In 2008, Kenneth Branagh was at a crossroads. He’d spent years forging a reputation as a skilled adaptor of William Shakespeare’s works, writing, directing, and starring in both 1989’s “Henry V” and 1996’s “Hamlet,” both of which earned Oscar nominations. But fresh off a string of three disappointing releases, it was time to recalibrate.
Given his penchant for adaptations, Branagh had an idea: Why not adapt another kind of treasured literature?
Word had been spreading around Hollywood that Marvel Studios was finally ready to bring one of its most iconic comic book superheroes, Thor, to the big screen after decades of development. The story of the God of Thunder had qualities that Branagh gravitated toward: generations-old mythology, a hero who must learn to be a leader, and, like the works of Shakespeare, plenty of family turmoil. He was ready to give Thor the Shakespeare treatment.
There was just one problem. After the success of “Iron Man” that same year, Marvel was already circling several potential directors, from Matthew Vaughn to Guillermo del Toro. Branagh, however, was determined to get the gig. Just before Labor Day weekend in 2008, he jumped on a plane from England to Los Angeles on his own dime to meet with Marvel.
The gamble paid off. A few months after that meeting, Branagh got the job.
“I knew sometimes you have to just buckle down and do it, and I did that,” Branagh, 65, told Business Insider.
Branagh wasted no time diving headfirst into the world of Marvel, taking meetings about costumes and outer space sets, having a sit-down with the comic’s co-creator Stan Lee, and, most importantly, working alongside Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to make one of the biggest casting choices in its budding Marvel Cinematic Universe: The actors who would play the two main characters, brothers Thor and Loki.
All those decisions culminated in a hit when “Thor” was released in May 2011. The movie, headed by stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hiddleston as the mischievous Loki, would go on to gross $449 million at the worldwide box office.
Not only was it a moneymaker, it also set the stage for Marvel’s dominance of the decade to come. In addition to showcasing Thor’s powers, it expanded the MCU beyond Earth into the outer reaches of the cosmos, laying essential groundwork for Marvel Studios’ main prize: a big-screen Avengers movie.
In honor of the movie’s 15th anniversary, Kenneth Branagh took a look back on “Thor,” opening up about casting Hemsworth, coaching him on how to act alongside Anthony Hopkins, and what he’d do if he made a “Thor” sequel.
On getting the gig and what ‘Thor’ has in common with ‘Succession’
Business Insider: Is it true that after you voiced interest in directing a Thor movie, you flew out to LA on your own dime to pitch Marvel?
Kenneth Branagh: To be honest, yes. I wish I could tell you, “No, no, they wooed me.” But I had made three films that weren’t successes, and as they say in this business, three strikes and you’re out.
At the same time, Marvel movies were not yet this phenomenon that would take over the movie business, so they had to think out of the box with directors, and I was one of those names.
The advantage I had was I was less scared of the material than others. With “Thor,” the great question, and I think the scariest one for them when they were setting up that first tier of titles, was the tone. When you talk about tone, when you try to get that across, you just have to be in the room.
So I flew out on a Friday early morning from the UK. I had the meeting at 4 p.m. the Friday before Labor Day, and I was on the plane home the next day. I had written half a dozen pages of the beginning of the screenplay, which I read to them in the room, and that was to convey tone. The basic declaration was that the story and the characters would take themselves seriously; I would not take myself seriously; that’s what was established.
If I were pitching it now, I would have said this is a little like “Succession.”
On those Daniel Craig casting rumors and assuring Kevin Feige that Chris Hemsworth was right for Thor
So you sign on in 2008, but after the success of “Iron Man,” Marvel decides it wants to do a sequel, so now the “Thor” release is pushed back to 2011. What did you do with all that time before shooting started?
There was a long, long preproduction process, and key to it all was casting. It was a long time before we found that oak tree strength and that wry charisma of Chris Hemsworth, and to balance it with the razor wit and passion of Tom Hiddleston’s lunatic Loki. And then you need an acting titan as the God of Gods, Odin; that was Anthony Hopkins. That was a long dance.
