The love of ‘Thor’

May 3, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Photo

Photo by: Zade Rosenthal

Marvel Studios

Director Kenneth Branagh on the set of THOR, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment.

Director Branagh brings the comic-book character to life

By Geoff Boucher

Los Angeles Times

SANTA FE, N.M.

The day’s light was fading, but the cast and crew of “Thor” were making good headway on a battle scene — a giant, fire-breathing alien automaton was laying waste to a tiny desert town. Still, director Kenneth Branagh kept glancing at the horizon with anxious Irish eyes. The Marvel Studios and Paramount production already had been battered by windstorms, and on that April day last year, Branagh feared another tempest was on the way.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Branagh’s team was in a mad scramble to save lighting gear, cast chairs, script sides, props and their own eyesight from the winds barreling through the main drag of their faux city, which recalled both old Edward Hopper paintings and young Dennis Hopper films.

Later, Branagh, whose crew also dealt with rain, frigid nights and mud, was sanguine about the elements. “Well, we are making a movie about the god of thunder.”

It’s not especially surprising to see art-house souls migrate to expensive superhero films — “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” director Michel Gondry took a ride with “The Green Hornet,” and Christopher Nolan made his mark with “Memento” long before he went to Gotham City — but Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige was still taken aback a few years ago when Branagh’s camp inquired about “Thor.” Feige, whose passions run more toward “Star Trek” than “Masterpiece Theatre,” was immediately intrigued, because he had once sat through Branagh’s adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing” and had been stunned by how much he enjoyed it. “The accessibility of it,” Feige said of the vibrant 1993 comedy, “that makes him the perfect guy to take Thor to the screen.”

“Thor,” a mash-up of old gods and costumed heroes, opens Friday with Chris Hemsworth in the title role; newly minted Oscar winner Natalie Portman plays Thor’s mortal love interest, Jane Foster; Anthony Hopkins is Odin, the king of Asgard and Thor’s father; and Tom Hiddleston is Loki, the trickster god and Thor’s conniving brother. Although the legend dates to Norse mythology, which at times has presented the character as a ginger-bearded warrior wearing iron gloves and traveling by goat-drawn carriage, you won’t be seeing that Thor in this film, which instead follows the sleeker, four-color mythology set down in the pages of Marvel Comics beginning in summer 1962.

Those comics by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and others made it into the hands of young Branagh. When he was growing up first in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then in Reading, England, American superheroes were a bit of a mystery, with the exception of the thunder god who wore a winged hat and a red cape.

“I was passionate about Thor,” Branagh, 50, said wistfully. “There was so much there, this hero with primitive brute strength and the dysfunctional family and always this sense of epic about it, the journeys and quests and vendettas.”

The tales of royal intrigue, clanging metal and sibling betrayal were the perfect training wheels for the youngster who would become one of his generation’s signature figures of the Shakespearean stage.

Branagh made his mark with “Henry V” onstage. He then took the role to the screen in 1989 and earned Oscar nominations for acting and directing. He directed six additional feature films over the next seven years, including “Dead Again” and “Hamlet,” but critics weren’t always kind.

In recent years, Branagh has focused on his role as a producer and title star of “Wallander,” the well-regarded British TV series based on Henning Mankell’s novels.