Though he’s up for yet another outing as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s resident God of Thunder, Chris Hemsworth has admitted that he’s only interested in once more wielding Mjolnir so long as the powers that be actually do something substantial – and new – with the character.
Hemsworth offered his thoughts on a potential return to his thus-far-career defining role during a recent interview given to Entertainment Weekly in promotion of his latest film, Extraction 2.
After a brief discussion regarding the newly-released sequel to his fan-favorite Netflix action film, Hemsworth was asked by the outlet’s Devan Coggan if he could provide any details as to his MCU future, to which he paused before playfully replying, “I’ve got to be careful how I word that because I have no idea what’s happening in the next phase.”
“There’s always conversations, like with Extraction,” he added. “Before anything is official, people are throwing around ideas. But officially, I don’t know.”
To that end, the Australian actor then explained his hopes that any such return would avoid having the character’s screen presence settle into a comfortable groove of “Thor’s Greatest Hits”, asserting, “I don’t want to continue to do it until people are so exhausted that they roll their eyes when they see me come on the screen as that character.”
“If an audience wants to see it, and if there’s something that we believe is exciting and fun, then great,” Hemsworth told Coggan. “I’ve loved being able to reinvent that character a few times. I don’t have the answer yet, but I would love to try and [figure out] how we can do that again and keep it a little unpredictable.”
Notably, this is not the first time Hemsworth has offered up this condition as a caveat to his return.
Asked by entertainment reporter Josh Horowitz “Where do you go with Thor at this point?” during a November 2022 appearance on his Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hemsworth opined, “I think, you look at Thor and Thor: The Dark World, and they were quite similar. Ragnarok, Love and Thunder, similar. I think it’s about reinventing him.”
“I think I’ve had such a unique opportunity with Infinity War and Endgame to do very drastic things with the character – I enjoy that, you know,” he continued, seemingly all but calling out by name Taika Waititi’s bastardization of his character. “I like keeping people on their toes. It keeps me invested. I’ve said this before but when it becomes too familiar, I think there’s a risk in getting lazy, because then you go ‘Eh, I know what I’m doing.’”
“So I don’t know,” he ultimately admitted. “I mean, I don’t even know if I’m invited back, but if I was, I think it would have to be a drastically different version, in tone, in everything, just for my own sanity.”
More recently, the actor likewise told GQ UK‘s Hannah-Rose Yee of a hypothetical return, “You know, I got sick of the character pretty quick every couple of years. If I was going to do something again it would have to be tonally different.”
“And we’d have to do something very drastic to keep people on their toes,” he concluded. “Otherwise it’s just the fatigue of those characters and those films, where people are like, ‘I’ve seen it.’”
Hemsworth’s Extraction 2 is now streaming on Netflix.