Alan Taylor’s MCU film, Thor: The Dark World, is a cautionary tale for directors in charge of franchise sequels

credit: wikimedia commons

For most directors, the art of filmmaking is an experience worth its weight in creative calories. For Alan Taylor, it was instead a harrowing one better left forgotten or chalked up as a bad dream. In hindsight, Thor: The Dark World wasn’t just a director’s worst nightmare but an agonizing ordeal for the audience who had to suffer through 112 minutes of a rotten piece of film that had no business existing within the realm of cinema.

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Thor: The Dark World [Credit: Marvel Studios]
In the later years, Taylor himself picked apart his Marvel project, proving there was no love lost between him and the Nordic God. But even Chris Hemsworth’s best efforts to preserve the sanctity of his leading role and Tom Hiddleston lending his Shakespearean expertise to the film’s drab plot couldn’t help make the final product any less painful for the Marvel fans.

Alan Taylor Learns From His “Wrenching” Thor Experience

After the experience of Thor: The Dark World, Alan Taylor, director of historic television series such as Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Game of Thrones, lost the primary conviction he held as an artist. Patty Jenkins, who was originally hired for the sequel, wisely bowed out of the project after foreseeing the disaster that lay ahead. “It would have looked like it was my fault,” she claimed. Instead, it ended up looking like Alan Taylor’s fault.

Tom Hiddleston and Alan Taylor at a Thor 2 event [Credit: Sue Lukenbaugh/Wikimedia Commons]
In an interview with Uproxx, he later said:

“I’ve learned that you don’t make a $170 million movie with someone else’s money and not have to collaborate a lot. The Marvel experience was particularly wrenching because I was sort of given absolute freedom while we were shooting. Then in post, it turned into a different movie. So, that is something I hope never to repeat and don’t wish upon anybody else.”

Although he was right to believe so, he didn’t know how quickly his own words would become a foreboding prediction for another project. Before Thor: The Dark World premiered worldwide, Taylor was booked to direct Terminator: Genisys, one of the worst branch-offs of the James Cameron-Arnold Schwarzenegger IP that made fans question the very need and purpose of sequels in the filmmaking business.

Alan Taylor Revisits His MCU Disaster, Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World [Credit: Marvel Studios]

Almost a decade after the disaster that shook the foundations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and convinced fans that even Kevin Feige could sometimes make a wrong call, Alan Taylor reminisced about what made Thor: The Dark World so different before and after the making of the film. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the director revealed what his unseen “Taylor Cut” entailed:

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“Kevin Feige was always smart about looking at what worked and didn’t in the last iteration and trying to retool from that. So I came in to ‘bring some Game of Thrones to it.’ 

The version I had started off with had more childlike wonder; there was this imagery of children, which started the whole thing. There was a slightly more magical quality. There was weird stuff going on back on Earth because of the convergence that allowed for some of these magical realism things. And there were major plot differences that were inverted in the cutting room and with additional photography — people [such as Loki] who had died were not dead, people who had broken up were back together again. I think I would like my version.”

Both Thor: The Dark World and Terminator: Genisys (which were filmed back to back) made humongous profits and were officially considered as box office hits. But fans and critics were brutal and having to shoulder the blame for the two failed sequels of two major franchises had its impact on Taylor.

“I had lost the will to make movies. I lost the will to live as a director. I’m not blaming any person for that. The process was not good for me.”

In the decade that followed, the Emmy-winning director had to find his roots in prestige television and labored to get The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark made. In the process, Taylor rediscovered his love and passion for filmmaking but the damage that was done to the Marvel and Terminator franchises lives on to this day as some of the worst in movie history.

Thor: The Dark World is streaming on Disney+

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