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Topics: Marvel, Taika Waititi, Celebrity, TV and Film
Shola Lee
Taika Waititi got Russell Crowe to film all of his Thor: Love and Thunder scenes twice and, honestly, it was worth it.
We're still not over Thor: Love and Thunder. The film has everything we want from a movie: a killer soundtrack, a tragic/funny plot, and Russell Crowe as a Greek god.
Still, Taika wasn't completely convinced by Russell's choice of accent for the part, so he made him film all the scenes twice - we'd argue that means he should be paid twice too, but fine.
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Russell wanted to do a Greek accent to play Zeus, which makes sense, seeing that he's literally a Greek god. Taika, on the other hand, wanted him to have a British accent, so they filmed each scene twice.
Guess which one made it into the final cut?
If you guessed that the Greek god ended up with a Greek accent, you'd be correct.
Although it wasn't an easy choice, speaking to Insider, the director said: "We actually talked at length about the accent."
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"We wondered if someone did a Greek accent of a Greek god, is it going to be a farce? Will it be too silly?"
But Russell really thought it would work, which it did, so Taika compromised - asking the iconic actor to film all of the scenes twice.
"We ended up doing two versions of every take with Russell," at this point you might be wondering, why did Taika think Zeus should sound British?
Well, Laurence Olivier is to blame.
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Seeing as Laurence played Zeus in Clash of the Titans (1981) a film that would become pretty much immovable from our cinema consciousness, Taika "felt people would think Zeus would sound British," just like the iconic actor.
Russell obliged but when the final cut rolled around, the director saw sense, saying: "It's actually more offensive to the Greeks to have Zeus sound like he's British."
"And test audiences loved the Greek accent. I'm really happy with it. But, yeah, he had to do every take once in the Greek accent and once with a British accent because I couldn't make up my mind. But Russell was right all along."
Still, that means somewhere out there in the world there is a version of the new Thor film, with Russell's British accent and we have to see it, like seriously need to.
Thor: Love and Thunder is available to watch in cinemas now.