Thor

Hello, everyone. My name's Kenneth Branagh

Everyone calls me Ken,

so please feel free to do so if you choose to talk to me

while this director's commentary is going on.

And I'm here to talk a little bit

about how we came to some of the artistic decisions we made

when we were creating our new film of Thor .

So first off, the marvel of it all.

I was asked to do this back in the summer of 2008.

And one of the first things that we had to decide is,

"What's the basic structure?"

And one of the things that I was keen about was that we should start on Earth.

And so here we are in Puente Antiguo,

"old bridge," for those of you who know your Spanish, in New Mexico.

And the sequence that you're watching now

was one of the very first ones that I worked on

with our first storyboard artist,

a brilliantly talented young man called Federico D'Alessandro.

And it was about coming up with a kind of teaser on contemporary Earth

that allowed us to do a number of things.

First of all, introduce a vast Earth landscape,

something that could be, during the course of the picture, epic.

I'd worked in New Mexico as an actor, I'd shot there,

and I knew it was the land of the big sky.

And the sense of immensity in that landscape

would be, visually, very powerful and might work as a very strong mirror

for some of the epic landscapes

that we would try and convey off Earth, as it were.

We also wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the audience to characters,

contemporary characters.

In this case, Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman,

Erik Selvig, played by Stellan Skarsgård,

and Kat Dennings, who plays Darcy Lewis here,

at the front of the movie

who are engaged in scientific activity out in the desert watching the skies,

and who are introduced to this extraordinary aurora phenomenon.

I will digress in various ways. Let me tell you a little bit about auroras.

This kind of look, this kind of image

was the sort of image that we were finding all over the world

during the course of the two or three years of my involvement with it.

So, every time somebody saw some amazing thing happening over Moscow

or over the desert in Finland, we would pool these kinds of images,

and we would talk about it with our visual effects team.

And we would work out how closely we could mirror actual phenomena

that were found on Earth.

And that's where the beginnings of that Earth-like aurora phenomenon

meets the demands of the story, which calls for a Rainbow Bridge,

the Bifrost as the comics have it, which is part of the means

by which our characters will travel from world to world.

This first shocking moment of a race through the desert

and then hitting a man who we don't quite see

was always a strong feeling

about literally starting the movie with a bang in a big landscape,

new characters, contemporary characters,

a race, a chase, and then a big question mark,

where did he come from?

And so, here, at this point in the movie, in the original version of the screenplay,

there was the idea of some kind of prologue.

So, you have a teaser to allow the audience,

perhaps, to understand we'll be back on Earth,

a landscape and people that we'll enjoy being with.

But now we go into a version of a prologue

that tries to introduce some of the thematic material,

some of the world of the larger Thor universe.

So here, for instance, this Scandinavian influence, this fjord,

this world of Tonsberg, Norway,

a name, indeed, which those of you interested in the larger Marvel Universe,

may well find features elsewhere.

But as you can see through this very concentrated, condensed,

we hope very impactive storytelling here,

certainly what we were aiming for,

we introduce both the Viking element in Viking Earth

and then the arrival of the Frost Giants.

The Frost Giants are going to be enormously important in our story

and technically, we created them

by actually designing some very impressive make-ups

that real actors wore,

as well as creating some computer-generated versions of them.

The King of the Frost Giants,

who is facing off here with Anthony Hopkins as Odin,

was played by Colm Feore, a marvellous Canadian actor,

and we wanted anybody who had to face off

against the magnificent master of the screen, Anthony Hopkins,

to be also wonderfully charismatic and able to convey a little with a lot,

and Colm Feore, with the role of Laufey, did just that.

We wanted, here, to understand that there had been a battle,

as there were so many in the history of the Norse myths

and the history of the Marvel version of the comics,

that this is a warrior race full of historical examples

of where they fought and lost worlds and gained worlds,

and how their history was forged,

but also how their lives are led, which is to tell tales of yore,

tales of dashing exploits.

And it allowed us also to talk about where Jotunheim was,

and where Asgard is in the universe,

and to introduce it through this rather disguised upside down shot

that may or may not be some kind of power source,

some kind of lighting,

some sense of an almost nuclear reactor

at the bottom of what we now see

revealed through the water, is a fjord-like land.

