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LOS ANGELES — If you think Christian Bale’s hideous villain Gorr the God Butcher will haunt you forever after watching Thor: Love and Thunder, be thankful you never heard the Gorr infinity scream.
That’s right, Bale let out an instantaneous and sustained Gorr super howl on his first day of shooting for director Taika Waititi’s Marvel movie.
“There was this scream that never ended,” says Bale, now laughing at the dark moment. “It was a scream that people might have thought was about to end. But no, it went and went and went, I could tell nobody knew exactly what to think.
“This scene will never see the light of day,” he adds.
But it’s all part of Bale’s process of finding the right villain mode in Love and Thunder, the quirky superhero adventure anchored in Chris Hemsworth’s often-hilarious Thor regained his god body.
Bale’s deadly, head-scarred Gorr, whose inky mouth oozes black bile, is tasked with spreading the fear.
“It was my job to come in and provide that spooky element,” says Bale, 48. “You have to find the edge of what’s too little, what’s too much. And strike the right note.”
Even if this note doesn’t include a Hellscream.
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Bale, who was unrecognizable in his Oscar-nominated role as Dick Cheney in 2018’s ‘Vice’ and known to have lost more than 60 pounds for thriller ‘The Machinist,’ has focused on maintaining his gorr for his return to superhero films after ‘Dark Knight” to find. Franchise.
Amid the pandemic, the Welsh-born actor worked with the makeup team via Zoom to sculpt Gorr, the once pious man-turned-deity serial killer after his god Rapu killed his daughter (played by Hemsworth’s real-life daughter India, 10) lets die.
The hideous, prosthetic-heavy look took four hours in the makeup chair each day before hitting the set. Bale listened to music like the “fantastic Gorr-esque” Bruce Haack album The Electric Lucifer to get into the moody mindset during the lengthy process.
The physical result is downright terrifying for most. For Bale’s two children, Emmeline, 17, and Joseph, 7 (both playing the New Asgard kids in the film), the look was just kind of dad’s thing after the first family reveal.
“There’s always a look, they judge it for a minute or two, then it’s like, ‘All right, we get it,'” says Bale. “And then it’s just ‘Dad.’ ”
Filming revealed Bale’s Gorr intensity experiments. Before the silenced Gorr scream, Bale had thrown himself into a strange impromptu dance, which he describes as “a demented nun”. That too was scrapped.
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Hemsworth now says of Bale’s early days of shooting Gorr: “I remember thinking that’s scary as hell. And is that too intense?”
After three days of Gorr climbing to 11 on the villain ladder, Bale pulled Waititi aside.
“I asked him, ‘Am I in the wrong movie or am I getting this all wrong?’ “, Bale recalls. “[Waititi]actually said to me, ‘Well, I’m glad you said it.’ I said, “That’s cryptic. Do you want more or less?” But we found out.”
The trial and error as Bale wasted moments never quite ended. It was RIP for a scene where Gorr cuts off the head tattoos that served as symbols of his devotion to Rapu, the god he was beginning to loathe.
“We shot scenes where (Gorr) cuts himself and black blood is pouring down,” says Bale, who seems disappointed he didn’t do the Disney/Marvel PG-13 film. “The powers to be decided were perhaps too much for everyone. We’ve taken it too far. But we knew where the edge was.”
Between scenes with the kids playing his hostages, the bright Bale even fooled around as Gorr.
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“The kids realized I was just a dumb guy under that horrible makeup,” says Bale. “They grabbed my sword and made me do tricks with the black bile in my mouth. I became a circus character.”
Or a character with a revealed heart. Hemsworth says Gorr is his favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe villain because of Bale’s “nuanced performance,” after all.
“He brings empathy and humor to someone doing horrible, twisted things,” says Hemsworth. “Christian is the master at it.”
Hemsworth witnessed this empathy in a scene with India, where Bale sadly cries and holds his screen daughter.
“Chris sat behind the camera, like a good father,” says Bale. who praised India for making the scene work by being sympathetic to her cruel co-star. “I cried my eyes out. I just yelled. And India is totally involved. Between takes she said ‘Ewww!’ But she was flawless.”
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