“Thor: Love and Thunder” has finally hit theaters, but some Marvel fans still want to see more. Reports of an assembly cut that clocks in at around four hours have sparked calls of “#ReleaseTheWaititiCut” among some viewers who would like to see an extended version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Director Taika Waititi, however, seems to have no interest in such a thing.
“I’ve been thinking about director’s cuts,” Waititi told New Musical Express. “I watch director’s cuts of a lot of other directors. They suck. Director’s cuts are not good. Directors need to be controlled sometimes and if I was to say, ‘Ah you wanna watch my director’s cut? It’s four and a half hours long!’ It’s not good at four and a half hours. There’s a lot of cup-of-tea breaks in there, you don’t even have to pause it.”
Exploring the prospect of alternate cuts of blockbuster films has become an essential practice among online fanbases in recent years, emboldened by Zack Snyder’s extended version of the DC Comics team-up “Justice League,” which saw the largely derided 2017 release reworked and elongated by reshot footage and scenes that were excluded from the original release. The new version, titled “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” was released to HBO Max in the spring of 2021, drawing a much more enthusiastic response from viewers.
Now, it’s become common practice to see fans clamor for director’s cuts of films. Some fans have called for a director’s cut of 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” which was helmed by David Ayer.
Even though Waititi was dismissive of the possibility of a “Waititi cut” of “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the filmmaker still shared a few ideas of what his extended cut of the film would look like.
“I’d say my cut would probably have a few more jokes in there,” he explained. “There might be a couple of deleted scenes but as I always say, a scene is deleted because it’s not good enough to be in the film. I think the deleted scenes section on the DVD, not that they use them anymore, should just be a list of the scenes and no links so you can’t click on them!”
