Kevin Feige Says THOR: RAGNAROK Ventures Into GUARDIANS Territory

Speaking  from the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (the embargo has lifted and you can check out our coverage on Vol. 2 by CLICKING HERE), Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige also touched on what's happening in Thor: Ragnarok.  It seems Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange won't feature very prominently in the film, unless the Sorcerer Supreme is venturing off-world with Thor and Loki.  

Speaking to ScreenRant, Feige shared that the tone of this particular Thor film may not be repeated in any future installments in the franchise and that it's more of a reflection of where the MCU is at in its current state. "I don’t know about branching off from this, but certainly inhabiting similar areas from this. A lot of our upcoming movies will. I mean the upcoming movies will be as much up here, as they are on Earth, starting with not Spider-Man, starting with Thor: Ragnarok. There are three scenes on Earth in Thor: Ragnarok. Everything else is Asgard, and not all of these worlds, but world that certainly, let’s put it this way, in Thor lingo, it’s beyond the nine realms. There are other planets that we spend a lot of time on in Thor: Ragnarok, that certainly people would say, ‘oh, that’s sort of like the Guardians world’, but they’re just other areas of the Marvel cosmos universe."

Perhaps Chris Hemsworth knew exactly what he was talking about back in November 2015, when he stated that he wanted the third solo Thor film to feel more like the first Guardians film.  At the time, Hemsworth was promoting Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea (which also starred Tom Holland), but briefly touched on a then-untitled Thor: Ragnarok.  "I think it needs to be injected with that sort of smart wit and unexpected kind of humor, kind of what James Gunn came in and did with Guardians [Of The Galaxy]. It was like off center and unpredictable and I think we can definitely use a dose of that, you know.  We’ve done regal. We’ve done Shakespeare, and we’ve shown that. I think now it’s time to go, ‘Ok, cool. Let’s try something different,’ and Taika just had such a brilliant sort of take and funny kind of ideas about where we could, how we could do that."

We're already confirmed to see Hulk, Hela, the Gradmaster, Valkyrie, Skurge and Doctor Strange in the film but might we actually get a cameo from a Guardian or two?  Watching a gladiator fight to the death seems like exactly the kind of thing Rocket Raccoon or Drax would do on their off day. 

Thor: Ragnarok arrives in theaters on November 3, 2017.

In Marvel Studios’ Thor: Ragnarok, Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his mighty hammer and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok — the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization — at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. But first he must survive a deadly gladiatorial contest that pits him against his former ally and fellow Avenger — the Incredible Hulk!