THOR has been around in the pages of Marvel's comics since 1962 and has just made his first journey to the big screen.
Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz (pictured above) worked on the screenplay (along with Don Payne) and will be at the MCM Expo London Comic-Con on May 27 to 29. The two writers also penned X-Men: First Class.
The Coventry Telegraph has an interview in which Marvel Studios boss (and Thor producer) Kevin Feige joins Miller and Stentz to explain the process for adapting the comic book god into a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster.
Feige said: "There are a lot of fun things that Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] did in the early Thor comics - that Walt Simonson brought to life later - that J. Michael Straczynski has done an amazing job handling in the recent comics. He has taken the myths and brought them home. You may have heard of Thor, Loki, Odin…what you didn’t know is that they’re real.
"And that if you could get intergalactic transportation, and bust through a few dimensions and other spatial rifts in the process, you would come upon them. That’s the concept that has been developed and has been brought to this adaptation.”
Miller adds: “At the point in the other stories where the hero is bitten by a spider or hit by a gamma blast, Thor is stripped of every quality and possession that makes him what he believes he is. And on top of that, he is banished to a strange place. That makes him a displaced prince who is now a pauper - and so, he’s one of us.”
Stentz says it's also through Jane Foster that the fallen hero learns who he is: "This is where Thor is transformed, this is his journey. He is this close to packing it in, because he’s not who he used to be. But then, he discovers what he can be.”
So it seems Marvel and the writers wanted the movie to have a relatable human element rather than just be a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy set in Asgard. Was this the right approach? The fan reaction has been mixed about some of the human comedy elements on Earth. Did it work to ground the story on Earth or should they have gone all-out for epic mythical fantasy?
For the full interview, head over to the Coventry Telegraph's Geek Files.