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It’s Hammer Time, Again! VFX supervisor Jake Morrison takes us behind the scenes of the wild visuals of this summer’s Marvel extravaganza Thor: Love and Thunder. By Trevor Hogg
A
fter achieving box office and comedic success with Thor: Ragnarok, Kiwi filmmaker Taika Waititi returns with Thor: Love and Thunder, which ups the ante of action mayhem. In an effort to prevent the systematic murder of deities by a former worshipper, the Norse God of Thunder reteams with an ex-girlfriend. The cast of Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Russell Crowe, Jamie Alexander, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan and Waititi himself was supported by Marvel Studios’ VFX supervisor Jake Morrison, who has been involved with MCU franchise ever since the original solo outing. Overall, 25 vendors situated in Italy, U.K., Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand were responsible for producing 2200 visual effects shots. “You could say that the sun never sets on the Thor: Love and Thunder empire,” says Morrison. “You couldn’t go and see everybody [because of the pandemic], but it felt like a far more personal experience to do the whole thing through Zoom. For example, when saying our goodbyes and thank yous to Method Studios, it was heart-wrenching as we had over 300 people on Zoom. My take on the whole thing is I try to make sure the experience is as personal as possible so the notes go all the way down. If you want to be able to
convince people that it’s worth the work to actually stay [for a couple of extra hours] and make the shots better, the personal side of it becomes more important.”
Retaining Logic Within the Madness Morrison points out that even the film’s outrageous scenes, like giant goats pulling a flying Asgardian boat, had to be grounded with a
sense of logic. “I’m a big fan of superhero mechanics,” admits Morrison. “What I don’t want is a movie where the rules don’t make any sense. I thought, ‘What if we put Stormbreaker, which we know can summon Bifrost, front and center?’ We established that the boats can fly earlier when we see the Asgard tourist scenes. We hook up the goats in the front because we need a powerful force of compulsion. We get this
“Imagine the ability to shoot one actor doing one thing with multiple lighting passes and splitting them all out after the fact. Taika wanted us to have infinite control. We talked about magnesium flares in the air and that whole travel arc with long shadows.” — VFX supervisor Jake Morrison
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august 22
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