Scenes You Never Got To See In Thor: Ragnarok

With a runtime of 130 minutes, Thor: Ragnarok isn't exactly a short movie, but it would have been a lot longer if director Taika Waititi had gotten his way. The New Zealander put himself on Hollywood's radar in 2014 when his outrageously funny vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows became a critical smash, and Marvel hired him to bring that same irreverent humor to the third Thor installment, giving him the freedom to make the most unconventional Marvel movie yet. Much of his method relied on improvisation—Waititi encouraged leading man Chris Hemsworth to bounce off his co-stars and there was a lot of ad-libbing, which meant that tons of the material they filmed didn't end up being used.

While a good chunk of that footage probably belonged on the cutting room floor, there were some moments of pure gold that had to be removed due to time restraints. A number of other great moments were also axed because they affected the pace and/or tone of the film, though luckily for us the cast and crew have spilled the beans about everything we missed. From flashbacks to Thor's teens to alternate post-credit tags, these are the scenes you never got to see in Thor: Ragnarok.

During an interview with The Independent, Tessa Thompson revealed that Waititi pitched the part of Valkyrie as "the Han Solo of the movie" when they met to discuss it, and the Creed star occupied that space perfectly. Thompson has received heaps of praise for her performance as the hard-drinking, ass-kicking Asgardian warrior (Vulture called it "euphoric and emboldening"), and now she's revealed that there was supposed to be a scene that addressed her character's sexuality.

Thompson and Waititi agreed that Valkyrie liked women as well as men, and they even shot a scene in which a lady can be seen exiting her bedroom. According to Rolling Stone, it was eventually decided that the moment took the focus away from some of the vital exposition happening around it. Thompson pointed out that glimpses of her character's bisexuality are still visible in the final cut, if you know where to look: "There's a great shot of me falling back from one of my sisters who's just been slain," she said. "In my mind, that was my lover."

Thor: Ragnarok's mid-credit scene had pretty huge implications for the immediate future of the MCU, with Thor, Valkyrie, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Heimdall (Idris Elba) and what remains of the Asgardian people escaping their doomed planet only to run into Thanos (Josh Brolin) en route to Earth. The post-credit scene, however, was simply a fun way to say farewell to the film's secondary villain the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), though the version seen in cinemas was just one of many that they actually shot.

Waititi even did a take that involved Goldblum's character and his cranky right-hand-woman ending up on Earth, something he'd planned to include in the final cut for a long time. "It was going to be Topaz and Grandmaster stowing away on the ship at the end," he told Collider. "That could be on the DVD in the deleted scenes, those two in the crowd of the Asgardians and he pushes through and goes, 'I've never heard of this Earth place but... We got to keep a low profile.' And they kind of put these blankets over their heads and disband into the crowd."

Of course, the scene Waititi wound up going with doesn't show the Grandmaster stowing away aboard Thor's rescue ship—it shows him hiding out on Sakaar, the planet he used to rule before the Revengers came along. After Thor and crew instigate an uprising, the Grandmaster is forced to go into hiding, and in the post-credit scene we see him coming face to face with angry rebels. "It's a tie," he tells them.

In another alternate version of the scene, the Grandmaster attempts to win his power back, with meaningful musical accompaniment. "We even did the Sakaarian national anthem which we made up on the spot, which will hopefully be on the DVD at some point," Waititi told Digital Spy. "That was something we had so much fun doing. He tried to start a new revolution to topple the old revolution with the people who were ousting him. All sorts of different things emerged from that. The great thing about Jeff is he's so receptive to new things. Most of the stuff involving him in the film was stuff we found on the day on set, because he's a genius at improvising and he's willing to try anything."

Because Waititi went out of his way to nurture an environment of improvisation, different takes would barely resemble one another and there were tons of options to choose from. Co-editor Zene Baker told Screen Rant that he and his partner in the suite, Joel Negron, loved those "little magic moments" that ad-libbing brings, and he revealed that there was one moment in particular that he was sad to see go.

"There's one that didn't make it in the final film and is more of a little character thing that Chris did for Thor that Joel and I fought for," he said. "He sees Val in the gladiator prep area, where she's drinking the flaming drink and he confronts her and, you know, the guys come to drag him away and in an alternate take as they're dragging him away, Thor is like, "I hate you... I hate you so much," to Val. That never made it up and Joel and I always really liked that."

