All language subtitles for Thor.2011.1080p.BluRay.DTS.x264-CtrlHD _track14_[eng]

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 l'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.

l 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 l 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 l 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.

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

and l 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.

ln 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.

l 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 l'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 wilful,
rather arrogant, young warrior,

who needs to walk
through the halls ofAsgard

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 quality

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 Thorstory.

And l, as the director,
l 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 quality.

For me,
it was a fascinating combination

to try and bring to bear.

People interested
in the larger Marvel Universe, l 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, l encourage
anybody who fancies doing it

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

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

what, l 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.

lt'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 l 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.

Young Thor, here,
is without those qualities,

he simply wants to go and hit out.

He wants to punch, he wants to fight.

And it looks like that may be the way

he's going to run
his version of the kingdom.

But as you see in that very effective
reading from Anthony Hopkins,

he isn't king yet.

When we did this scene, and Anthony
Hopkins came out with that reading,

it was one of the moments
which we subsequently learned,

as it started to play,
where you could feel for what we hope

would be all the fun
of the opening of the film.

This was a moment
where the temperature changed a bit,

and suddenly you realise that
there was actually a very passionate

and hot familial relationship
at the centre of it.

We often talked about it,
for all that they're speaking

in a slightly more heightened way,
and they're speaking with this passion,

and here they are on an asteroid
at the top of the universe,

but we would often say
that the sort of emotional feeling here

is entirely contemporary in terms of
what a father might relate to his sons

and the frustration
that the sons might feel.

And so, that was something
in rehearsal

we did many times
ahead of the actual shooting.

We tried to encourage.
You just wanted to believe these people.

And in this scene, for instance,

you want to believe
that these two are brothers,

and that the Warriors Three
and the Lady Sif,

who join them here,
are their genuine friends.

The sense, however briefly done,
but in the feel of how it's done,

in the way they react to each other,

in the kind of intimacy
and the knowledge,

in the almost casual way
they talk to each other,

that they know each other,
that they go back a long way,

that in this case, as we had rehearsed it
and built our backstory,

they'd been to the
Asgardian Academy, if you like,

that they'd already been
through many battles.

So that when Fandral and the others
now suggest to Thor

that it's madness to go to Jotunheim,

we believe that they've been on other
similar kinds of adventures,

that they're bonded,
that they're a group,

in fact, they're a group
that we want to be with.

And so, this was very important
as a means of understanding

that they were this kind of group,
if you like, of young cadets.

And also here,
as throughout the rest of the movie,

there's a kind of lightness of tone,
a lightness of touch

that's embodied
by the warmth between them,

and then a kind of reaction like this
from Thor.

So, that kind of back and forth,
we wanted to enjoy.

Thor is an epic,
and here with this kind of shot,

with the use of the horses
against this extraordinary cityscape,

the sense of breadth
and the geography itself,

these massive golden gates,

and then this iconic element
of the Thor universe,

the Rainbow Bridge, the Bifrost,

which in the comics is a sort of
psychedelic, turning, right-angled thing

that leads all the way
from Asgard to Earth.

Here is a literal bridge,

but with, clearly, energies
running through it that are very special.

lt was something that took us
many, many, many months,

really the whole of the design process,
to perfect to our satisfaction.

lt was tied into this building behind
the glorious ldris Elba as Heimdall,

his observatory, as we called it.

We tried
every kind of experiment with it,

as you'll see in some of the shots.

The bridge and the light impacts
on the bridge as people walk on it

change slightly.
The way in which they do that

has been something we've
experimented with in very many ways.

The actual nature
of the substance of the bridge

we researched
in terms of modern plastics,

in terms of the make-up of quartz,
et cetera, and crystals.

We tried every kind of version
of this fusion

between a light source, a light energy

that would play very importantly
into the story at the end,

but that also had the sort of magical feel
that we were after.

As l said, it was tied into this idea
of this turret, this observatory,

this globe, which in terms of directing
people away from Asgard,

was now something
directed by Heimdall

who, with this extraordinary
inner mechanism,

could direct this gun, this nozzle,
this turret, this observatory

into the universe.

And through the way
in which the lightning connects

and reflects on the interior,

creates a kind of an astral map,

an astral map reflecting, if you like, the
patterns of Yggdrasil, the tree of life.

So, you see an idea of it here,

as if it's some sort of extraordinary
underground map,

or some sort of roadmap where
he chooses a place inside that nebula,

inside that vast galactic solar system
that is Yggdrasil

through which
the Nine Realms are spread.

He chooses the destination
and he sends you there.

And here they are
being drawn into the Bifrost.

And that was me enjoying
taking the sound out completely

to try and create the real impact

of passing through this,
sort of, time warp, space warp,

so that they have travelled
through the Bifrost,

through the trees
and the branches of the Bifrost,

until they land here on Jotunheim.

