Chris Hemsworth has said that Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher is one of his favorite Marvel villains, and it’s more and more apparent why as we get closer to release – Gorr is intense.
Ever since his initial reveal, Gorr’s new MCU design has been the subject of (sometimes heated) discussion among Marvel fans, if only because it’s so distinct. Gorr is all the more interesting when you take into account his scars, which Bale says has a lot to do with the character’s origin.
Light spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder
“He's a highly religious character at the beginning with tattoos displaying his piousness, and then he becomes disillusioned with that, and then literally just mutilates himself to get rid of that,” Bale explains in a new interview with IGN.
An interesting bit of trivia, perhaps, but apparently Thor: Love and Thunder went so far as to actually include the scene in which Gorr cuts out his tattoos. Ultimately, though, it was perhaps a bit too much for a family-friendly superhero film, even given the MCU’s darker and gorier turn with films like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
“It was perhaps a little bit too extreme to be included in the film, but there was a lot of wonderful stuff that we shot. But you know that as an actor. You always know, hey, you're going to experiment. Some things can work, some things don't, and we want this to be a family film. My kids love it,” Bale says.
Who knows, maybe we’ll see it in the home release.
In the meantime, we have this somewhat brighter clip from Thor: Love and Thunder, in which Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor shows that she’s good at saving lives but bad at catchphrases. Thor: Love and Thunder releases July 8.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.