We rehearsed more for this film than for any film I’ve done. We rehearsed around Thanksgiving 2009, then the fortnight ahead of shooting in January of 2010, everybody took it very seriously. We were still very nervous, but a week before Christmas, three weeks before we started shooting, we had a series of costume tests on camera.
There was a real shiver of excitement in the room. I played some music that I thought might work for the movie, and it felt dangerous; it felt pretty daring for something on this scale. So I had benefited enormously from what some would see as delays, but what I was viewing as more time to marinate the material.
Is it true that Daniel Craig was offered the Thor role?
Not to my knowledge. I think we can officially debunk that. He’s an extraordinary actor, but at least under my watch, I didn’t see that happening.
To be honest, we needed someone who wasn’t bringing previous baggage, even if the baggage was brilliance and familiar roles. It felt as though we needed someone with a clean slate who was bringing a physical heft and an innocence. I think there’s a terrific naivety that’s part of this origin story with Chris. There’s a beautiful moment in the movie where he says under deceptive questioning by Loki while marooned on Earth, “Can I go home?” And he does so with such vulnerability. I think he was very open, very fresh, and very alive to being this kind of clean slate.
We knew Thor had to be physically impressive; he needed to be big, he needed to be young to have the kind of reckless, passionate, rebellious soul that was going to be part of our story. It took a long time because we could never agree on an actor who checked every single box. I think Marvel was particularly aware that this picture needed to work for them because so much of what they already dreamed, which was all these multiverse intersections story-wise, to take them across worlds and universes in the films to come, was dependent on establishing a character who brought that whole part of the multiverse.
I remember when we cast Chris and Tom; it was a Saturday morning at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Kevin Feige walked around the central table in this little room that he and I were in. He must have gone around it 10,000 steps, muttering sometimes to me, and sometimes as if I wasn’t there; he was sort of hallucinating, saying, “This is the most important decision we will ever make.” It was clear it had taken a long time to get to this moment, and now we really needed to be certain. It was like talking someone off the ledge. My job that morning was just to say, “No, it’s Chris, and it’s Tom.”
Is it true that after you cast Chris, you gave him the famous St. Crispin’s Day monologue from “Henry V” to memorize?
We did. We were always going into what you would call the underneath of the character, so we knew that at various times, he needed to feel as though he was going to inspire people to follow him. So, yes. We did do some work on that. We talked about “The Odyssey,” we talked about all the stories that have the trials and tribulations of young men on the road to acquiring wisdom through adventures.
But of all people to give Chris that monologue, St. Crispin’s Day made you a legend on the London stage. Did you feel you might be putting a lot of pressure on Chris going about it that way?
The goal was to give him the confidence that Thor, as a leader, has to acquire, and one of the gifts is for a leader to allow those who he is leading to understand what moment in their lives they are meeting when they are asked to do something dangerous. We knew what we were making, but we never chose to use the phrase “comic book movie” as needing to mean something that we didn’t treat with the greatest possible depth that we could give it. And that’s what we were after.
Also, I knew that I had to prepare him and Tom like that because they were going to come up against Hopkins. You can’t put them in a scene with him unless they’ve got some texture underneath, because when Odin says, “You’re unworthy! You’re unworthy of me!” that’s big stuff. We wanted Chris to feel equipped to handle being in the ring with the big boys.
On watching Hemsworth eat four chickens and crafting a worthy Stan Lee cameo
How did Hopkins go about all this? Was he generous toward Chris and Tom, or was there some good-natured veteran actor ribbing where he made the boys earn it?
He’s definitely generous, but he’s what Clint Eastwood used to call a “fast start-up actor.” So he’s ready. He’s generous, but you have to keep up with him.
So three takes and he’s had it?
It doesn’t take more than three takes with him.
What I would do is I would say to the boys, “Listen, he’s going to be so ready.” So I would play with two cameras and cross-shoot it. The big scene where Loki says “Tell me!” demanding what his parentage is, I said to both Tom and Mr. Hopkins, “I’m going to cross shoot this,” so at 8:30 a.m., I was in the closeups, cross-shooting the closeups. I knew that Mr. Hopkins would be thrilled by this, because he’s absolutely ready to go.
