For Taika Waititi, something about Thor: Ragnarok just made sense. The character’s humour in all his previous appearance almost screamed for a director with his unique comedic skills to come on board the franchise. But did Waititi, who’d previously directed What We Do In the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, ever consider other Marvel characters his brand of humour might fit with?
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“In all honesty, I reckon I could probably bring something pretty unique to any of the franchises,” Waititi told me. “So I’d love to see Black Widow.”
Whaaaaaat?
“[I’d like to see] Black Widow as something crazy and a bit funnier than we expect it to be,” he continued. “Because we know her story and it’s very sullen and very dark and her history is very dark. But! What’s the funny version of that? What’s the more entertaining version of that?”
If Waititi had said Hawkeye, that would make sense. Vision and Wanda? Sure. War Machine? of course. Falcon? One million per cent. But Black Widow? A comedy version of her story is so fundamentally opposed to the character’s downtrodden history, well, it almost makes it the one not-obvious choice. And Waititi is all about not making the obvious choice.
“I really go for the underdog,” he explains. “[And] I think there’s a way in with any of the characters. You just have to find it and find what honours what’s already there with the source material but also brings it into a more entertaining form for the audience.”
It’s important to remember that while this is a fun hypothetical, the odds of Waititi actually making a Black Widow movie seem pretty slim. It feels almost too crazy for even Marvel to attempt. But that doesn’t make it impossible. He has expressed interest in doing another Marvel movie.
Thor: Ragnarok is the third film in a franchise and the only Marvel franchise to yet get a fourth film so far is The Avengers. So Thor 4 seems unlikely, at least for a while. Maybe, just maybe, this could be something that happens in the future.
We’ll have more from our interview with Waititi soon.