Christian Bale is an actor whose intense preparation for roles is Hollywood legend. We’ve all seen his xylophone rib cage in The Machinist, his juicy biceps in American Psycho, his mighty paunch in America Hustle. He took intense drum lessons for The Big Short, learned to throw a mean right hook for The Fighter. No doubt your man also studied loopholes in the Constitution before taking on Dick Cheney in Vice.
So it comes as some surprise – and perhaps comfort to millions of confused Dads out there – that when it came to joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe for his forthcoming role in Thor: Love and Thunder, Christian Bale didn’t actually know what the MCU is. Hey: there’s method acting, and there’s wrapping your head around an ever expanding series that includes over thirty films and TV shows.
The revelation came in a recent interview with Total Film magazine, in which it was put to Bale that, following his long tenure as Christopher Nolan’s Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy – which belong to Marvel rivals DC Comics – taking on the role of Gorr alongside Christopher Hemsworth’s flowing locks and a considerably hench Natalie Portman might feel like a risk.
“Absolutely not, no,” the 48-year-old responded. “That didn’t even enter into my head at all.
“I’d read that, and people would go, ‘Oh, look at this! He’s entered the MCU!’ And I’d go, ‘I’ve done what? I haven’t entered shit, thank you very much. I’m like, ‘The MCU?’ I had to ask what that was.”
So there you have it: a 48-year-old with an Oscar, two Golden Globes and a formidable reputation for Serious Acting doesn’t really know the difference between his Captain Marvels and his WandaVisions, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t approached his role in Love and Thunder seriously.
Elsewhere in the interview Bale discussed how he and director Taika Waititi agreed to tackle the character of Gorr the God Butcher (great job title), an extremely creepy-looking villain who will cause Thor all sorts of headaches. Apparently they wanted to give him “sort of a Nosferatu attitude,” referring to the 1922 silent German Expressionist classic, which is a very Christian Bale thing to say.
There was even, he claimed, a dance routine for the character plotted out that involved “all this sort of Kate Bush stuff that we worked at,” which never made the final cut (they must be kicking themselves now, given ‘Running Up that Hill’ has single-handedly revived Stranger Things season 4).
In further credit to Bale, while he might not know what the MCU is, he did admit to doing some Google research on his character.
“[But] I did make the mistake of googling him and, oh no! [In the comics] he runs around in a G-string all the time. And I thought, ‘They don’t have the right man for that!’”
A body transformation too far, by the sounds of it. Don’t they CGI for that sort of thing these days?
Thor: Love and Thunder is out 8 July.
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