Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame had successfully juggled the lengthy superhero roster, and it was done in a way that audiences and fans rarely saw as unsatisfactory. The mish-mashing of characters was a fun element to finally see after a decade of films from the shared universe. And while Marvel plans ahead, sometimes what they seemingly plant for the future isn’t necessarily paid off. One arc that Avengers: Endgame left us with was Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy joining forces for whatever lays ahead of them. Thor: Love and Thunder would follow up on the plot thread and James Gunn told Marvel that he wasn’t keen on using Thor for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
According to Variety, Gunn explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he stood his ground with Marvel Studios on his disinterest in using the Asgard character. The Superman director said,
I said in the script notes: ‘I’m not gonna put him in. I don’t want to have Thor in the Guardians. I don’t want to do a movie with Thor.’ I don’t understand the character that much. I love watching his movies and I love Chris Hemsworth as a guy. I don’t understand how to write that character.”
Gunn isn’t immune to resenting his own future set-ups, as he also felt some regret about teasing Adam Warlock at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. “I did not like what I did in Guardians 2 where we set up Adam Warlock and we set up the Guardians of the Galaxy and we set up all this shit that I didn’t necessarily plan on. Well, I guess I kind of planned on fulfilling that promise, but you want to be careful about that. The way a post-credits scene works is a punch to the face, like, ‘Oh my God! Look at this.’ At times when you’re using it just solely to set something up, sometimes you’re screwing yourself over. It was not easy to work Adam Warlock into Guardians 3.”
Gunn had also previously stated how much it was a relief that Taika would have to pick up the plot on Thor: Love and Thunder so that he was creatively untethered to the character for Vol. 3.
