THOR: THE DARK WORLD Director Says His Original Version Has "More Childlike Wonder"

I think I’m one of the few people who enjoyed Thor: The Dark World. It wasn’t perfect, but I liked it more than most people. Regardless, it is considered to be one of the lower-tier Marvel movies. However, the film we ended up seeing wasn’t director Alan Taylor’s original vision.

During a recent interview with THR, Taylor revealed that the film’s story ended up changing in some major ways throughout the post-production, reshoots, and edits that changed the ending. There was a different cut of the film that he had, and that original cut is said to have had “more childlike wonder.” The director explained:

"The version I had started off with had more childlike wonder; there was this imagery of children, which started the whole thing. There was a slightly more magical quality. There was weird stuff going on back on Earth because of the convergence that allowed for some of these magical realism things. And there were major plot differences that were inverted in the cutting room and with additional photography – people [such as Loki] who had died were not dead, people who had broken up were back together again. I think I would like my version."

This looks like a job for fans to campaign for the Taylor cut of Thor: The Dark World! His original version of the film certainly sounds a lot more interesting than what we got. So what happened, why were all the changes made? Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige wanted the film to be a bit darker, which is why he hired Taylor in the first place:

"Kevin Feige was always smart about looking at what worked and didn't in the last iteration and trying to retool from that. So I came in to 'bring some Game of Thrones to it.'"

The filmmaker went on to share that he admires what Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) and James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), who had the opportunity to bring their personal vision to their stories and also managed “to combine it with the big corporate demands".