So, the logic of that,
sort of, space travel,

Heimdall's position up there
as the lonely attendant,

as the guardian ofAsgard,
the last person you see as you leave,

the first person you see as you return.

l'm very pleased with
the way everybody worked on that.

We had a marvellous
visual effects supervisor in Wes Sewell,

who was full of brilliant ideas for that,

as was Bo Welch, whose team built
so much of the observatory itself.

Beautiful finishes.

Here we come to Jotunheim.

Jotunheim, we'd imagined as this
once absolutely splendid city of ice,

also like Asgard, from a civilisation
that were very sophisticated

and yet had this primal connection
to the source of their power,

water, ice, cold,
all concentrated in the blue Casket

that has been stolen from them,
in their view, by Odin,

the Casket ofAncient Winters,
and it's that almost nuclear device

that would allow them to leave here.

First of all, to restore this
to its former glory, then leave here,

travel through the Nine Realms,

and terraform and conquer other worlds
with this terrible, icy power.

So, in this opening sequence,

which is a combination of work
that we did on some set

and some CGl,
realised by Digital Domain

amongst our many VFX vendors
and partners that we worked with,

we wanted to create this
sense of dread at what Jotunheim,

the now broken-down Jotunheim,
the angry planet,

the planet full of emptiness
and echoes and pain,

what that would bring to the story.

There you hear for the first time
a slight treatment of the voice of Laufey.

And here we see a proper,
sort of, first appearance

for this deadly red-eyed
King of the Frost Giants.

Colm Feore, unbelievably patient

about the five, six hours
it would take him

to get into the full body make-up
that we used for him.

Legacy was the company
that we worked with,

and they had an incredibly dedicated
team of people

who were up in the small hours
working with him.

And he's an example of the kind of actor
who really can use the make-up.

Not do too much, be very still,

allow the make-up
to really inform who he is,

and so the acting comes in from under
and it's very, very powerful.

This is an interesting moment for Thor

because, in a way, it's his gamble,
it's his risk,

and we see the point
to which perhaps he can be pushed,

before he brutally risks war,

by potentially provoking
and whether he is capable of listening.

lt's a slight sort of shading

on what we may have
to understand about him later on.

Just before all of this kicks off, might be
worth talking about, briefly here,

we will again, costumes.

Alexandra Byrne did the costumes.

She's an Oscar-winning
costume designer.

l've worked with her many times

and started with her back in the theatre
nearly 30 years ago.

Her attention to detail
in Thor's costume was amazing,

from those discs to the cape,

to the way it sculpted itself
around Chris Hemsworth's body,

to the way it was influenced
by the comics and by the Norse myths,

and the way in which a confident
and cocky Thor can move in it.

So, here you'll see these costumes
under great stress and strain.

And the fight you're about to see,
the first big, major action sequence,

was one where we wanted to make sure
that everybody amongst the Asgardians

had a chance to have
some kind of signature move,

particularly, of course, Thor,
who is the provocateur here.

And at the same time,
we wanted to showcase

the incredible threat
of the Frost Giants themselves,

this dormant, pain-filled race,
who are now pouring out

from every conceivable part
of this mixture.

ls it stone, is it jade, is it ice? Exactly
what is this world constructed of?

But it's dangerous, it's lethal,

and potentially has
many, many more of its population

than Thor is currently considering.

Meantime, the general philosophy
for the fight was, as you can see,

to try and put the audience
as close into it as possible.

For my first film, Henry V,

l had the great pleasure of working
with a wonderful second unit director

and a great stuntman as well,
Vic Armstrong,

whose work you'll know
from many Bond films,

from the Raiders films,

from him being an incredibly
impressive double for Harrison Ford,

and having been a very effective
and brilliant director of many things,

but action being one of them.

l worked with him and his team,
Andy Armstrong

and the Armstrong clan,
who are a great part of our industry,

and we worked to, first of all, find out
what everybody's individual gifts were.

We did a kind of boot camp and
we made sure everybody was flexible,

that Fandral could be flashy
with his sword,

that Tom Hiddleston here, as Loki,

could use the daggers in an interesting
way that are part of his character.

And that we could,
with long lens photography,

sometimes do what we did in Henry V,

which is to try and put people
inside the battle, closer,

in this sense of a hectic,
frenzied moment

where things like that can happen.

You turn around and suddenly,
the taking your eye off what's going on

for even a second
is lethal and dangerous.

So, we wanted there to be
this sense of hurry and of frenzy.

lt was less about huge, wide shots

showing hundreds and thousands of
people fighting each other at this point,

but more a dirty scrum
that leads to this kind of revelation

that once again, Thor, cocky Thor,

has underestimated
what this angry, hurt race have in store.

And here, what appeared to be
a statue or a plinth

that was commemorating
some great beast of the past,

that was announcing the entranceway
to this part of the city,

turns out to be, in fact, a sleeping giant,

this beast that now is headed
towards the rest of the Asgardians

who are leaving with the hurt Fandral.

