In chatting with the UK's
Daily Mail from an editing suite in Los Angeles, where he was overseeing post-production and the installation of visual effects, Kenneth Branagh, director of Marvel's much-anticipated
THOR movie, speaks in-depth on fan reactions, assembling such an ensemble cast, and his oncoming approach. Also featuring a new image from the film, check it out!
On casting Chris Hemsworth & Tom Hiddleston in their pivotal roles...
‘I feel with those guys like I did with [Kate Winslet as Ophelia in his 1995 Hamlet] years ago. When you’re seeing somebody who is going to make an impression in a film that means that their life is going to change. That’s exciting! We were sending them books on Scandinavia, or family dynamics, or sibling rivalry,’
‘I’ve been in the audience when the phwoars kick off,’ Branagh laughed. ‘He (Hemsworth) is able to bring to this god all the physical beauty and magnificence he can muster. He’s got romance, he’s got humour — and he’s got a twinkle in his eye. ‘He also has what the part needs; he can be quite primal. There’s a compelling mixture of things and he absolutely answers the brief of what a god/superhero should be.’
On the set's atmosphere with an ensemble cast...
With Hopkins playing Odin and Hemsworth and Hiddleston as his sons, there was a heady atmosphere on the set, Branagh said. He explained that the characters ‘love each other . . . they’re a close-knit, passionate family but they all have very strong ideas and it was interesting, this dynamic on set; this immense respect from Chris and Tom for Tony, who is sort of a god to them anyway’. ‘Everybody’s in this terrific opportunity of a film and they’re all hungry actors, and they were all going at it,’ Branagh said. ‘Think of tennis. They were playing tennis with partners who were lifting their game.’
On casting Oscar-winning Natalie Portman, who brought the story down to earth...
‘We delivered the script to her while she was taking a ballet class. She was eight months into preparation for Black Swan and prepared for Black Swan during rehearsals for us. I never rehearsed with Natalie without her leg being up over her head. ‘Any time I gave her a note, she was leaning against a wall with her toe over the top of her head. It was fantastically impressive,’ he added.
Approaching Thor as oncoming director three years ago...
‘I didn’t want to be bound in either the world of the gods or in some Viking-era earth. My starting point was that this should be a coming-of-age story about a hot-headed young man, entitled and empowered, dangerous and making mistakes, who is banished by his father.’ ‘I was in the middle of my Scandinavian period,’ he joked. ‘I’ve done my gloomy Dane, I’ve done my melancholy Swede and now I’m doing my naughty Norseman!’
Hitting theaters in just over a month,
THOR premieres May 6, in 3D!