When Taika Waititi conceived Thor: Ragnarok for Marvel, he had more than Flash Gordon in mind. In fact, he initially wanted to throw a little John Hughes ’80s teen comedy into the mix, too.
Talking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confusing podcast, Waititi revealed how his Hughes influence, which included using some footage from his ’80s films in his original pitch to Marvel, manifested itself in the film’s production. And Waititi, in turn, reveals this great flashback scene that didn’t make the cut:
Well I wanted this little thing, and maybe if we ever do a Thor 4 we can have it, but I wanted to do some flashbacks where Thor was a kid, a fat little kid. There was like an 80s version of Asgard where everyone had massive shoulder pads, and everyone had mullets (laughs). Our idea was Thor and Valkyrie meet and he’s like, ‘Hey I know you,’ and she’s like ‘Ha I remember you,’ and then it cuts back to this thing and he’s just this pudgy little kid walking around with a mullet and being picked on by other kids. And Loki’s like this little emo goth hanging out by himself. He was like the kid in Harry Potter, [Malfoy].
I’m just a writer on the internet, but I’m willing to declare this a really good idea. Imagining the Asgardian Gods having awkward, gawky childhoods is golden territory. As is li’l Thor with a mullet. While it might be a little too silly for the MCU as it exists, I still earnestly want to see some vision of this appear somewhere, somehow. Fan creators, get on it.
Ultimately, though, the scene never came to any sort of fruition because the dramatic need for a flashback diminished. As Waititi explains (and some light Ragnarok spoilers here), “The problem was we needed him to not know Valkyrie in the film and stuff. And then it became less and less of a thing to have a flashback. We would have been forcing it, so it would have been a situation where we would have been having a pointless flashback.”
Too bad, really. Maybe next film.
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