Tag: screenwriters vs. directors

nonbinaryjasontodd:

taika: here’s this neat symbolism of thor being sent down the same path of his father, shown by losing his eye and having the eyepatch, but instead he chose to be a better man than his father was. also his hammer gets destroyed because he never really needed it, it was just a channel for his powers, and he’s far more powerful without it.

russo brothers: ……………………………….. okay heres a robot eye and an axe

I’m gonna guess the decision to lose the hammer and the eye, and hence the symbolism, came from the screenwriter, Eric Pearson. (Can anyone who’s read the novelization confirm those were in there?) Likewise, the robot eye and axe would have come from Markus and McFeely.

Don’t forget that screenwriters are a thing, folks! Joss Whedon made things easy because he was both writer and director, so all blame, justified or un-, could be aimed at him. Taika does deserve a lot of the blame for the “text” of Ragnarok, because so much of it was improvised. But there was a basic story in there and a few scripted lines.

I’m probably just being pedantic (as usual), and I don’t know squat about the actual content of IW, but I’d like to insist on the difference between the role of the *screenwriters*, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote the story and dialogue, and that of the *directors*, Joe and Anthony Russo, who figured out things like staging, framing, and precise expression. Markus and McFeely are primarily to blame/credit for the actual sequence of events, including significant character deaths.