How Natalie Portman Adjusted to Wielding the Hammer in 'Thor: Love and Thunder' and the Future of Thor in the MCU

Two Thors are better than one.

This is the consensus of those who saw Thor: Love and Thunder early, but it's also, of course, how those behind the fourth movie in Marvel Studios' big-screen adaptation of the comic book character feel. After all, the premise of the film which opens July 8, is that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been experiencing a crisis of purpose, while his ex, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), has picked up his hammer.

"I feel like getting this opportunity, first of all, was such an incredible way to explore a female superhero that could be quite vulnerable and weak, and find strength in that and be more like a human I could relate to personally," Portman said during a press conference for the film on June 24. "He's obviously very assured and experienced in being a superhero, and she's just trying to figure it out. She's new at it and also keeps reverting to human form, so [there's] a danger always that it might be her last moment."

Portman acknowledged that she learned a lot about playing a superhero from Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie.

"It just gave me renewed respect for what Chris has been doing for over a decade [and] what Tessa has been doing because I see how much work goes into it that I don't think I was aware of when it was just the chick in the first one," she explained. "I didn't see everything that went on behind the scenes. When I got insight into like all of the choreography and the training and everything, I was like, 'Wow, this is a triple job of what I was doing back then.'"

What the actors on Thor: Love and Thunder had to take on from a practical, production level was slightly different than previous Marvel films, though, as they shot many scenes using The Volume technology, which is a physical set that includes wall of LED screens to create a digital environment for the performers to react to.

As writer-director-actor Taika Waititi puts it, "Imagine a big, long TV that's circular. ... It's like the old filmmaking of the '20s and '30s with rear projection and most of it is in camera, and the actors can see the environment and also the environment lights the scene, so you've got reflections."

For Waititi, this meant planning scenes ahead more fully. For the actors, it meant actually getting to see details on set that they usually have to wait to see when the film is finished. 

"So much of what we've done in these films has been green screen, blue screen; you don't even know what the monster or whatever it is you're looking at until you see the film," Hemsworth explained. "What I thought was cool was the skin coloring and tones change due to you know, the sunset you're looking at or whatever is in that environment. And it's more immersive."

Hemsworth's Thor was already going through a complicated time before Jane showed up "dressed as him," which is "a shock," Hemsworth said. "All of a sudden his weapon that he held so dear for so many years now belongs to someone else. And then he has Stormbreaker [and] he starts to sense there's a little jealousy there."

Due to the nature of the threat of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), though, the former couple have to band together with some other important allies, including Valkyrie, to save the gods from elimination.

"The thing that I really enjoy about these films, and certainly I think something that Stan Lee talked to a lot about, [is that] whether it's a villain or hero, the thing sometimes that connect them to their power, whether it's used for good or bad, is actually their trauma," Thompson said.

When Valkyrie was first introduced, she was dealing with her trauma by drinking a lot, which allowed Thompson to "upend what a female superhero looks like" by what a female super hero looks like. Now, she is troubled in a different way.

"She was a professional soldier for thousands of years and now finds herself stuck in bureaucracy. So, she's really missing being on the battlefield and missing her sisters, and so, it's been very fun to get to have that again with Natalie, in particular, as Mighty Thor," Thompson said.

The battlefield will be hard won, as Gorr is a villain to be feared — someone who cut his own tattoos off, Bale pointed out. But even though he is "a monster" now, Bale also said the film will allow audience to understand "why this guy is making awful decisions," in addition to "understanding why he came to be" that monster in the first place.

You won't get any spoilers here as to how the team fares against Gorr. However, as for the future of Thor films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, producer and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said, "Our interest in making additional stories is somewhat about continuing the character [but] it's almost entirely about continuing the experience with the actor. I think of all of our cast not as their individual characters, but as Marvel players, who, within that character, can grow and evolve and change. And if we look at the comics as our guide, there are plenty of other incarnations of Thor that we've that we have yet to see."