[WARNING: Spoilers for Thor: Ragnarok ahead.]

--

Thor: Ragnarok screenwriter Eric Pearson revealed in a new interview that Hela was originally going to battle the Destroyer armor. Cate Blanchett provided quite a formidable villain with the Goddess of Death, mostly dominating her brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and basically anyone else put in front of her. It took the actual events of Ragnarok - the destruction of Asgard - to take place in order to end Hela's threat to its people.

Plenty of Ragnarok's set pieces showcase Hela's destructive power, which she wields heavily in order to take control of Asgard in the first place. It was clearly a goal of Pearson and the writing team to make the character virtually impossible to defeat. In fact, she was going to prove much stronger than a previous Thor enemy, the enchanted Destroyer armor.

Pearson revealed several scenes and subplots of Ragnarok that didn't make the final script in a new interview with Yahoo! News. One of them involves Hela and the Destroyer, the giant armor that Loki brings to life in the first Thor and causes to wreak havoc on Earth, nearly defeating Thor in the process. In an earlier version of the script, Pearson had the armor locked away in a vault that Hela would break open. And like almost everyone and everything else Hela fights in Ragnarok, she would have immediately crushed it - but the producers ultimately had it removed from the final draft. Here's how Pearson described the scene:

"I always want the villain to be really … not-Disney. I want to give them moments where they’re really massacring or crushing people,” he explained. “And she has that great entrance where she takes everybody out. [Originally it was extended,] and they were like, ‘This is a bit repetitive, and we don’t have the days to shoot it.’ There was [also] a scene where she thought they were hiding the sword in the armory, this big fortress. She goes up, and the destroyer armor comes out to take her out, and she just rips that thing apart too, just to call back the destroyer armor. And it just felt like an extra beat that we didn’t need. We needed to get Thor pushing back to Asgard as fast as possible."

Cate Blanchett as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok

Pearson also revealed that while he couldn't keep the Destroyer scene, he was able to lobby for one of Hela's most memorable moments to stay in the script. The fight likely would have immediately followed the Goddess of Death's epic speech at Asgard, the moment when she reveals her lineage (which was a major change from the comics) to the soldiers watching her. Pearson gave director Taika Waititi credit for hilariously "taking the piss out of" the monologue, adding the warrior Hogun's oblivious reaction to literally everything she just said.

Based on how the final cut turned out, Ragnarok was just fine without the Destroyer's cameo. But it surely would have been a welcome addition to the movie in terms of both action and humor. Hela would have been able to show off her overwhelming power and Waititi's knack for comedic timing and dialogue could have added some funny beats to it.

It's a bummer that it seems like the scene with Hela and the Destroyer was ultimately left out due to budgetary reasons. But the producers had a point that it really wouldn't have added much to the plot, other than to reinforce how strong Hela was. At the end of the day, the Goddess of Death was able to establish herself as a dangerous-enough villain to make Thor: Ragnarok's subversive climax possible.

MORE: Thor: Ragnarok’s Original Odin Scenes Were Too Sad

Source: Yahoo! News

Key Release Dates