I’d imagine that directing a Marvel Studios movie would come with a tremendous amount of pressure, but Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi made it look like a breeze. Not only did he completely overhaul the Thor franchise into an outright comedy (a decision that seemed to work wonders at the box office), but the New Zealand-born Waititi stepped in and played Korg, one of the movie’s funniest supporting characters. No sweat.
But apparently directing and playing one character wasn’t enough: he ended up playing four characters in the movie. Read about all of the Taika Waititi Thor Ragnarok characters below.
In a new interview for the Empire Magazine podcast, Waititi revealed that he played three characters in the movie – and we actually already knew about two of them. He provided his voice and did the performance-capture for Korg, the delightfully-accented Kronan who’s trying to organize a revolution on Sakaar and ends up fighting alongside Thor and his pals during the movie’s climax. And in our visit to the movie’s Australian set, we spoke with Waititi and he mentioned that he also provided the performance-capture work for the fire demon Surtur, although that character’s voice was eventually provided by actor Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption).
But Waititi also played a much smaller role. As he told the podcast:
“I am one of the heads on the three-headed alien, this character called Haju. I’m the head on the right. And I’m also the motion-capture for Surtur.”
So that’s three…but what about the fourth character? While his work on the fourth character wasn’t quite as involved, the director told us on the set that he did some uncredited character work when the occasion called for it:
“Often I’ll jump in [for other mocap stuff]. Mark [Ruffalo] is no longer here so I’ll jump in for Hulk’s stuff. We have stand-ins, but they’re not actors, and they don’t have timing and stuff. So I’ll jump in for those things every now and then.”
This isn’t the first time a Marvel director has stepped in front of the camera for performance capture work. Remember, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn did all of the performance-capture work for Baby Groot’s dancing in both Guardians films. But even Gunn’s earnest and goofy dance moves pale in comparison to the work required to play three different performance-captured characters in your own movie. Major props to Waititi for pulling that off.
Thor: Ragnarok is in theaters now.
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