The inclusion of the beast happened
about halfway through post-production,

where the original beat in the story
had thousands,

hundreds of thousands of Frost Giants
emerging from under the earth,

and by this stage of the battle,
we felt we'd done it,

so we needed an additional element,
and l was very, very pleased

that we came up with and then enjoyed
the idea of this ice monster

doing this kind of chasing,

while the damage that Thor has done,

which is essentially
breaking the very floor of the planet up,

is at work in the same way.

These kinds of shots, this massive shot
with Jotunheim falling,

with the creature upside down is
a great idea of Federico D'Alessandro.

Part of the process, where for me,

as a relative newcomer
to the world of big visual effects shots,

happens very late in the day,

so many of these shots,
which l was thrilled by,

were always planned
and l knew what was coming.

But it was really quite late in the day
when they arrived,

so the experience
in a visual effects picture,

where you've worked on it
for maybe two, three years

of the full understanding that
that's gonna happen,

doesn't quite get to you
until the last minute.

So, it's a little harum-scarum.

The visual effects shots
are cooking away,

and eventually they arrive,

and when they do,
you get a lot of magic right at the end.

Meantime, of course,
you're mixing sound,

and you're mixing and creating
other visual effects,

like the additional snow here,
or like these additional Frost Giants.

And you need to be very, very confident
in all of your fellows.

We had a great head of visual effects
in Victoria Alonso

and a great VFX producer
in Diana Giorgiutti.

And they worked all hours
that God sent

with their team to make sure

that if you needed
an eight-legged horse in time,

then Sleipnir would arrive.

Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse,
l absolutely love.

For those of you
familiar with the Norse myths,

you'll know that Sleipnir has many
adventures of his own across the myths,

and in fact, one of the challenges for us
when we came to this material,

was just what to select, what to include.

There are Nine Realms,
there are dwarves, there are elves,

there are Norns, there are characters,

hugely important characters
like Balder, like Princess Karnilla.

There were so many opportunities to
create so many different kinds of story,

but our real sense, both for
the devotees, for the aficionados

and l hope for people new to the story,

was that we would try
and tell a genuine origins story

full of this kind of excitement,
this kind of warring worlds,

but that actually, at the centre of it,
the backbone of it,

apart from the antagonism
of someone like Laufey

and his very disappointed,
revengeful race there,

at the centre of it was a story of, as l've
mentioned before, fathers and sons.

Now, here we come to a scene
which encapsulates this struggle

between an Odin
who is absolutely serious

about how difficult and how necessary
and how precarious a job it is

to protect the safety of the Nine Realms,
the whole of the known universe,

and a son who seems to be
working on instinct,

an instinct that doesn't seem to be
serving him very well.

He may have set off
some kind of nuclear war.

And here you have a chance
for a kind of passion

between these characters
that l think is unusual,

because the stakes are so high,
the universe is at stake,

it can take this level of feeling.

So here, when Anthony Hopkins
receives this blow, this dismissal,

a line that Prince Hal might have
said to Falstaff

in the Henry lV plays in Shakespeare,

you see him take the hurt.

You still see the lion roaring
in relation to Tom Hiddleston as Loki,

but you have this great capacity
for feeling conveyed through simplicity,

but he's not afraid of the fire of it.

So, you feel the incredible passion
at the centre of the picture,

and so you know when they're playing
with this kind of intensity,

that we hopefully will be
able to come back here

and want to know
how this story is resolved.

Who will be king?
What will happen to Asgard?

ls Odin's heart broken?
ls it more than that?

But we're feeling the beginning of a
very marked moment in Thor's journey,

a journey which will literally see us see
him change from that arrogant youth,

who paraded and cheered his way down
that ceremonial room,

to someone who is going to have to
think seriously about

whether he belongs here.

l love this cashiering moment.

There he goes. There's a biblical line
and it's a biblical action.

The fall of man.

Thor falls from the Garden of Eden,
if you'd like, from Asgard,

and he's stripped, court martial-like,

an image that l pulled
from The Dreyfus Affair.

Paul Muni and The Dreyfus Affair,

ancient film about an extraordinary
scandal in the French government

in the late 19th century.

And they pull the epaulets
off the uniform,

and l wanted to do it in that scene.

And then to bring that
extraordinary leap through space,

for our hero to return to the place

from where he first began
at the beginning of the movie.

And as we come to this scene,

one of the things we noticed
when we started to screen the movie

in our small friends and family
screenings, as we call them,

because they don't become public ones,

because of the dread, fear and terror

that negative things
might be written on the lnternet

orjust spoilers, et cetera,
for a work in progress.

We realised that this return to Earth

was something
that people were really enjoying.

They felt pleased to be back
amongst these characters.

Of course, now you're looking at Thor
in a completely different way.

You're bringing to this the sense of
all of that drama and grandeur

that went on up in Asgard,

but it's backing up
against a modern sensibility,

which inevitably results in it
being quite funny.

Absurd and surreal in some ways,
but funny.

