Of all the director hires that Marvel Studios has made over the last 15 years, there are few that are more surprising than Taika Waititi to direct a “Thor” film. However, not only did the decision to bring in a young Waititi to direct “Thor: Ragnarok” pay off in a big way (the film was a huge success, both financially and with fans), but it led to a continued relationship where the filmmaker returned for another round of ‘Thor’ goodness (though ‘Love & Thunder’ wasn’t received nearly as well as the previous film). Now, removed from the MCU machine, Waititi is opening up about his reasoning for making the jump from indie films to Marvel Studios.

In a recent episode of the Smartless podcast, Taika Waititi was incredibly candid about his decision to direct a “Thor” film and the amount of research he did before really working on the movie. Needless to say, especially given how rabid the MCU fanbase is, there will be plenty of thoughts from fans regarding these comments.

“You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films,” Waititi said. “It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur. But I was poor and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.’”

He added, “And ‘Thor,’ let’s face it — it was probably the least popular franchise. I never read ‘Thor’ comics as a kid. That was the comic I’d pick up and be like ‘Ugh.’ And then I did some research on it, and I read one ‘Thor’ comic or 18 pages, or however long they are.”

Firstly, it’s not all that surprising to discover that Waititi mainly took the ‘Thor’ job for the paycheck. While there haven’t been many filmmakers to openly admit to this, it’s clear that is the motivation for many who make the leap to Marvel Studios (or any big-budget project, honestly). And it’s not just directors who collect the paychecks, the actors are also given much more freedom in their careers after successful runs at Marvel.

Secondly, and what might be more shocking for fans of the franchise, you have the admission from Waititi and he didn’t like Thor, as a character, and hardly did any research about the history of the hero before accepting the job. This sort of flippance about the source material would, normally, get crucified by fandom because they hold the comic book universe and the history in such reverence. That said, it’s difficult to really hate on Waititi for saying that considering the success of ‘Ragnarok.’ Like it or not, there’s no denying the filmmaker greatly changed the ‘Thor’ franchise and make it such a massive success after the disaster that was ‘The Dark World.’ Then again, comic book fans don’t really ever like to hear a filmmaker admit to disregarding the source material.

Regardless, it doesn’t appear that Waititi has much interest in returning to ‘Thor’ or the Marvel Cinematic Universe anytime soon. He has a number of projects he wants to get done, including something in the ‘Star Wars’ franchise. He’s admitted that a new Marvel film is pretty low on his list of priorities.

You can hear the full discussion below:

Taika Waititi Says He Took The ‘Thor’ Job Because He Was “Poor” & Only Read 1 Comic To Prepare