You have the magic of the buildings on the right floating above their base

and then this vast central tower at the back of an Asgard,

which is very much influenced by Jack Kirby, by empire,

this kind of image that you might expect to see

in the Roman or Grecian empires.

And here, another example of how we evoke Asgard,

which is with a shot like this, that is a sort of cityscape shot,

to absolutely maximise what I'll talk a little bit about later on,

which is 3-D.

But for now, let's find ourselves here, arrived in Asgard,

with young Thor and young Loki.

These are terrific performers. Dakota is Thor and Ted is Loki,

and they were remarkable for their ability

to capture something of the essence of the older actors who play them,

and also to have fun with

and be up to speed with Mr. Hopkins in this scene.

They loved being in this set, this vault set, which we constructed.

Many of the sets, we constructed because there was a concern

that we do as much as we can to make sure

that as exotic and fantastical as some of the worlds in the movie should be,

it should not feel synthetic.

There's a sort of relative reality

we discovered that we wanted to have in a superhero movie, in this case,

which somehow wants you to believe everything, even though it's fantastical.

And building sets was part of seeing real textures,

real interaction with real people, real shadows,

so that when we go to the entirely computer-generated world,

which is the case with a shot like that one,

we can feel the reality of an architectural structure like this,

the great hall for the ceremony that will be about to have Thor king.

And so this vast crown, the great doors behind, the vast throne,

all of it were constructed over many months by Bo Welch,

our production designer's great art direction construction team.

And it did make a great difference,

for instance, here, to Chris Hemsworth, who's our wonderful Thor,

embodying that willful, rather arrogant, young warrior,

who needs to walk through the halls of Asgard

for the purposes of our story, as if he absolutely owns it.

So, if you're in a great space like that...

Although, it's entirely possible for actors to imagine it,

they do it in the theatre all the time,

you have an empty space, you have to imagine some exotic place.

Nevertheless, here, with that costume on,

these golden walls, with this curious mixture of a sort of primitive qualify

to the whole layout with the patterns on the floor,

but also the sense in the finish on the walls of a material

that you believe could be made by a race that travels through space,

so that they are technologically advanced,

much more advanced than us,

but also they have this callback to an ancient culture

that uses ancient weapons,

like that spear, Gungnir, the all-powerful weapon of Odin,

Mjolnir, the hard-to-pronounce mighty hammer of Thor,

an iconic part of the Thor story.

And I, as the director, I love this combination

of the ancient and the modern, the primitive and the sophisticated.

A character like Loki wearing his horned helmet,

but they're inside these kinds of remarkable buildings

which have their own partly Viking-influenced layout,

but also have this kind of super sci-fi qualify.

For me, it was a fascinating combination

to try and bring to bear.

People interested in the larger Marvel Universe, I think,

may be interested to answer the questions of,

what are those additional items in these alcoves, in this vault?

One of the enjoyments of being part of that larger Marvel Universe

was being able to, wherever we could, maybe just offer a little indication

of how other elements of it might play here

that perhaps feature elsewhere.

And so, I encourage anybody who fancies doing it

to maybe have some fun working out what else was in the vault.

It's time, probably, to talk a little bit about

what, I think, is the luxury casting of our film.

That man, Anthony Hopkins, if you're going to cast someone

who looks as though he should run the universe, he's your man.

It's a universe that has to protect itself against this kind of thing,

the vicious violence of the Frost Giants,

these creatures who can terraform worlds

as they do with the vault there,

creating ice that encapsulates the walls, the water,

being able to produce ice weapons from their very hands.

But they are not invulnerable

to something as extraordinary as the Destroyer,

and we get a tiny hint of this creature ruled by, run by Odin,

who will appear later on in the film and who is a sort of killing machine.

This was a very early decision

to choose that particular creature, monster, machine,

whatever you like to call the Destroyer, as a key element in our picture.

This brings me back to the casting,

and how, with some of the things we've spoken about,

the idea that at the centre of this there would be a film that you could refer to

as being about fathers and sons, or, indeed, about who would be king.

Some people have said to me,

"There are Shakespearean connections here."

Where I think connections lie are between what Stan Lee was after,

and what classic, mythic tales look at,

and in this case, it is the story of a fitness for responsibility.

Thor, here, reacts to the same thing that Odin's reacting to.

Odin reacts with what one might call judgment and discretion.