And back to what we started talking
about at the beginning of this,

contemporary Earth
and humour were two ways

in which l felt we had to go
in order to blend

and make successfully
stay in the same film,

all of these many combinations
of the fantastical elements,

the space elements,
the Jotunheim elements,

the drama up there and the investigation
and the science down here,

all of it had to include
a sense of humour, basically,

a sense of humour that you've seen
Chris Hemsworth embody

in his performance

and that we definitely see here in the
reactions of Selvig, and of Jane Foster

and of Kat Dennings as Darcy.

Once again, the beginnings now
of the classic tale,

the classic tension, if you like,
of a god amongst men

starts to play out comically.

Let's talk a little bit,
as we see Thor on Earth,

about the casting of Chris Hemsworth.

About 6'3", 6'4",
a young Australian actor,

l met him at the beginning of the
three- or four-month casting process,

and we didn't know much about
what our Thor was going to be like.

He had a cold, l don't think anyone
had given him any pages,

maybe we didn't have
any pages of the script.

lt was a little unsuccessful,
l suppose, our meeting.

And then, about three months later,

when we had met people
from all over the world

and tested some people,

we knew much more
about what our character should be like,

as we see the crater here
made by the falling Mjolnir.

When we understood that we needed
this character to change,

there would be
an acting range required,

that he couldn't just be muscle,
he couldn't just be brute strength,

we were then lucky enough
and smart enough, in some way,

one of us was, not me, to understand
we should get Chris back in

if he was prepared to do so.
And come in.

And we did meet, and we talked
and we workshopped and we tested,

and he told Thor war stories, and
he was involved in passionate scenes,

and he had romantic scenes,
and he did some physical work

and he absolutely owned it.

He walked in and took the part
by the scruff of the neck,

and one realised that we'd be luckier
than a lucky thing to have him.

So, Chris Hemsworth,
additionally to all of that,

showed himself
to be a natural screen actor.

He knows how to hold the screen,

he knows how to be
in front of the camera, not just to do.

And so, l feel very, very lucky
that this movie has him at its heart

because he carries it off.

And he's able to carry the movie,
no mean feat.

Here are two people
who have carried movies before,

the beautiful, wondrous, intelligent,
funny, sharp, true Ms Natalie Portman,

and the brilliant Mr Stellan Skarsgård
you've seen in a thousand films.

He's a ubiquitous actor,
always striking, always brilliant.

And there you've seen already lines
that have amused and thrilled us,

Kat Dennings, who is a brilliant
comedian, excellent actress.

The three of them got on very, very well,

and they lend this scientific credibility
to the story of this,

the man who fell to Earth.

Here, an image
from inside that funnel cloud.

l enjoy, in this shot, the red shoes,

the red Crocs on the right side of frame.

And the colour palette throughout,

we try and be as subtle
and intelligent with as we can.

The blues and the reds there
that echo Thor's costume.

And that's something that we discussed,
obviously, with Bo Welch,

who gave me a nice, clean room there,

with Alex Byrne,
who gave me the simple costumes.

And of course, crucially
with Haris Zambarloukos,

our director of photography

who was involved with this project
from the very earliest days.

And he and l, with models of the sets

and an entire mini lighting rig-up,

would play,
as if with a kind of doll's house,

on the interior of something like this.

Then we'd go out to a real interior,
and way ahead of time,

we would practise
what we wanted from the lighting.

His contribution was crucial,
as are moments like this.

lt made me laugh the first time we did it,
it's made me laugh every time since.

l think it's funny when people,
cruel as it is,

get hit in moments like that.

Obviously, it's a bit
of a running gag for Thor.

This scene,
fans of the comics will know,

has appeared in varying versions
of the comics,

and l love it for the fun
and for the colour that it introduces,

but l just also enjoy the fact
that this is Stan Lee,

who you may see
coming up in a moment.

And the Marvelistas
raiding the Norse myths,

but also popping in their own
Arthurian moment with Excalibur.

And there's Stan Lee asking,
"Did it work?"

No, Excalibur or Mjolnir, in this case,
is still in the stone

or in the rock, in this case.

l had lunch with Stan Lee
before we started shooting.

He's the most extraordinary
mixture of energy

and intelligence and kindness.

His insights into the character and
his generosity about his invitation to us

to do with him what we would
were incredible.

He was really a joy to work with.

This work,
evidenced in Chris Hemsworth's torso,

was the product of his six, nine months
of very intensive work in the gym,

and l thought that l might risk saying

that l'd had his head pasted
onto my body here for this sequence,

but l fear that you wouldn't believe me,

so l guess l'm just going to have
to tell you that it was him.

And l remember
a few days before we shot this

saying rather embarrassedly,
"Hey, Chris, l want to do this shot,

"it seems important to me
that we reveal Thor in this way.

"Do you mind taking your shirt off?"
To which he replied, "Do l mind?

"l've been doing this
for nine months, mate.

