How A Taylor Swift Meme Inspired Thor: Love And Thunder's Silliest Joke
It's a love (and thunder) story, baby just say yes.
Taylor Swift is finally part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. OK... not officially, but the pop star did help inspire one element of Marvel’s latest blockbuster. While promoting his new movie, director Taika Waititi revealed that a Taylor Swift meme inspired Thor: Love and Thunder’s goats, and it’s a total throwback that’ll have Swifties reliving early 2010s internet humor.
The screaming goats are one of the silliest parts of the fourth Thor movie. Early in the film, Thor is given some goats as a reward on one of his adventures, only to discover that the animals tend to let out shrill screams from time to time. In a July 11 interview with Insider, Waititi disclosed that originally the goats weren’t going to scream like that, but while editing the movie he stumbled across a meme of screaming goats and got inspired.
“They were never meant to be screaming,” Waititi said. “The goats were always going to be in there because they are in the comics, but we didn't know how they would sound. Then someone in post-production found this meme of a Taylor Swift song that has screaming goats in it. I didn't even know that existed. So I hear the screaming goats and I just felt it was awesome. A lot of people think it's me screaming. It's not.”
In case you weren’t logged into the meme culture back in 2013, the video Waititi is referring to was a viral sensation back in the day. The clip spliced a screaming goat into the chorus of Swift’s Red single “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Waititi said once one of his crewmates showed him the old meme, he had to recreate it in the movie.
“I think one of the vendors that was making the CG goats, they just added the Taylor Swift song ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ but the fan-made one with the goat sounds, and we just thought it was so funny,” Waititi said. “So it was just a shot of how the CG creatures were coming along, it wasn't meant for the film or anything, it was just an update. And the screams were freakin' awesome.”
So, if you found yourself giggling at Thor’s screaming goats, you have Taylor Swift to thank. Well, Taylor Swift and randomcore internet humor.