Screenwriter Eric Pearson, a former pizza delivery guy who rose through the ranks of the Marvel Writer's Program, rarely saw the light of day during the first months of 2016. He spent almost every waking hour making his contribution to the Thor: Ragnarok script, which several writers worked on at different stages. His biggest concern was how his revelation that antagonist Hela (Cate Blanchett) was Thor's sister would go down with the top brass, but he was relieved to find out that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was a huge fan of this twist. Not everything Pearson penned wound up being used, however, as he explained to Yahoo! Movies.

"[There was] a scene that we f***ing rewrote, like, 10 million times," he said. "It was an emotional check-in moment with Bruce Banner and Thor before the finale, with Banner eating alien food and trying to be serious. It [looks like] spaghetti, but then he realizes the thing he's eating is alive on the end." Pearson put a lot of work into the scene, but in the end he was forced to concede that it was bad for the overall pace. "I spent so much time on it, and it just never made it in. We thought it was this pivotal character moment, and it never had a place. It crushed the momentum."

Thor: Ragnarok is quite rightly being hailed as the funniest Marvel Cinematic Universe film to date, but it certainly isn't the first to masterfully blend action sequences with moments of humor. Joss Whedon might not be quite as dry as Waititi is in terms of his style, but the director also has an undeniable talent for injecting levity into a movie in just the right places, as he did in 2012's The Avengers when Hulk (still sulking from their earlier scrap) sucker punches Thor right out of the frame.

Waititi actually planned to pay homage to this fan favorite scene in Thor: Ragnarok by having Hulk do the exact same thing to Thor's brother Loki, but he was forced to leave his version on the cutting room floor. "They all land on the bridge—Thor, Loki and then Hulk," he told Empire. "They stand for a second, then Hulk just smashes Loki, punches him out of the frame, just like in Avengers when Hulk did it to Thor. It was a crowd favorite, but we just had to get rid of it for time. It might be on the DVD."

One early idea Waititi had for Thor: Ragnarok was to include a series of flashbacks to show the audience what Thor's relationship with his troublesome brother was like when they were both teenagers. There's a scene in the final cut of the movie in which the God of Thunder recalls one of the times that Loki pranked him as a kid, but if the director had gotten it his way, he would have actually filmed it.

"We always wondered, could we put in these flashbacks and make them work? To me it still feels like a great idea," Waititi said during an interview with Business Insider. In the end, he decided that it was a case of all or nothing when it came to his flashback idea, and there simply wasn't room in the runtime to make it a repeating gag. "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."

Yes, you read that correctly. One of the other flashback ideas Waititi had in mind involved a fat Thor and an emo Loki with a backdrop of '80s Asgard. The helmer told Den of Geek that he included clips from brat pack classic Sixteen Candles in his sizzle reel to give Marvel an idea of how the flashbacks would feel, though sadly they never came to pass.

"I wanted to do some flashbacks where Thor was a kid, a fat little kid," he told Collider. "There was like an '80s version of Asgard where everyone had massive shoulder pads, and everyone had mullets. 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."

Marvel fans couldn't stop talking about "Hobodin" when set photos of a homeless-looking Anthony Hopkins first emerged, but this scene was eventually cut from the final version of Thor: Ragnarok because it didn't have the impact Waititi was looking for. "We wanted the scene to have more of an emotional resonance around Odin and the sons," the director told Yahoo! Movies. "We wanted it to be a very special moment between them, where Odin acknowledges Loki as his son, and the three of them [are] together, there in that moment."

The scene originally took place in New York City where Odin had been laying low living on the streets, but the location was changed to Norway (the birth place of the Norse mythology Marvel's Thor comics are based on) to give the moment the gravitas it needed. "It's the first time we've really seen them all together in the same room alone, connecting, and you just can't f***ing do that in New York, you know?" Waititi added. "You can't even do that in real life in New York, have an emotional connection in an alleyway, so that was a very distracting environment in the end."

Hela's destruction of Thor's mighty hammer Mjolnir comes right after the aforementioned Odinson family reunion, so this scene was also originally slated to happen in the city, not atop a cliff on the idyllic Norwegian coastline. Early trailers showed the Goddess of Death effortlessly catching and then shattering Thor's hammer in a dingy New York back alley, the same alley where Thor and Loki were supposed to discover the Allfather until Waititi decided it would be more beneficial (and more believable) to change the setting to Europe.