"Of course l'm gonna get my shirt off."

l'm glad he did, because it's produced
gasps in early screenings,

and we needed Thor to look like a god,
Chris Hemsworth does.

Here is the home of the gods, Asgard,

where from that
beautiful evocation of the city,

we pan into
another one of Bo Welch's great sets.

Above you see
what is a ram's head, inverted,

which becomes the canopy
to this real fire.

Beautiful shot, l think,
that one of Jaimie Alexander as Sif.

Let me talk a little bit about these
excellent actors, starting with this man.

Tom Hiddleston, l worked with in
the theatre and on television in England,

and he brings to Loki
an intellectual complexity.

He has a real swiftness of thought.

Tom has a fine sense of humour,
so you can get Loki, the mischief maker.

He, like all the others, did an enormous
amount of work by way of preparation,

by way of research into the comics.

And he is someone, as an actor, who
from take to take is very free, very able,

very imaginative, and is really
quite a brilliant, young talent.

He got on very well
with both Chris Hemsworth directly

and was part of a very, very happy,

kind of, chemical combination of folk
in this group.

Jaimie Alexander as Sif,

an absolute comic geek,
she knows more about the comics

than most of the people
involved with the project.

l think she's from a family
of many brothers,

and she has also that tomboyish quality

that makes her unafraid
to be involved in the physical stuff.

So, she did a great job
of conveying the warrior princess,

but she also, as you can see,
is quite stunningly beautiful,

and brings to Sif's inner life,
as we go through the movie,

really quite a complex quality,

particularly in relation to
what she feels about Thor.

lt was a very fine,
very subtle piece of acting.

Here we see Tom Hiddleston as Loki

returning to the
Casket ofAncient Winters

to try and understand
what happened on Jotunheim

when his skin appeared to turn blue.

And, in a moment, there was
a very good suggestion of Craig Kyle,

one of our co-producers
who was intimately involved.

We reveal

that Loki is at least part Frost Giant.

Once again in this scene,

it felt as though the film was
trying to be ambitious,

to bring to this family dynamic

this, if you like, relatable,
universal issue,

not experienced by many
but understood by all,

of what happens when your life
appears to have been exposed

as having been a lie.

Loki is not, in fact, Odin's son.

Although the act of saving him
may, in Odin's view,

have been the beginnings
of loving and adoring

and caring for him as his own son,

the reality to Loki of this lie,

and the evidence that his father
is, in fact, Laufey,

is obviously
a cataclysmic discovery for him.

ln a scene like this, it seems to me
that, again, the stakes are so high,

the passions involved
are so extraordinary

that the kind of acting moments
touched on by these two

are pleasing and unusual
in a film like this, l think.

They give it some ballast.

They are the kind of weight

against which the comedy,
the fun of so much of the rest of it sits,

and is offset,
and it's a necessary balance.

When you put these two together
to do something like this,

l think you are blessed.

Tony Hopkins, this was
his first day on set, his first scene.

And l decided that l would experiment

with something l'd been
experimenting with as an actor myself,

which was to start the day in a scene
like this by shooting the close-ups.

Normally, you'd start in a wide shot,
like the one we've just seen,

and you'd move slowly in and you might
get to close-ups after lunch

or in the middle of the afternoon.

At whatever time we got him on set,
maybe 9:30, 10:00 in the morning,

Tony Hopkins was
doing the close-ups for this scene,

and l thought he did a magnificent job.

And he was incredibly generous
to young Tom,

who was incredibly patient
and did his close-ups

much later in the day
or even the next day.

lt was an example of great camaraderie
and cooperation between two actors.

The town of Puente Antiguo,
we built in New Mexico

just outside Santa Fe.

lt's this wonderful western town
that was featured in movies

from as far back as Silverado and
as recently as Ed Harris' Appaloosa.

We took the basic shape
and we remodelled the frontages,

and instead of the dust track
down the middle, we tarmacked

and we created what l wanted to be,
with Bo Welch,

a sort of heightened version
of a kind ofAmericana

that l had enjoyed seeing in the comics.

l wanted it
to sit in the vast sea of the desert,

just like
Asgard sits in the vast sea of space.

And l wanted to be able to have the
colours of the seats, like the red here,

have a sort of ambience that evoked
the world of Edward Hopper,

a kind of heightened,
very familiar, very intensely flavoured,

intensely coloured version
of small-town America

that comes out of the comics,

and that is immensely fascinating
and attractive, l think,

to anyone who is not from America
and l hope, obviously,

if you're from America,
it's equally interesting.

But it was to do with trying to have
Thor land

in a coherent environment, community,

where, when eventually it is threatened,

we have some sense
that it deserves not to be threatened,

it deserves to be saved.

And there are kind people there,
and people like you and me.

And so, the building of this town,

the creation of this town
inside the desert

with that kind of backdrop
right at the back

with the mountains
and the fun of a sign like,

"Welcome to the home of the Vikings"
on the water tower there,

was a wonderful part
of creating an Earth part

of a translation of the comics,
which l loved doing.