But I said this to Tom, so he was rehearsed. It was all deliberate. It was also deliberate to tell the boys, “Know these scenes backward, mate, because he’s going to be so sharp I don’t want any mumbling of the lines. You’ve got a laser beam coming at you, you’ll need to be ready with your own.”
Was there ever a point in production where you felt Chris’ body got too big? Even for Thor standards.
No. Um [Pause]. No —
Ken, did he get too bulky?
[Laughs.] No, he didn’t get too bulky. He did throw me numerous times. I would speak to him, and a door would open, and suddenly four whole chickens would arrive and be put in front of him. That would sometimes throw me because I didn’t get much out of him after that.
He’d go, [speaks in an Australian accent] “Gotta go eat, mate, 45 minutes have passed. I gotta have another fucking chicken.”
But I remember when he first took off his shirt. I felt a little embarrassed, I said, “I think we need you to take your shirt off.” And he said, “Are you joking? I spent the last nine months getting ready for this, of course I’m going to take my shirt off.” And then he went outside, and I think I watched him do 200 push-ups, and then he came back in, and [Natalie] Portman turned around and just gasped, and I said, “That’s it! That’s what you do on film.”
Was there a lot of thought put into the Stan Lee cameo?
In terms of Kevin’s vision, Stan was going to always be in each movie, and they had to be interesting and different. I had a great lunch with Stan before shooting. My god, that was a real privilege to hear his stories. We talked about the cameo a little with him, but we were always looking for something that was cool.
The atmosphere on set when he showed up that day was great. We had a lot of extras that day. There was a spontaneous round of applause when he showed up. Many of us knew we were standing there because of him and Jack Kirby and many others. You felt like this was the blessing from the true creators. It was a special feeling.
And it always felt like with the nature of that scene, the feel of Excalibur, the sword in the stone, though also having a bit of fun with it, him to be around when that hammer is stuck in the ground that it was so symbolic. I mean, once that thing moves, a whole universe kicks off, a whole series of chapters are unleashed, so having him there was sufficient scale for Stan Lee, who himself is such an epic character.
On what he’d do with a ‘Thor’ sequel
You gave three years of your life to make this movie. Was it as simple as that as to why you didn’t return for the sequel?
I definitely was ready for another, for sure, but not right then. Marvel shoots are intense. Marvel postproduction is more intense — wildly exciting but super intense. I definitely needed to smell the roses. Kevin Feige was very understanding, and so was the cast. I needed a break.
Part of me would love to finish my relationship with that character. I’d always wanted to do more and indeed had a couple of ideas, more in the territory of James Mangold’s brilliant “Logan.” I would love to see Chris Hemsworth and the others have their own individual final story that takes Thor into a glorious twilight.
But Marvel wanted you to come back for the sequel?
For sure. I was thrilled to be asked. They were disappointed; they understood, but they were disappointed. They wanted to go straight away with a sequel, and why shouldn’t they? And I said to Kevin at that time, “I don’t have it in me.”
Gradually, the “Thor” sequels pivoted to a more comedic tone. Have you watched any of the sequels?
Yes.
And?
Amazing films. I mean that. I watched them with a mix of tremendous pride and amazement at the many ways such stories can go. I think it’s a tribute to what Kevin saw in the potential for a character and a world. To see how elastic it’s been in encompassing a different kind of adventure, different kind of humor, different drive to the narrative, it’s been an absolute fascination on how that’s developed.
At this point in your life, you have since made other big movies, and won an Oscar for writing “Belfast.” Is returning to direct another “Thor” attractive? It sounds like they want to now move away from the comedy and go back to the foundation you created.
As a watcher, it’s very attractive. I have such a high regard for what Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston and all of them involved have done. And there’s also this unique relationship with a large cinema audience that those characters now have that, for people who have grown up with them and their arc, I think it would be something very beautiful to take those characters into their own particular sunset. It could be a beautiful thing. I would love to see it, for sure.
But how about you directing it?
That’s a whole other question. They are so far deep into the future of the Marvel Universe that I’m sure whatever plans they have for it are already kind of set. All I know is there’s something beautiful to be had out of arriving at a conclusion for that arc of those stories with those characters and those actors.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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