Avengers: Age of Ultron was pretty disjointed in places, but the disjointed-est moment had to be the scene of Thor thrashing about in that pool, hallucinating something-or-other, for no apparent reason. Now the full, original scene has shown up online, and it explains exactly what the hell Thor was doing... although the answer still doesn’t make any sense.
According to the scene, Thor was visiting the Norns, looking for an answer on how to beat Ultron. This necessitates jumping in the pool, where the Norns possess him, and Thor thrashes about and hisses while Erik Selvig asks him questions. The Norns don’t seem to do much in terms of giving Thor a solution, but they do warn him that Ultron has the Mind Stone, which of course sets up the arrival of the Vision—but mostly this scene seems like a chance for the Infinity Stones to be brought up in an ominous fashion, as a sort of set-up to the Infinity War movies.
Still, it’s a very silly scene. Thor splashing in a pool is not cool-looking, and I don’t know why Thor would think the Norns have the answer to defeating a Midgardian robot. I also don’t know why the Norns can only be accessed by playing in a small pool. Is there a Norse mythological basis for this? Because in cinematic terms, it doesn’t much work.
In fact, this scene apparently didn’t test well with audiences, which is why it was pulled; according to Polygon, director Joss Whedon said that audiences saw “an effects-sparse early cut,” which is presumably what this video is of. However, seeing it, I can’t really blame audiences for not digging it. Even knowing the full story, I don’t think it adds anything to the movie—but I feel like leaving a single shot of Thor in the pool in the final cut of the movie made things more confusing instead of less.
Contact the author at rob@io9.com.