From a movie point of view,

building something
where we could have control over it,

we did lots of scouting
down in New Mexico,

there were lots of candidates
as real towns,

and that issue of level of reality
was one we discussed much.

But here, l knew that we would be
staging, later on, a big battle in it,

and l just wanted to be
able to stop and start

and have complete and utter control
over what we were doing

and the camera style,
and not be stopping traffic

and not be dealing with everything
that's to do

with closing down a real town.

Also, l wanted to have the time to,
again, have some of the fun of,

at the beginning of this scene,
Thor walking down the street ignoring,

either walking
on the left- or right-hand side,

walking like a god walks.

l mean,
people should get out of his way.

The other part of his god-like quality
was this sort of gallantry,

the idea of kissing hands
and generally being a sort of knight

gallant to someone like Jane Foster.

And here you see that
in the very brief time

in which you may be able to establish

some kind of romantic feeling
between them,

she is absolutely thrown for a loop
by his old-fashioned gentlemanliness

wrapped up in this kind of gargantuan,
massive, sort of, caveman body.

One can see that
he makes an impression, and swiftly.

However, we also know
that life won't be made easy

and into the movie,
as hinted at earlier on

when Clark Gregg showed up
at the crater site,

there's now a much stronger presence

of the mysterious government agency,
S.H.l.E.L.D.,

in the form of Mr Clark Gregg,
who you'll know from lron Man

and who l was really thrilled
to be working with in this.

He has a great sensitivity
for the character,

a great deadpan quality, very dry
and funny man in his own right.

But he does the difficult thing
in a part like this,

especially one that's now
become a very successful part,

of continuing to keep it honest,
play it straight,

and he brings that side of the story,

this concern on the part of S.H.l.E.L.D.
and Nick Fury

and those who work with him,

at the potential danger,
the potential knowledge to be learnt

from what's happening out here
in the New Mexican desert,

and from what's happening

in Jane Foster's brilliant, maverick,
scientific journey.

The shots that follow,
l love having been in New Mexico.

lt gets away from the synthetic and there
we are, the real set, the real desert.

And for me, tilted angles,
Dutched angles as we call them,

because that's the way
l remember comic book frames.

lt was something controversial
at the time,

l remember there was some concern
about whether l was overdoing it.

l hope you don't feel l did.

They were there because
that's how l received the dynamism

of the composition in the frames.

Wide-angle lenses with lots of depth

and it's why l chose it as a style for this.

And while we're talking about depth and
here, live in the New Mexican desert

on the top of Smith's Motors,

this spaceship,
'50s retro designed look

that tries to evoke a little outer space
even on Earth,

let's talk a little bit about 3-D.

3-D was a discussion
early on in the process.

l didn't want to shoot in 3-D. l needed
more time to work with the actors.

l wasn't confident about how swiftly
l could work with the two 3-D cameras.

And so, l investigated, instead,
what would happen if we converted,

and as we, indeed, did render,

the vast majority of our 1,309
visual effects shots in post-production.

l was very, very happy with the results.

l had the initial discussion saying,

"Look, if this is just an attempt
to make some more money,

"people will see through it.

"l need to go through a journey
where l can understand

"how much more value
it can add for me."

So l did, and when we prepared
our five-minute piece

for the great convention
of Comic-Con in San Diego,

we worked out how 3-D could enhance
a more and differently immersive

version of the film
for sequences like this,

where you have an iconic image of
Tom Hiddleston as Loki on the throne.

And where here, you can have
a sense of the grandeur, vastness,

and layer out the depth
between the Warriors Four

and him between them
and the background

in a way that, l think, often subtly

and sometimes more directly
puts you in the picture,

gives you a stronger, more immersive
sense of being in Asgard.

We worked particularly
on the depth script,

that is to say through being able
to have control shot to shot

on how the compression or release
of the space inside the frame worked,

we could avoid, we hoped,
that headache-inducing,

eye-hurting kind of quality
that is sometimes the product

of either rushed 3-D,
or 3-D where shot for shot, when shot,

has depth judged perfectly,

but when put together
can be problematic.

We wanted a smooth
and subtly enhancing,

but not wildly disturbing version of 3-D.

l was delighted with the results
in both the spectacular scenes,

but also in some of the subtler scenes

where just a different sense
of being there

and a different relationship
to some of the characters, the textures

and the compositional elements
was something

that l was very happy to experiment with.

lt took a long time,
but l was pleased and proud

with the company
we worked with, Stereo D,

they did a fantastic job.

There's the Rainbow Bridge for you,
and Odin on it.

That shows you how far we came.

And then something that l wanted
to have in the movie from day one,

which is just the simple explanation
that "Thursday" comes from "Thor."

lt is "Thor's day."

