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Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters July 8th, and ahead of its release Taika Waititi and Chis Hemsworth have been sharing some secrets behind the making of the film. They recently talked to PEOPLE, where the writer, director, and costar, revealed that some of the monsters in the film, are based on drawing his kids made along with Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky’s.
Waititi said the film features cameos by several cast members’ kids, along with “cool and weird” shadow monsters inspired by their drawings. “Here’s a fun fact, I haven’t talked about this at all,” he said. “The monsters in the film were originally based on drawings that all of our kids did.” The idea came while he was typing the script. He said his daughter leaned over and asked, “What’s an oil monster?’”
The oil monster was the first thing the writer “could come up with,” “I have no idea. I just wrote oil monster, whatever that means” he told his curious daughter “What do you think that looks like? Do you think it’s spiky?” She asked before drawing a “snakey thing.”
Waititi realized his daughter was on to something, and he talked to Hemsworth. “And then Taika said to me, ‘Tell your kids to do some drawings,’ and they did some drawings,” Hemsworth said.
Once they had the drawings Waititi said they gave them to the visual development artists working on the film’s special effects. “They turned them into these fully rendered, wild monsters,” he told the outlet. “In some of the kids [drawings], they were super colorful. So we toned those down. But yeah, that’s why the monsters are so weird and look so cool. That’s why the monsters look like they were created by kids,” the talented filmmaker added.
Hemsworth and Pataky are the parents of India, 10, and twin sons Tristan and Sasha, 8. Whilw Waititi shares daughters Te Kāinga o te Hinekāhu, 10, and Matewa Kiritapu, 6, with ex Chelsea Winstanley.