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Watch Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman Reunite in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ | Anatomy of a Scene

NYT, 16 Jul 2022
A battleground becomes the site of a bittersweet reunion in this scene from “Thor: Love and Thunder.”

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is facing an attack on New Asgard by Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). He has help from Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), but also from powerful projectiles scattering through the air and taking out Gorr’s creatures. Those projectiles turn out to be pieces of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, which he last saw when it was destroyed by Hela (Cate Blanchett) in “Thor: Ragnarok.” The pieces reassemble into a whole, but now Mjolnir is being wielded by a new figure whose costume looks a lot like Thor’s.

It turns out to be the Mighty Thor, or Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and the scene becomes a passionate reunion on multiple fronts.

The director Taika Waititi discussed how he sought to play up both the action and the comedy of the moment, while highlighting Thor’s self-doubts.

At the beginning of the film, Thor is “going through a lot of insecurity, trying to find himself,” Waititi said.

So when the Mighty Thor appears, Waititi said, the moment is challenging for Thor because “he doesn’t know who he is and he’s seeing someone else dressed just like him.”

The scene is also a reunion for the stars Hemsworth and Portman, who haven’t been in the franchise together since “Thor: The Dark World” (2013).

The final shot of the sequence shows that they get along, quite literally, like a house on fire.

Read the New York Times review: https://nyti.ms/3RQ3qVp
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