As, indeed,
"Friday" comes from "Frigga"

and the two other days
from the western character

that are also influenced
by the Norse myths.

l wish l could tell you
l'd given Chris Hemsworth

a great reading of that line
"l want a horse,"

which makes me laugh
almost every time.

l didn't, he did.

He came at the part
with such a natural sense of humour

that it was great to see him get value
out of that fish-out-of-water moment,

and a very good reaction
from the pet shop keeper.

This is an area
where 3-D, l like very much

in terms of how it makes me
feel the vastness of the desert.

And if you're not watching in 3-D,
of course,

it's a very nice series of shots.

But it was one

where it was about
giving an in-depth experience

that wasn't necessarily to do with
hammers throwing themselves at you.

This is an experience, by the by,

where Natalie Portman, who had
just been working on Black Swan,

was talking about the moments
when people said to her,

"Are you frustrated
you get to work on an independent film

"and you have all that marvellous
creative satisfaction,

"and then you do something like Thor
and it's all a big sort of machine?"

She said, on this one, for this scene,
we had all day to do this scene.

We spent all day
driving around the desert,

many, many takes
to try and get this right.

She said on an independent film,
you never have any time.

You've got to do four scenes
in a morning and move on,

and you're often left frustrated because
you didn't get a chance to practise.

So, for Natalie, the kind of time
that we were able to take

just for a scene like that, to try
and get it right with lightness of touch

but depth at the same time,
was a real enjoyment in the process.

The talented and beautiful Rene Russo
plays Frigga,

and she and Odin had
some more scenes in the film

that in the end
didn't make it into the final cut

simply because
we just didn't have the room

to do everything else
the story was doing,

but l admire her so much.

She was such a beautiful actress
inside and out

and gave a wonderful, wonderful
sense of depth

in this warrior queen.

She was a pleasure to work with.

God, she's a great-looking gal,

and she got on very well
with these two kids.

This idea for the restorative
Odinsleep effect

was a very good one
from Ms Victoria Alonso,

and l think it tells the story
of Odin's need to regenerate.

Now, we do one of these switches
from Asgard to Earth.

That was one
of the real challenges, story-wise,

about how we could make it work,

and throughout draft after draft,
this rhythm, finding this rhythm,

and in post-production
was really crucial.

Kevin Feige, our producer,
always had very good instincts

about when we could or shouldn't
go to Earth or Asgard, back and forth.

What were the ways
to exploit that rhythm

and not confuse the audience?

We knew, probably, there would be
people who preferred being on Earth,

there would be some people
who preferred being in Asgard.

We wanted both because we felt
as though the story had to interweave.

lt was an exciting sequence like this
that allowed us a sense of

how, with music, we could come back

and really make a great advantage
of this, as she says, "city"

thrown up by S.H.l.E.L.D.

with all of this paraphernalia
to analyse this hammer.

lt's worth talking, perhaps,
a little bit about this set,

which was put together by Bo Welch,

and l thought was a sort of
brilliant graphic response,

a sort of comic
visual language response

in all of these tubes
and cubes to the marriage between,

again, the fantastical up on Asgard
and in space,

and down here, earthbound,
but still excitingly graphic and dynamic.

Lots of shapes, lots of texture.

l think that both the way he designed it
and the starkness

with which Haris Zambarloukos
could light it was very exciting.

lt felt like a really different
kind of texture, it felt surprising,

a different kind of dynamic
to this part of the movie.

lt's also worth talking about music.

The composer of the score for the film
was Patrick Doyle.

Patrick, l've worked with
since his first film and mine, Henry V.

He was a student of composition
and piano

at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music.

He then worked as an actor. He has
a very wide-ranging experience of story,

and his gifts as a composer
are a wonderful ear for melody,

but a great sense of the dramatic.

He always gets involved very early on,

and we knew that he needed to have

the kind of drive in the music

that would keep the sort of ticking clock
of Thor's time on Earth

really vibrantly motoring through,
for instance, a sequence like this.

Patrick is particularly good
at being able to craft,

once he sees a sequence like this,
the ups and the downs of the music,

leaves space for the sound effects,
leaves space for the visual effects,

be able to give and paint in
a musical introduction

to as important a character
as we're about to see, this man.

And so, his sculpting of the score
is really exemplary,

and his ability to write a great tune
is, l think, unmatched.

He's had a fantastic

and continues to have a fantastic career
as a composer,

and he made an enormous
contribution to this.

This is Barton, Hawkeye,

a character familiar
to readers of the comics beyond Thor.

They'll know
that he is one of the Avengers,

and an extra pleasure
in being in the Marvel Universe

was to get a chance on this picture
to work with this young man,

Jeremy Renner,

who came in much further down the line
to shoot his part of this sequence,

but was a joy to watch and to work with.

And to see someone
latch onto a character immediately,

and to do so in the style
and with the talent of the best

by a beautiful choice
of relative minimalism

in the look and speech of the character.

And it was very, very nice
to have that kind of a talent

come into a movie like this in,
in this case, a small part.