"What we wanted to do was have them go down to Earth and they see Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and stuff, but it felt too convenient that [Odin] was suddenly just down the road in an alley," Waititi explained in an interview with Digital Spy (via CBR). "And also everything, up to then, everything was so fast-paced and all over the place. We wanted to go somewhere peaceful and actually chill out with those characters and be with Odin while he imparts this wisdom and stuff, and not have to hear stupid yellow cabs honking out the back."

There were several moments from the trailers that never wound up making the final cut, for varying reasons. One of the coolest shots from the promotional footage was Thor confronting Hela after she taunts him by asking, "What were you the God of, again?" Both of his eyes glow with lightning, though at this point in the movie she's already gouged one of them out. The ads were edited with both eyes still intact so as not to give the game away, because nobody likes spoilers in trailers. 

Another standout shot that got fans super excited for the movie was the one in which Loki flips his knives in slow motion as a battle rages behind him, though sadly, despite its cinematic quality and general awesomeness, it wound up getting the axe. It looks as though it takes place during the final stages of the film, but when Loki meets up with Thor and co on the Bifrost Bridge, he isn't twirling knives. In fact, the shot of Thor, Loki, Valkyrie and Hulk standing side by side in a nice straight line on the bridge is also nowhere to be seen in the final film, as Hulk is busy fighting Hela's giant wolf Fenris at that stage in the proceedings.

The Grandmaster teaches Topaz the meaning of popular signals in one Thor: Ragnarok extended scene which features the Grandmaster tasking Loki and Valkyrie with capturing the escaped Thor. When they fail to understand the meaning of his "go" signal, he starts ranting about all the ways to tell people to do something without ever having to open your mouth.

"That's the universal sign, was I not clear?" he says to Topaz. "For heaven's sakes, what did you make of that?" He then proceeds to teach Topaz about the signals that he promises are universal, although she struggles to grasp them, thinking his signal for "where's my check?" means everything from "dial it down" to "I'd like dessert" to "pay the bill." The Grandmaster's signals clearly aren't as easy to understand as he seems to think, and it's fun to see Goldblum getting the chance to use his gift for understated physical comedy.

Bruce Banner goes through quite the journey in Thor: Ragnarok, finally busting out after being stuck within the Hulk for two years only to return to the green persona to help his friends defeat Hela on Asgard. In one deleted scene, Banner fights the Hulk within even more as he deals with the stress of fleeing the Grandmaster alongside Thor. 

"I swang all the way over here to Hulk, I got stuck there for two years," Banner tells Thor, explaining why he won't Hulk out again. "Didn't matter if I was angry or not. I have no control over it anymore. Then it swang back to the Bruce zone, and I'm stuck here now, unless something major happens, intense. Other than that you've got Banner."

Thor is initially upset at the declaration and is ready to give up on going home to Asgard. However, Banner still offers to help, saying that's what friends do. The sweet moment is underscored by clear evidence of the monster still living within, with a bit of green and a growl coming out as Banner agrees to help.

A surprise (and unplanned) cameo appearance from Michael Rooker's Yondu almost interrupted one of Hela's scariest moments. In one scene, Skurge is about to execute a whimpering woman at the goddess' command when Yondu comes in, demanding that he stop it immediately. 

"Hold on right there," Yondu says. "Easy does it, hoss. Wait a minute." However, as it turns out, Yondu isn't there for heroics — he's actually looking for the offices of Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] and Lou [D'Esposito, Marvel Studios co-president]. When an off-camera voice sends him off in the right direction, he lets the execution proceed as planned.

This bizarre little scene was not actually an intended cameo. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn revealed that Rooker was actually on the studio lot shooting a scene for the Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout! ride at Disney California Adventure when he decided to stop by and "goof around" on the Thor: Ragnarok set. Rooker later confirmed as much, crushing fans' hopes that the character might make a quick return from the dead. 

The Grandmaster makes a bit more of an impression on Thor in an extended scene showing their first meeting. The scene begins with Thor, freshly arrived in the Grandmaster's palace, trying to escape while the celestial being sends his many followers after a frustrating flying creature.

