Talk about a catastrophically near-missed opportunity. Taika Waititi, the mastermind who brought the MCU Thor franchise back from near failure with his comedic take on the God of Thunder, Thor: Ragnarok, almost missed the first meeting with the higher-ups at Marvel.

While on The Late Late Show recently, the Oscar winner regaled the audience about the film which almost never was. While on a birthday vacation in Hawaii, he was preparing to fly to the mainland when his buddies took his luggage back to his home country of New Zealand, along with his passport, leaving Waititi stranded due to his non-American status.

"I was in Hawaii and just had a birthday. I'm glad you ask this, I've been wanting to tell the story. A bunch of friends came to visit me in Hawaii and went to went back to New Zealand, they took my luggage with them and my passport was in one of those suitcases. Not being from America, you can't travel domestically without some sort of American I.D. and all I had was a New Zealand drivers license. If you've seen one of those it looks like it comes out of a Corn Flakes box."

He continued,

"I turned up to the airport because I just had to try, and there were these lovely guys at Customs. I showed them my ID and they laughed."

Thanks to some cool customs agents, Waititi flashed a contract he was carrying with him for his writing contribution to the film Moana. In a not so legal move, they allowed him to take the flight to the meeting and the rest is MCU history.

If it wasn't for a couple bends in the rules, the world might never have gotten one of the most clever films in the MCU, with another on the way, namely Thor: Love and Thunder, which will have Natalie Portman wielding the hammer this July 8th.

Tags: Taika Waititi Thor: Ragnarok MCU Natalie Portman The Late Late Show with James Corden