Thor: Love and Thunder and The Marvels star Tessa Thompson sat down to reflect on her career at the BFI London Film Festival yesterday. She made her MCU debut in 2017's Thor: Ragnarok, and her take on the character has been well-received by fans.
Despite being the new King of Asgard, it's unclear when or where we'll see Valkyrie again. Rumour has it that we were supposed to learn of her romantic connection to Carol Danvers in the Captain Marvel sequel, only for that (and many other ideas) to wind up on the cutting room floor.
Reflecting on her Thor experience (via Variety), Thompson affectionately described filmmaker Taika Waititi as "a huge infant, just, he’s like an infant with a bank account." Praising his childlike approach to writing and directing, she called it "terrifying" and joked that "he should be stopped."
Turning to co-star Chris Hemsworth, Thompson hailed him as "a baby with muscles, a very big infant" who has "no inhibition" and "will just do anything you know, to get the laugh and to discover, so it’s a pleasure to work with him."
"It’s so goofy making those movies sometimes," the actor later acknowledged. "The mechanism of making those films requires a place of pure imagination, you know, where you just have to play like a kid."
However, she sought out an MCU role and has no regrets. "I really wanted to make a movie like that, because I’m not sure I can do that, and I really want to figure out if I can. And it was just so fun. It really, really freed me up."
Waititi successfully reinvented the God of Thunder with Thor: Ragnarok, leaving fans excited to see what came next. The result was Thor: Love and Thunder, a movie which largely disappointed fans and let down both its new and returning characters.
Waititi, who was given perhaps too much freedom with the movie, has largely shrugged off the complaints. Chris Hemsworth, however, has addressed them head-on and didn't shy away from acknowledging where the movie fell short.
"I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself," Hemsworth admitted last year. "I didn’t stick the landing."
The movie was too silly, becoming a full-blown comedy which saw even Russell Crowe prancing around the place as Zeus in what may go down as one of the MCU's biggest wastes of an actor.
Thompson fared a little better, and with $760.9 million at the worldwide box office, Thor: Love and Thunder wasn't that far behind Thor: Ragnarok's $865 million haul (and even a drop of over $100 million was a good result in the post-pandemic era).
What do you hope the future holds in store for the MCU's Valkyrie?