After everyone else departs, the Grandmaster tells Thor about the obedience discs, the chip implanted in his neck that keeps him from escaping. "It's a little invention of mine, by the way," the Grandmaster says. "You know, some people find it kind of erotic." The Grandmaster's rant on the obedience discs is soon interrupted as he comes across his horde going a little too wild in their attempts to catch the pests.

Finally, the Grandmaster turns his attention to Thor, asking the hero to introduce himself. With a great amount of effort, Thor identifies himself as the god of thunder, lifting his arms from the restraints as much as he can and struggling to get the words out. "Wow, jeez, that was, I didn't hear anything, but weren't those like sparkles out of your fingers, like lightning maybe?" the Grandmaster replies. The Grandmaster then takes Thor to see his interrogation of his cousin Carlo. After a bit more back-and-forth, as in the actual film, the clip ends with Carlo being "pardoned... from life." 

Thor and the Hulk made a pretty great pair in Thor: Ragnarok, but they didn't exactly start out on good footing. After their big fight, the pair had to get used to rooming together, and an extended scene of the two in their quarters shows that figuring out how to get along wasn't easy.

The scene begins with Thor once again trying (and failing) to remove his obedience disc. The noise wakes up a sleeping Hulk, who has to shake off a "bad dream" that seems to have involved the Banner within briefly fighting for control. Hulk ultimately wins out and starts pestering his roommate for seeming "sad."

"Sad Thor," Hulk says repeatedly, while flicking the hero in the head. He eventually knocks Thor over, leading him to say that he isn't sad, but angry. "I lost my father, I lost my hammer," Thor rages. Hulk doesn't seem to care about Thor's crying, calling him a "baby man." 

"You know what we call you? We call you the stupid Avenger," Thor says. Hulk shoots back that they call Thor the "tiny Avenger." The clip ends with a sad moment, with Thor getting angry and telling Hulk that Earth does in fact hate him.

Skurge went through a long journey in Thor: Ragnarok, going from undervalued soldier to Hela's executioner to the savior of Asgard. Although the character was featured quite a lot in the film, there was one scene that didn't make the cut, showing him finding one of Hela's most wanted — Heimdall. 

In the clip, Skurge appears to be trying to get his bearings after Hela's destruction of the Asgardian army when he spots a group of people fleeing in the distance. He pulls out a pair of binoculars and trains them on Heimdall, who turns around and looks directly towards Skurge before fleeing. 

Theres no word on why the filmmakers decided not to keep the scene, as the brief moment seems like it actually may have been pretty important to the plot, hinting early on that Skurge would be willing to defy Hela's orders if it meant saving his friends. Still, the movie worked just fine without the moment, and it made Skurge's eventual change of heart even more surprising.

Hulk's escape from the Grandmaster's headquarters was nothing short of heroic in the film, and a deleted scene gives even more of a glimpse at just what he had to go through to get out. In the clip, Thor jumps out the window of the Grandmaster's palace, but he's followed by an angry Hulk, who wants him to stay.

Hulk crashes through the marketplace, greeted with cheers from the locals everywhere he goes. He follows a somersaulting, running Thor throughout the colorful city until Thor finally makes it to the junkyard where he'll eventually find the former Avengers ship that he wants to use to get off the planet. 

There isn't much to the scene, but it's fun to get more of a glimpse of the relationship between Hulk and Thor with Banner out of the picture. It also shows more of Sakaar, and how its people react to their champion. 

Okay, so this was clearly never actually meant to be in the finished product, but the special short of the Grandmaster moving in with Thor's old roommate Darryl is too good to miss. The movie brings back the fan favorite character from the Team Thor shorts, which show what the hero was up to during the events of Captain America: Civil War.

The clip finds Darryl shortly after he's moved to Los Angeles, leaving him looking for a new roommate. "The Grandmaster was the only one who answered my Craigslist ad," Darryl says in the clip. "At first I thought he was just another Hollywood type person, then I realized he was more than likely from another planet." The clip then highlights the Grandmaster's lack of knowledge about Earth's traditions by showing him learning all about toast.

"I come from Sakaar," the Grandmaster says. "It's a haven for lost things. That sounds kind of poetic, but it's really kind of a catch-all phrase. And now, without boring you with the details, I had formerly, for a very long period of time, an assistant/bodyguard named Topaz, and now I'm looking for a new assistant. And you know who seems to fit the bill just perfectly, believe it or not, is Darryl." A true match made in heaven.