Taika Waititi has recently come under fire for comments made about his work on the franchise. After working on the beloved Thor: Ragnarok and the more divisive Thor: Love and Thunder, the Kiwi director seemed to ‘get’ what Marvel fans wanted from their movies. The films in-between the big team-ups needed to be fun. Colourfu🧸l characters, a🌜n all-star cast, and a propensity for Guardians-esque needle drops also helped Waititi endear himself to fans.
All that goodwill seems to have dissipated over the past week, however. The Flight of the Conchords, What We Do In T🐼he Shadows, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople writer-director said that he took the Thor gig because it paid well, not out of any love for the character or the MCU. And to Marvel fans, this is tantamount to heresy.
"Thor, let’s face it, it was probably the least popular 𒈔fran🤡chise" - Taika Waititi
“I had no interest in doing one of those films,” Waititi said on the . “It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur. But I was poor and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.'”
Despite his⛎ slightly self-aggrandising use of the word ‘auteur’, I don’t see the problem with taking a job for the money. Millions of people across the world do it every day. If Marvel came up to a plumber and offered them ten times their usual pay to fix the loos on a Marvel set, would you begrudge th💛em for taking the job out of practicality and not because they simply adored Reed Richards as a kid?
The whole situation reminds me of the famous Michael Caine quote about his role in the terrible Jaws 4. “Somebody said, 'Have you ever seen Jaws 4?',” he recalled on the Jonathon Ross show in 2016. “I said, 'No. But I've seen the house it bought for my mum.'"
This is regaled as a funny quote from a man who has earned his payday. Caine’s star turns 🐻in Alfie, The Italian Job, Educating R🌸ita, and countless more have won him a plethora of awards, so many that he has his own Wikipedia page dedicated to them. He’s a beloved actor, so if he takes a job for the money, good for him. Why does the same not ring true for Taika Waititi?
Obviously, Waititi has had a far shorter 🐬career than Caine – mostly due to ♏the fact that he was born a decade after Caine’s first Oscar nomination – but he’s no less beloved. Many of his films and TV shows are deified as cult classics, with the likes of What We Do In The Shadows (both the film and the show) and Our Flag Means Death quickly developing rapturous appraise and devoted fanbases. While I personally prefer his earlier work – Boy is my personal favourite if you want to dive in – there are gems throughout his career. He’s the first person of Māori descent to win an Academy Award in a screenplay category, for Jojo Rabbit, while he has two further nominations to his name including Best Picture. Has he not earned a Marvel payday?
However, I think that Marvel fans may be jumping on the Waititi hatewagon due to the less-distributed second half of the quote. “And Thor, let’s face it, it was probably the least popular franchise. I never read Thor comics as a kid. That was the comic I’d pick up and be like ‘Ugh.’ And then I did some research𝓀 on it, and I read one Thor comic or 18 pages, or however long they are. I was still b🌼affled by this character.”
Note: An interview with Chris Evans has wher🍌e he makes similar comments about wishing fans cared about his "good movies"
If there’s one thing that Marvel fans don’t like, it’s someone saying that the comics aren’t very good. But Waititi is telling the truth. Thor wasn’t very popular until the MCU. Of the original Avengers, only Hulk was already a fan ⛄favourite, maybe Iron Man at a push. It was Downey Jr., Hemsworth, and Kevin Feige who made these characters stars. He wasn’t even that popular in the MCU pre-Waititi. Thor and Thor: The Dark World are the 26th and 28th highest grossing movies in the MCU.
And Waititi did a good job of Thor, by all accounts! I don’t jive with the films but I was already well burned out of the MCU by that point, but Ragnarok especially is beloved and I🎉’ve heard many fans defend Love and Thunder until they’re breathless – it’s also 15th highest for gross, way ahead of what Thor did before Waititi, despite its divisiveness. Whether that is genuine love for the film, an affection for Waititi, or the need to defend every single piece of the MCU, I don’t know, but some people love that movie.
For whatever reason, fans are now turning on Waititi, and his only crime was taking a well-paying job and doing it very well. Perhaps Love and Thunder haters assume he was half-arsing the job for a quick buck. Perhaps absolute, unflinching brand loyalty is a part of the job description. I dread tꦬo think what will happen when Robert Downey Jr. finally admits that Iron Man 2 was awful.
