The Hilarious Reason Russell Crowe Had To Shoot Two Versions Of His Thor: Love And Thunder Scenes

The following article contains spoilers for "Thor: Love and Thunder."

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has always been the God of Thunder in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but "Thor: Love and Thunder" truly explores what it means to be a god. In the film's opening sequence, we're introduced to Gorr (Christian Bale), who finally meets his god after his daughter dies. Despised by what he finds, Gorr renounces his god and vows to kill all gods. This is bad news for Thor, so he turns to Omnipotence City to recruit more gods for his goal of taking down Gorr.

While plenty of gods are seen in the background, the main one Thor encounters is the Greek god Zeus (Russell Crowe). Of course, he's more concerned with more (ahem) personal matters than taking down the God Butcher. Ultimately, Zeus proves that Gorr kind of has a point in that the gods are more concerned with their own power than helping those who worship them. 

For the most part, Zeus is there as comedic relief, right down to his silly voice. As director Taika Waititi revealed in an interview with Insider, he wasn't always supposed to have that voice, and there's a good reason why he ended up with a thick Greek accent.

Apparently, Russell Crowe very much wanted the Greek god to have a Greek accent, but Waititi just wasn't sure if that was the best route to take. As he explained to Insider, "Will it be too silly? And Russell was very much wanting it to be Greek. But I wasn't sure, so we ended up doing two versions of every take with Russell. One in a Greek accent and then another in a British accent. Because I felt people would think Zeus would sound British like Laurence Olivier in 'Clash of the Titans.'"

Waititi goes on to say how it worked out for the best to use the Greek takes: "But then I realized in post that it's actually more offensive to the Greeks to have Zeus sound like he's British. And test audiences loved the Greek accent. I'm really happy with it. But, yeah, he had to do every take once in the Greek accent and once with a British accent because I couldn't make up my mind. But Russell was right all along."

It worked out, and even though the voice may be silly, it works with his character. Zeus effectively functions as a farce of what one would expect a regal god to be, and hopefully someday, audiences will get to see the British accent cut of "Love and Thunder."