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Chris Hemsworth feared Ghostbusters role could have ended his career

August 18th, 2022 by Marc Comments

In all my years being a Ghostbusters fan, nothing was ever as controversial is Ghostbusters 2016 or Answer the Call as it’s now subtitled.

The reboot starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon was a tough pill to swallow for many fans as it lost what made the original so great and because it decided to move on, ignoring so many years of history and lore spanning movies, comics, books, games and more.

One of the most divisive things in the movie was Thor star Chris Hemsworth’s turn as Kevin, the Ghostbusters’ secretary. Why divisive? Well, I for one found him very funny but he was barely less than a cartoon character and he personified why the reboot failed: it couldn’t grasp that the reason the first movie was so good was that it avoided the yucks and guffaws and placed four realistic characters in an unrealistic situation and let smart writing, dialogue and characters do the rest. the 2016 movie relied on dick and fart jokes and while many were worth a giggle, it didn’t honour what went before.

We interview Ghostbusters: Answer the Call writer/director Paul Feig about the reboot, the fallout, the ideas and what he would have done different.

But it seems that Hemsworth had his doubts going in to the movie too, so much so that he feared it might end his career at first.

“I said to [director] Paul [Feig], ‘There’s not a whole lot on the page, like, what do you want me doing?’ He said, ‘Oh, we’ll figure it out when you get here.’ So I said, ‘Okay, why not? Let’s go.’ And I got there, turned up to the studio the day before we started shooting and he handed me the script, I read the script and I said, ‘There’s still nothing in here. Like, what am I doing?’ And he said, ‘It’s okay, we’re gonna improvise and have fun.’ And my immediate reaction was, this is not only the end of my career but I’m going to ruin this film, I’m gonna let everyone down, I haven’t done this before, what am I doing?”

From this, it seems that the humour Hemsworth does bring the movie came from the star himself and, despite his fears, it may have actually helped his career, making many realise he actually had great comic timing.

However, in the end, the movie wasn’t the nightmare he envisioned to film: “It just became so much fun. It became about trying to not laugh, about trying to make the other person laugh. It reminded me of drama class or being back in high school. I thought, ‘I want to take that into everything I do.'”

Thankfully the reboot didn’t end Hemsworth’s career otherwise we would never have got Thor: Love and Thunder. Em…

Source GQ via our friends at Ghostbusters News

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….