In this in-depth interview with
io9, screenwriters behind Kenneth Branagh's
THOR and Matthew Vaughn-directed
X-Men: First Class, talk about their approach for these films.
On what was the influence for their
THOR script:
Miller: "Walt Simonson was a huge influence. So was Mark Millar, in terms of how Thor was presented in action in the Ultimates 1 and 2. I'm a huge fan of Thor, which I think is key. I believe in his emotional reality, so it's not hard to translate that into a script. That's the key with any of these movies — find the emotional reality and dramatize it. That gives your characters weight and your stories value. It's as true for Thor as it is for Derek Reese."
Stentz: "What did they used to say in the 80s? "Let Reagan be Reagan?" We just tried to let Thor be Thor, because there's a really strong, defined core of that character that comes through loud and clear across the decades, whether it's in the space opera of Simonson, the epic hero of the Fraction one shots, or the more grounded version in the JMS run. And honestly, we also went straight back to the source when thinking about and writing Thor— the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlson and various Norse myths, which are so vivid and memorable themselves. Those Norse storytellers knew what they were doing when they paired a strong man and a clever man as friends, brothers, and rivals."
On writing
X-Men: First Class, Civil Rights movement within the X-Men universe and more:
Miller: "That sort of thing certainly runs through your mind, but you can't make the movie about that. You can't even make the movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's layered into subtext - although oddly in this case, I think it's more explicit with respect to attitudes toward women. Even that is very small."
Stentz: "I think the MLK-Malcolm X dichotomy has always been in the Singer X-Men films...he even has Magneto say "By any means necessary" at one point! But actually setting an X-Men film during the Civil Rights Era, which coincided with this wonderful, crazy period of technological optimism and possibility, opened up the storytelling in a lot of ways. Partway through the process, we realized that what we were writing in many ways had the vibe of a 1960s Connery Bond film, which was something Matthew Vaughn really responded to in the material and ran with. He just did a wonderful job of transplanting the X-Men into a whole jet age, swingin' London, Civil Rights, JFK New Frontier era."
X-Men: First Class is set to hit theatres on June 3, while
THOR hits US theatres this week!