Christian Bale's Hilarious Relationship With The MCU Before Signing On For Thor: Love And Thunder

Christian Bale has a wealth of experience across multiple genres of the acting spectrum. He's danced and sung in Disney's Depression-era musical drama "Newsies," explored the dark depths of the human psyche in the gory "American Psycho," and became Bruce Wayne for Christopher Nolan's "Batman" trilogy. It's perhaps not surprising that he's joined the many versatile faces who make up the ever-expanding cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Bale will be portraying the emotionally complex Gorr the God Butcher in the upcoming release "Thor: Love and Thunder." Gorr's bitter experience with unresponsive god types who govern his own home planet — whose lack of caring and unwillingness to intervene led to the starvation of his family — turned him against his faith and left him ready to balance the scales of justice through action of his own. He's developed a weapon that can slay any god, and he's gunning for Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the rest of his family and friends. The problem is, of course, that — at least in the comic book version of his origin story — Thor and his Norse God brethren had nothing to do with Gorr's misery. His anger is universal, directed at any and every god in the multiverse.

But there's something Bale didn't know about the MCU before he agreed to play Gorr, which will definitely amuse fans of the sprawling comic book franchise. 

Per an interview with Total Film, Christian Bale had no idea what the MCU was before he signed up to play Gorr — and actually thought it might have been an offensive term before he figured out what the phrase means.

"I'd read that, and people would go, 'Oh, look at this! He's entered the MCU!' And I'd go, 'I've done what? I haven't entered s***, thank you very much.' I'm like, 'The MCU?' I had to ask what that was," he told the magazine. His experience with the DC Universe seems to have been a positive one, as playing Batman did not affect his choice to become a part of Thor's world. But he did have one issue with playing Gorr — replicating his appearance. Bale recalled reading comics that feature the character and noted the near-constant semi-nudity of his Marvel-world counterpart.

"He runs around in a g-string all the time. And I thought, 'They don't have the right man for that!' And then Taika [Waititi, the director of 'Thor: Love and Thunder'] quickly dispelled any notions of running around in that," Bale said. He then added that he would've gladly stood before a green screen and let Waititi edit the footage in post-production in any manner he deemed fitting, but the director simply chose to change the character's sartorial style for the finished film.