'Thor: Ragnarok' director explains why his hilarious 'flashback scenes' idea didn't make it in the movie
In the early talks with Marvel to make "Ragnarok," Waititi had an idea to feature flashback scenes, particularly of Thor and his brother Loki tormenting each other as teens.
Waititi even highlighted it in the sizzle reel he created for Marvel by including a scene from the 1980s classic "Sixteen Candles" to show the kind of tone that he wanted for the flashbacks.
"It was in the first couple months of storylining," Waititi told Business Insider. "We always wondered, could we put in these flashbacks and make them work? To me it still feels like a great idea."
There's one scene in "Ragnarok" (opening in theaters on Friday) where it definitely could have worked.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) recounts how Loki (Tom Hiddleston) fantastically tried to kill him as a teen. The story gets a laugh the way it's told, but Waititi wanted to go a step further and actually shoot a 1980s-era flashback of the moment, including teenage versions of Thor and Loki.
The thinking by Waititi was the flashback would be another example of how un-Marvel "Ragnarok" is. But the idea never got off the ground.
"It was very hard to justify doing," he said. "It would have felt like just this one-off little flashback and it needed more. It would have been funnier if it was this ongoing thing where we had more and more of those stories through the movie."
Even though it would have been really fun to see teenage Thor and Loki going at each other, there's still a lot in the movie that will make you laugh.