How Thor: Ragnarok’s Visually Stunning Valkyrie Flashbacks Were Created

Director Taika Waititi opted to use a yet-to-be-tested movie making tech in creating that visually striking battle scene between Hela and Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok.


Chris Hemsworth’s latest outing as Marvel’s God of Thunder has finally arrived in North America. And based on its first-day box office haul, a lot of people have already checked it out. While the movie has several highlights – from the action-packed opening scene to Thor and Hulk’s gladiator battle and eventual reconciliation – there is arguably one scene that stands out from the rest when it comes to its pure aesthetic impact: the Valkyrie flashback.


For those who have not seen the movie yet, you may remember the sequence incorporated in some of the trailers for the film. It is where Valkyrie and her co-Asgardian warriors riding their respective Pegasus dramatically charge towards the Goddess of Death in an effort to lock her up just as Odin ordered. The whole sequence looks like a Renaissance painting that has come to life, with its scenic and slow-motion shots. Apparently, as New York Times’ Dan Kois shared on his Twitter, Waititi opted to use his What We Do In The Shadows co-star Stuart Rutherford’s newly developed tech called Dynamic Light to film the scene:

“One thing I couldn’t get into the Taika profile was a bit about the very cool tech used on the Valkyrie-Hela fight. It’s called DynamicLight, it’s brand new, co-developed by @Stuetr, whom fans of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS will know as everyone’s pal Stu. As far as I understand, the system involves 200 lights in a circle that fire in sequence, one per frame, as you shoot a scene. As that slo-mo sequence was shot at about 1000 frames per second, it makes quite a striking effect…Marvel is omnipotent, but Taika also made shit happen. This unproven tech by his mate is in THOR on his initiative. I thought that was cool.”


Kois also included Rutherford’s recollection of his first day on the set of Ragnarok bearing his untested creation. And while he was totally nervous about having to demonstrate his work in front of key Marvel personalities behind the blockbuster, Waititi eased him up by welcoming him with a prank. Check out his tweet below:


https://twitter.com/dankois/status/9...-flashbacks%2F


Marvel is no stranger to trying out new types of tech for their movies and it makes sense given that most of them are computer-graphics heavy. They were the first to introduce the de-aging CG that has already been used in several of their films including Captain America: Civil War (with Tony Stark) and Ant-Man (with Hank Pym). Even the motion-capture performance of Mark Ruffalo’s the Hulk has tremendously improved over the last five years since his iteration debuted in the first Avengers movie. Last year’s Doctor Strange also offered some psychedelic graphics that made some scenes of the movie seem like it was lifted straight from Jack Kirby’s trippy spreads.