens in a new tab)), a sequence that would have been completed with Thor flashing into range. hand Suffice it to say, it seems like we missed out on a lot of fun moments in the final cut of the Marvel Phase 4 movie.
So will the director's cut of Thor: Love and Thunder ever see the light of day? Waititi and star Chris Hemsworth joked about it when they spoke to Collider about the film, but it's unclear if we'll get a Zack Snyder Justice League-style director's cut at some point.
Opinion: Do It Like This, Marvel
Who wouldn't want to see the director's cut of Thor 4? (Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Unsurprisingly, comments from Waititi, Hemsworth, and Bale have piqued the interest of fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So much so, in fact, that many have called on Marvel Studios to give a director's cut of Thor 4.
As entrepreneur Erich Reimer suggested on Twitter (opens in a new tab), we think Disney Plus would be the perfect place to launch a director's cut of Thor: Love and Thunder. Warner Bros has already shown that there is public demand for such a project on streaming services, with the company releasing Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max in March 2021. Why couldn't Disney and Marvel do the same? when Thor 4 finally drops on your streaming platform?
Other MCU fans were quick to call on Marvel to release a director's cut of the film as well. Twitter user Lighting Spider (opens in a new tab) pleaded with the studio to release the four-hour cut, while Twitter user menks101 (opens in a new tab) joked that they would now join the ranks to start a hashtag request to get the director. released cut. So who wants to start the #releasethewaiticut campaign?
Another Marvel fan on Twitter at ChaosGoddess (opens in a new tab) claimed that we would miss out on "so many precious Korg moments," implying that several scenes of Korg were likely cut from the final version of the film. Meanwhile, TJDizzler0613 (opens in a new tab) said that he would "watch every second" of a four-hour Thor movie. Talk about dedicated.
Over on Reddit, several users had fun changing Thor 4's name to fit its original runtime. Unique_Unorque (opens in a new tab) playfully suggested that the movie be called Thor Four: Four Hours of Thor starring Gorr, while PrinceNuada01 (opens in a new tab) joked that it should be changed into Thor Four: with More Thor, Gorr and Korg. Ultimately, HardasOoblek (opens in a new tab) wrote that they would "pay extra" to see the extended cut, and Dragon_yum (opens in a new tab) agreed that Disney Plus would be the place to post the director's cut.
The ball is in your court now, Marvel. Please give the fans what we want and thank you.
For more MCU-based content, read why the Marvel's Blade reboot might not meet its supposed 2023 release date. Otherwise, find out why Thor 4 might not be Chris Hemsworth's last MCU movie.
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