On July 8, Thor: Love and Thunder will become the 29th MCU film and the fourth Thor solo movie – a record for Marvel’s heroes. Clearly, working together across both the Thor movies, Marvel’s team-up films, and other projects has led to Thor’s stars becoming very close, and they tell IGN it's their real-life friendships that will make this story even stronger.
Natalie Portman’s return as Jane Foster is one of the most exciting parts of Thor: Love and Thunder as she is set to wield Mjolnir and become Mighty Thor before our eyes. While Portman wasn’t a part of Thor: Ragnarok, she did star as Foster in the first two Thor films. Furthermore, her legendary career has led her to cross paths with Valkryie actor Tessa Thompson in Annihilation and Gorr the God Butcher actor Christian Bale in Knight of Cups.
“It was so incredible getting to work again with so many of the actors that I had previously worked with,” Portman said. “I really appreciated getting another opportunity with Chris and with Tessa, who is also a great friend. It was just really fun to get to play again and also to come on set feeling comfortable already.”
“Also, it’s been wonderful to get to work with Tessa in this way and explore our friendship a little bit in the film. It's been nice to have a variety of female characters that I think kids can relate to and see different possibilities for women, personalities and superpowers and all that. Whenever I've had the opportunity to work with other actresses, it's always much more fun and much more powerful and meaningful I think.”
Thompson echoed Portman’s words and talked about how working with her friend meant so much more than simply making it easier to get into character together. It was, as she puts it, inspiring.
“Natalie is such an incredible actor who has been working for a long time now. And I feel really inspired when I see someone that has been doing it for a long time and they're still trying to reach new heights and do things that challenge them,” Thompson said. “It's very seldom, especially as a woman, that you're asked to actually expand yourself, to get bigger, to get as big as you can get. Typically, you're asked to get smaller in all sorts of ways. So watching her do that and take up that challenge was wonderful.
“And then she and I, outside of Annihilation, have also just had the opportunity to work together as colleagues in thinking about how to make this business more equitable and safer for women and girls. And so to me, she's actually just a real-life superhero in a lot of ways. And so to get to play with her in this space as one is also just fun.”
Hemsworth also spoke of playing alongside Portman’s Jane Foster once more and how their reuniting after being in such different places made this new story even more fun.
“I think so much of the change of who Thor was has a lot to do with the people he's interacting with. And so to interact again with Jane Foster after they were both in very different places made it so much fun,” Hemsworth said. “I started this journey with Natalie Portman 10 years ago, so to sort of reunite this many years later was just really exciting. When we had the prospect of doing this film in front of us, we were both talking about it a lot prior to shooting and throwing around ideas of how we'd interact or how the characters would interact and how it would be familiar, but also different to what we'd seen before.”
Thor: Love and Thunder will be released in theaters on July 8, 2022. In our review, we said that it "is held back by a cookie-cutter plot and a mishandling of supporting characters, but it succeeds as the MCU's first romantic comedy thanks to Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman's chemistry."
For more, read on as to why Chris Hemsworth calls Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher one of his favorite Marvel villains and as these stars talk about acting in the MCU and the mighty return of Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster.
Francesca Rivera is Video Producer at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @fbrivera.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.