One of the highlights of the recently released Marvel fim Thor: Love and Thunder has to be Christian Bale casted as Gorr The God Butcher.
And the anticpation for the film was only increased when it was heard of him playing this debutant character to MCU.
Even though there were some mixed reactions from audience as well as critics regarding the Thor 4 movie, Bale’s performance was certainly the scene stealer every time he appeared.
In fact, one can go so far to say that the opening scene of Thor: Love and Thuder featuring Christian Bale’s Gorr, and his tragic origin story of becoming the God butcher was, perhaps one of the best opening scenes ever in MCU movies.
Christian Bale, if you specifically connect him to any superhero universe, he is popularly knonw for playing Bruce Wayne aka Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy.
So, for superhero fans, he is still mostly regarded proudly as the Batman, some would say the best Batman of our era.
However, this year it seems Christian Bale hopped on the train of well-known actors who are making their debuts in MCU.
Even more importantly, he got what it’s like to play a villain, the other side of being a hero on-screen.
He portrays this charcter, who is one of the most terrifying and powerful villains in the MCU, so much that he can kill Gods of marvel universe.
Interestingly, since the actor got both sides of character to play now, a hero and a villain. Now he seems to have some reservations regarding the difference between playing a hero and a villain.
The actor exclusively revealed to ScreenRant about why he prefers playing the bad guy, the villain rather than a hero, here’s what the actor said “
“They do, absolutely. They not only have more fun, but they’re easier to play. Because everybody is fascinated with bad guys, right? The minute the bad guy walks on the screen, no one’s looking at the good guy anymore. All eyes go to the bad guy, so it’s a much easier acting gig.”
Just some time ago, before the release of the film, Christian Bale talked about the inspiration of this character, and how he decided with Taika Watiti, the director regarding the portrayal.
Christian Bale shared this to GameRader exploring more details about the influences on the character he portrays in Thor 4. Here’s full quote on what actor said :
“Mostly hearing Taika’s [Waititi, director] thoughts on itThere’s obviously sort of a Nosferatu slight attitude. Taika and I wanted to do a whole dance, which we didn’t get to do, but we had all this sort of Kate Bush stuff that we worked at. But I think he just realised he was never going to be allowed to put that in the final film. I would say that the most common thing I was staring at was the Aphex Twin video of ‘Come To Daddy’. But I don’t even know if that will be in the final film.”
This comes as quite a surprise as the influence that goes into his character is a strange and unexpected one.
Christian Bale’s Expectation From Gorr The Butcher
Further the actor continued sharing about how his initial thoughts or expectations from the character were totally different.
He said that he made the mistake of Googling the character, knowing the vast expanse of his character history in the comics.
Here’s what Bale continued about the difference in his expectation and what he found out from the comics :
“You sort of go, ‘I know what he does.’ It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? But I did make the mistake of Googling him and, oh no! [In the comics] 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 quickly dispelled any notions of running around in that. But I always did think what he could do with this in front of a bluescreen – he could chuck on whatever he wants later on.”
Interestingly, he was also asked about whether he was any hesitant on taking up a comic-book role after playing the Batman, he said “Absolutely not, no. That didn’t even enter my head at all.”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 shit, thank you very much.’ I’m like, ‘The MCU?’ I had to ask what that was.”
So, basically he was clueless about the abbreveation MCU and what it means that “He have entered the MCU!” comments of people.
Thor: Love & Thunder Changed Gorr The Butcher: Was It The Right Choice?
It is also important to address that Love and Thunder changed Gorr the Butcher from what he was in the comics. The question lies whether it was a right choice or not.
If you look at him in the comics, the mere appearence of the character was radically changed in the movies apart from other things, however there are defintely big similarities.
In the movie, Gorr was more humanized, and made much less strange as he was in comics. It kind of also allowed Christian Bale more to show his acting skills through the character, and he certainly threw that ball out of park.
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige talked about this after the release of the film, and this controversy going around the fans.
He talked about getting the comic-accurate Gorr the butcher would have required too much work of motion-capture and CGI, putting a negative effect on Christian Bale’s ability to perform.
Here’s what Feige exactly said to The Direct defending the design of the character in the MCU film Thor 4 :
“Gorr the God Butcher has an awesome look in the comics. We wanted to tap into that. But had we done exactly that translation, we would’ve lost all of Christian. So we made the decision early on that we didn’t want him to be a motion capture character. There are incredible ways of doing that, but with this particular actor in this particular character, Taika really believed, rightfully so, that we could achieve that with makeup.”
As per our suggestion, choosing this more humanized form of Gorr the God Butcher was focussed more on bringing out great performance rather than comic-accuracy.
And it is indeed a better choice since they cast Christian Bale for playing Gorr, it would be a disservice to him or any good actor for that matter, if performance get undermined due to heavy CGI and motion-capture.
We would have missed what we got in Love and Thunder, a complex and strongly portrayed character from Bale, grief-stricken and finding his chance at vengence against the Gods who let her daughter die.
It was even more complex than that because his entire life , and apparently his people spent their whole life believing in gods as their saviours only to find out that they don’t care, and being ridiculed and insulted by one, as we saw in the first scene.
Source: ScreenRant | The Direct | GamesRadar
Featured Image Source: Imageantra