Following up from last week’s deleted scene, which featured Jeff Goldblum getting intimate with some tentacles, Thor: Ragnarok is giving us more delightful absurdity from the Grandmaster.
Honestly, I believe that Taika Waititi has dozens of hours of footage of Jeff Goldblum pretty much playing Jeff Goldblum as an ancient Elder of the Universe with his own chaos pleasure planet. His Grandmaster is all over the place—flitting from DJing at his own space raves to executing his cousin with a “melt stick” a moment later—and you can tell that much of the Grandmaster’s mannerisms are Goldblum improvising.
We don’t know if this deleted scene was even scripted as such or if Goldblum and Rachel House, who plays his bodyguard/bad cop henchwoman Topaz, just ran with it long after the scene was set to end and Waititi kept rolling tape. Their riff on “universal hand signs” follows a part that is in Ragnarok: the Grandmaster is furious that Thor has escaped his custody and taken his beloved champion the Hulk with him.
The Grandmaster summons Loki—who at this point is still marginally trying to retain his favor—and Valkyrie, who hasn’t quite embraced her old job calling and is still marginally acting as Scrapper 142. He initiates a competition between the two to track down Thor and the Hulk, Loki and Valkyrie leave, and then … the Grandmaster and Topaz have an extended debate about universal hand signs and symbols.
The irony and humor here is that the symbol the Grandmaster is trying to convey is, I believe, one of the more universally recognized ones—”Can I get the check?”—but like most things with the Grandmaster, it’s complicated.
“Jeff Goldblum is god’s tall, awkward, funny gift to humanity,” writes YouTube commenter sam Olive on the clip. Yes, yes he is, and we are most blessed to have him.
If you missed last week’s holographic tentacle party / Thor & Bruce’s heart-to-heart … we can fix that.
Thor: Ragnarok is out on Digital in HD and Movies Anywhere on February 20, with the DVD/Blu-ray dropping March 6th. This is so soon! Can’t wait to fall asleep to this movie at night and dream of trippy space techno-synths.
(image: screengrab/Marvel)
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