I ask him about the ensemble, which earned him the title of "best-dressed helmer" from DuVernay on Twitter. "A lot of people thought it was a romper, but it was a shirt and shorts," Waititi says. "It's a bummer that a lot of people saw that outfit, because I probably won't wear it in public again." He muses that it's probably his theater days that inspired his fashion sense. "I love dressing up, and I think part of it is just obviously wanting some attention, but it also makes me feel very good. It makes me feel happy wearing something that's, like, just got a bit more personality, I think. Don't get me wrong: I like a classic suit. A no-frills, nothing-crazy-about-it suit with good lines. But I think in my day-to-day life, I like a lot of interesting patterns and things."

He's already been branded a weird Hollywood outsider, a spy in the house of Marvel, so why not dress the part? Maybe it's even Waititi's eccentric fashion sense that makes him so approachable to his actors. "It felt like meeting a new friend," Thompson says, describing her first meeting with Waititi. "I was getting my hair braided before the meeting and had timed it poorly, so I was only half way done. We were about an hour in when he asked me what was happening under the hat that all my hair was stuffed into. I took it down, and my lopsided mop fell out. One [side] half braided, the other a curly mess. We just had a laugh. This was the first indication I had of how fabulously Taika embraces that which is unconventional and ridiculous."

The fact that Waititi doesn't come off as most directors do, the fact that he drips with cool, makes it easy to embrace him, and also keeps you on your toes. Talking to him is often like trying to play a pinball game and, as Thompson describes it, "a real exercise in constantly staying sharp." If Waititi is known for his idiosyncratic, ever-changing wardrobe ("He would sometimes have two or three outfit changes on set," Hemsworth says), it's merely an extension of his sense of humor and directing style. "I think the genius of his comedy is that it is freewheeling, stream of conscious, and incredibly connected to the moment," Thompson tells me.

Beneath that exterior, however, there's an extremely confident director who harnesses his eccentricities into superb filmmaking. "Every day was sort of a wild experiment due to his wacky sense of humor. There's a quiet confidence in him," Hemsworth says. "I was so impressed that this film has his fingerprints all over it and it wasn't muscled into a studio version of it." Which is always the risk when it comes to a grueling studio franchise film. You can get "beaten down," as Joss Whedon described his experience with Avengers: Age of Ultron, and end up with every trace of your soul on the cutting-room floor. I ask Waititi if he experienced any of the woes that other directors have expressed about losing themselves in the Marvel machine, which schedules film releases years in advance and puts you on a tight, rigorous schedule? He shakes his head emphatically, telling me he thrives on the "chaotic energy" of a film set: "If you're ever super confident in what you're going to do, I feel you're kind of just treading water. You come up with something kind of mediocre that everyone's seen before."

Waititi speaks with so much enthusiasm that you have to wonder if anything soured him while he was making Ragnarok. "The only thing that really affected me was the stress manifested itself in this, like, sore shoulder I got two months ago," he says. "But now it's actually gone. I remember thinking, I can barely lift my arm, and there's this neck pain and stuff like that. But I was at this barbecue talking to another director friend of mine, and he's like, 'No, yeah, I've got that. In your left arm? And you sort of think you're having a heart attack all the time?' And then another guy goes, 'Oh, you're talking about the shoulder thing where you think you're having a heart attack! It's just anxiety and stress, don't worry about it.'" Waititi admits that he often wears his "Everything is fine!" look on his face, because the stress only ever manifests "below the neck."

He manages to beat the stress by making his sets as energetic and frenetic as he is. Blanchett describes the set as "one long Mardi Gras parade," yet the actors still felt like Waititi always had a handle on the proceedings. "I’d read Taika’s book on acting, entitled Trust Me, You’re Gonna Look Cool on the Poster,” she jokes. “He is a profound pedagogue—he says so himself. I felt very safe in his warm yet brutal embrace. He’s like a cross between a teddy bear and a meat grinder." Thompson agrees, informing me the Hollywood term for the final shot of the day is the "martini shot," and Waititi is the only director she's met who has an actual martini when it's called. "In a proper martini glass," she adds.