Spoilers: Thor: Ragnarok screenwriter on what didn’t make the cut

If you've yet to have seen THOR: RAGNAROK, be warned that there are SPOILERS below. From the very first click of the keys until the movie hits theaters, a script goes through a great deal of changes, sometimes minimal and at times major, but it is constantly in flux. Eric Pearson, one of the three credited writers on the recently released THOR: RAGNAROK, spoke with Yahoo Movies! about the evolution of the threequel's script and what major changes were made before production began, particularly in regards to Hela (Cate Blanchett).

As Eric Pearson was in the stages of crafting the climatic battle between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Hela, he found himself feeling as though the stakes weren't high enough. It was then that he began thinking about making Hela, the Asgardian goddess of death, the sister of Thor. In the comics, Hela was allegedly the daughter of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), but that bit of backstory was never in the cards for THOR: RAGNAROK. "We had decided that she’s like this ghost of Asgard’s past that’s come back," Pearson said. "She represents the kind of violent way that they won their kingdom that Odin’s been trying to cover up."

Making Hela into a sibling of Thor and Loki was a big change, and Pearson feared that it would get shot down if he pitched it, so he got some advice from Brad Winderbaum, Vice-President of production and development at Marvel Studios. Eric Pearson explained to Winderbaum that the final moment didn't have the impact that he was hoping it would. "I’m like, 'With all this stuff, she should be Thor’s sister. And that should be the thing that [represents] what it is to rule Asgard, his family, what he’s been told, what he hasn’t been told.'" Winderbaum told Pearson, "Don’t tell anyone. Just write it into the script. If we pitch it, it’s so much more likely to get shot down. Just write it into the movie." Confessing that he was terrified, Eric Pearson later felt vindicated when Brad Winderbaum showed him Kevin Feige's notes which had the big reveal circled with "WHOA!" spelled out on the margins. It was later decided that the revelation would come from Odin (Anthony Hopkins), because they wanted to make the best use of his limited screen-time.

Several other moments which didn't make the cut included a romance subplot with Thor and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), which was part of the original script from Craig Kyle & Christoper Yost. "But we didn’t want to start from that place," Pearson explained. "It was like, Let’s give Valkyrie her own story that connects with Thor … and if it makes sense for them to get together, then great. You’ve got two really good-looking people who can fight and who’d probably be [good together] if the story went there, but it just didn’t. It became more about the mutual respect, and also dealing with her PTSD. She’s someone who’s drowning her sorrows in the bottle, and I just thought that was such a cool thing that you don’t often see in these movies: somebody dealing with extreme guilt and shame in a colorful, Taika Waititi[-directed] hilarious background." Hela was also featured in several other scenes which wound up not being realized, including an extended sequence in which she laid waste to Asgard and encountered a certain villain from the first THOR film.

I always want the villain to be really … not-Disney. I want to give them moments where they’re really massacring or crushing people. 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.

Another moment which didn't make it was the "Noodle Worm Scene," as they called it, which would have been an "emotional check-in moment with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor before the finale." Eric Pearson estimates that they rewrote the scene "10 millions times" but that it "just never made it in." The writer didn't elaborate all that much on the scene, only to say that it found Banner "eating alien food and trying to be serious. It [looks like] spaghetti, but then he realizes the thing he’s eating is alive on the end." At the time, Pearson considered the scene to be a "pivotal character moment," but at the end of the day, it was decided that it "crushed the momentum."

THOR: RAGNAROK is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray and let us know what YOU thought of the film!