But as much as Bale can put his body through extremes in pursuit of an effective performance, he couldn’t imagine going method for his Marvel debut in Thor: Love and Thunder. “That would’ve been a pitiful attempt to do that,” Bale told GQ when discussing his role as Gorr the God Butcher. Bale doesn’t criticize the approach of other actors who favor method acting in superhero movies (one might rhyme with “Flared Fleto”) as much as he does his own style. He chuckled at the idea of him trying to be the maniacal and driven Gorr even “as I’m trying to get help getting the fangs in and out and explaining I’ve broken a nail, or I’m tripping over the tunic.” More than anything else, Bale points to the difficulty of working in the Marvel machine, especially the studio’s heavy use of green screens. “That’s the first time I’ve done that,” Bale said of green screen acting, calling it “the definition of it is monotony.” Although he admitted that the movie had “good people,” including “actors who are far more experienced at it than me,” who found most of the experience baffling. “Can you differentiate one day from the next?” Bale asked rhetorically, before answering himself. “No. Absolutely not. You have no idea what to do. I couldn’t even differentiate one stage from the next.”
