Taika Waititi is known for his over the top style and humor when it comes to directing movies and it is this very over the top flare that Taika brought to the Marvel universe when he signed on to direct the 3rd Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok. The movie changed the Thor franchise completely and the franchise donned Taika’s style and color which made the movie one of the biggest successes in the entire MCU.
This gave Taika the greenlight for Thor: Love and Thunder which despite receiving mixed reviews, was still full of Taika’s signature flare and still a commercial success.
In recent interview, Marvel’s director for visual development Andy Park has talked about how Taika works and how sometimes he has some really extreme ideas. While speaking with Syfy, Andy recalls that Taika had some ideas while making Thor: Love and Thunder which were way too extreme and they had to pull him back a little bit. However, Andy goes onto admit that while Taika does leap towards the extreme end more often but it is because of his leaps that they always end up somewhere new, and even if they have to pull Taika back just a tinge, to make it work, it is still a brand new territory always. Andy’s full quote is as follows:
“It was really fun to get back into the Thor world with Taika because I know when I work with him, I’m in for a ride. He’s so much fun. He’s constantly joking around and he’s really just entertaining [Laughs]. But his ideas are very extreme and out there. He’s not scared to try something. There might be times when we’re scared [and say] ‘Ahhh, I don’t know…that might be a little too far design-wise.’ So he’ll like push us to be like, ‘Hey, let’s go there.’ Whether that becomes the design or we pivot back a little bit, we wouldn’t have found this pivot without going to the extreme. That’s Taika pretty much in a nutshell.”
Will Taika Waititi return to the MCU is anyone’s guess at the moment, given Love and Thunder’s mixed reviews but regardless, wherever he goes, he’ll keep being his extreme Taika self, that much is certain.