Over the past 17 years, Dan Hennah has had quite a career working as either the art director or production designer on most of Peter Jackson‘s films. Their memorable collaboration on “King Kong” as well as the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies have rewarded him with five Oscar nominations including a win for “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.” Now, Hennah and co-production designer Ra Vincent have brought their talents to Taiki Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnarok”, which is arguably one of Marvel Studios’ most critically acclaimed films and a surefire blockbuster following its $121 million domestic opening this past weekend.
The New Zealand native took some time last week to chat about the influence of legendary comic artist Jack Kirby on the film’s design, as well as the impressive lighting system integrated into most of the large sets and the joy of working with the Marvel Studios producing team (really).
Note: There is one very minor spoiler during our discussion if you have not seen the film.
—–
The Playlist: Where did the idea come from to inform most of the production design with Jack Kirby’s unique style?
Dan Hennah: Well, objectively, Jacky Kirby has been one of my gods for graphics since I was 15-years-old and maybe even younger, reading comics and looking at his drawings. We had a meeting with Taika and he brought in a painting of a helmet and it was all primary colors and abstract and had that quality of Jack’s that was instantly recognizable. And he said, ‘Look, I’ve seen this and I like this and I think we should use this as an influence.’ And it just opened a door that was so obvious really. It allowed us the freedom to go into the Jack Kirby world, the retro feel of that world and also we had the Marvel Studios production executives who bought into it as well. The idea that Jack Kirby would be celebrated in this way. This was the beginning of the whole thing. Granted, Sakaar being a dumping ground for the universe with all the space debris ending up there. We sort of took that and worked with the idea that out of that debris they would smelt it down and turn it into building materials in their own style of architecture that as peculiar to Jack Kirby, really.
Was there one design or set that is an ode to Jack the most? That you see it the most?
I think the street scene where they walk through the streets and Banner gets hit in the face with green dust. That whole piece, that was quite extensive, was probably where we went most all out on Jack.
Was that the biggest set? What was the most intricate set you had to build for the film?
That was probably the biggest. It was on a hillside and we built sort of three parts of the street running down this hillside. Because it was all asymmetrical and there were no vertical or horizontal lines as such it meant it was very intricate. It is very easy to draw straight lights and level lines and put them together, but when you start running off at 45-degree angles and 75-degree angles and trying to join those together it becomes something of a picture puzzle. So, in terms of the effort that went into building those sets and designing them and making them work that was probably the biggest task. That was really fun to do.
You mentioned you built this street scene on a hillside. That’s sort of rare. Usually, it’s on a flat surface somewhere.
Well, I wanted to have a lot of levels leading up from the town up to the streets and up again into the Grandmaster’s Palace entrance. There was a hillside near the studio that we were able to rent and it had the perfect slope to build this city on a series of steps and sloping streets and wacky buildings that sort of came off on all angles. It really was a convenient back lot that happened to be in the right place, pointing the right way with the sun and the lighting and Taika was key on the idea that we were able to illustrate that we were actually going up and down through a city.