Alright, you’ve already seen around five minutes of “Thor” footage. What do you think? Too campy/silly? Just on the money?
We internally have… definitely mixed feelings on the Marvel matter. We attended a roundtable interview with “Thor” director Kenneth Branagh during Comic-Con and the filmmaker mostly spoke about the film’s tone, tenor, aesthetic and look and feel, so we figured this was more than apropos to point out. Do his thoughts jive with the footage we witnessed today? Your call. Just saying, some of us glad we’re not going to be paying out-of-pocket to see this film when it comes out next spring.
Were you ever worried about being too campy with the project?
Kenneth Branagh: Tone with “Thor” was always the key issue. Key people early on—production designer Bo Welch and Academy award winning costume designer Alexandra Byrne —was also someone who was inspired by the comic book but also trying to be imaginative about it in terms of textures. You know, when you’re in the world of the gods, it can’t be just metal or just molded human material. We always tried to look and see what we saw in the comic and then reinvent, re-imagine, go back to the original source. That got everybody very excited. You want to be pure and bring in new twists.
Can you talk about production design?
Production design we wanted a mammoth set for Asgard, having monumental buildings. If you walk around the city of Rome and look up on any street corner, there’s just the [sic] massivity that would have kept people visiting people in Ancient Rome awed. So we wanted Asgard to inspire awe in its inhabitants by its size, its magnificence, its beauty, all of that. But that it had a heft and wasn’t airy-fairy.
Did you consult with Zak Penn’s “Avengers” script as you were moving forward?
I did not, I stayed in the ‘Thor’ zone.
How much of the movie takes place in Asgard vs.the real world?
You know, we’re in the middle of editing and there are ways the story is responding that looks a little more here or there, so that’s a slightly evolving thing. But there’s definitely interplay that we’re getting genuine dramatic value out of, so I couldn’t answer that at the moment. You get a full account of both worlds.
We know now that Thor is shooting in 3D. How is that going to affect the film?
You know, we’re just starting to cut now. With ‘Captain America,’ it served that movie to shoot in 3D [ed. note “Captain America: The First Avenger” is not shooting in 3D says director Joe Johnston]. They had a longer shooting schedule than we did in Thor. The difference between having 52 weeks to work on that project and incorporate 3D into it, we could do all the effects in 3D in the first place, shooting it, blocking it. ‘Avengers’ [3D], I don’t know yet.
Do you see Thor as something that’s going to change the Marvel universe a bit?
I hope so.
“Thor” hits theaters May 4, 2011. – Reporting Drew Morton