All of this work in the mud
was done very late in the night,

maybe 4:00 in the morning, during
a couple of weeks of night shoots,

which are always a challenge
on a movie.

Mr Hemsworth, uncomplaining,

as were the rest
of the brilliant stunt team.

All the boys who are used to this,
who nevertheless have to

sometimes put up with
fairly trying conditions, were great.

The, sort of, mud fight
helped us understand

this primal quality to both Thor
and to this point in the story,

because now he's going home, isn't he?

He's gonna get his hammer,
and he's gonna go home

and that arrogant Thor
is gonna prove that might is right.

lf you could only smash your way out
of a hospital or out of a van

or recruit people like Jane Foster
to help you, you'll get it.

And here in the music, we try and set up
this sense of impending triumph,

the great strongman of the universe
will claim his right,

Excalibur will be lifted from the stone,

Thor will be returned to his full powers
and will be able to go home.

Except, of course, that he can't.

"Only he who is worthy,"
that's what Odin said.

And we have not seen sufficient
evidence in this story of the flawed hero

who must lose in order to find.

We haven't seen the evidence there.

This is not something
he's gonna take easily, however,

and once again, that primal part
of the character kicks in.

Like a great bear yelling

or like a crazed child
hysterically screaming,

some part of him is broken

by the certain knowledge
that he ain't going back,

that's it, it's over.

No home, no friends, no family,
no powers.

This becomes, for Thor,
a pivotal moment

in his journey through the picture.

And one of the things l love
about Chris Hemsworth's performance

is just the look coming up.

The sense,
as he sees the symbol of home,

of that hurt
and of that youthfulness in his look,

that great oak tree of a man

is now almost a, sort of,
bottom-lip-quivering kid.

He's had to really understand
that he's not going home.

lt's very touching, l think,

and l asked Pat
to reflect that in the music.

lt's the moment in which,
perhaps they may have admired,

they may have been amused by him,
they may have a sneaking admiration

for his cheeky, grinning,
winking cockiness,

but now, perhaps the audience have
genuine sympathy for this man,

because now he's down on our level.

He loses stuff,
he doesn't get his way all the time,

and maybe it's the point at which
the audience fully sympathise with him.

l like this scene very much
for a number of reasons.

The 3-D orjust the composition
generally in this lab, l love,

because they were at the back
of the lab in the wide shot,

and you have all those
layers of structure.

You have the real genuine outside
of a real town at night

through the glass, seeing all the neon.

You have this passionate debate,

which, in a way,
states the kind of parameters

of the issue of reality in our film.

She quotes Arthur C. Clarke, "Magic's
just science we don't understand yet."

"lt was science fiction," says he.
"Which is a precursor to science fact."

And l think that if you just look at
what's happened in our own lives

on what may seem
a rather superficial level,

but 15, 16 years ago,
we didn't have the lnternet,

and everything working as it does today,
with all our handheld devices,

the whole revolution of the social media.

lmagine the massive shake-up
in our own lives that's gone on,

so that the degree
to which Jane Foster can argue

that just because we don't understand
or have complete experience

of a blond god from another world
coming to live amongst us,

it doesn't mean
that miraculous things can't happen.

And if you'd told Christopher
Columbus that a small piece of plastic

would connect you
to back home, to Genoa,

when he landed in 1492

to tell them
that he'd just discovered America,

he would have
perhaps laughed in your face.

A few hundred years later,
it's all normal.

Anyway, the basic notion of accepting
the suspension of disbelief

for some of the miraculous qualities
in the picture

that search for
a certain kind of credibility

were caught
by Natalie Portman's passion there

and by, l think, some well-written work
from our team of writers.

When we talk about the sort of
emotional core of the film,

which exists in a picture

that essentially has always
drawn the reaction

when we screened it early on,
and we always wanted to have it

draw the reaction of being fun,
it's a fun experience,

it's a summer movie, it's something
to enjoy in a beautiful way.

But nevertheless, at the centre of it,

you hope there are these other things,
including here,

l think beautifully played between
Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth,

this moment where Thor believes

not only has he lost his home
and is forbidden from returning to it,

but that he has lost his father.

The reaction to this news

and the way in which he articulates
quite tenderly, quite vulnerably

his response, l think, is beautifully done.

The act, if you like, of Loki is
wonderfully, seamlessly done by Tom,

who evoked by way of a sort of model
for the character,

the character of lago
in Shakespeare's play Othello,

who is, if you like,
the great actor in Shakespeare,

a terrifying character
who is a sort of sociopath,

who will disguise every real feeling

under the mask of something authentic
and genuine-seeming.

Well, here, this dynamic
between two brothers

who really, l think, do love each other,
but have this complicated relationship,

as Loki's burgeoning knowledge
of who or what he might be

and therefore who or what,

especially what might be
available to him,

is occurring inside him,
questions being asked,

and they play this very delicate scene
so well.

l was most impressed by them,

and l like the fact
that it's in this neutral arena,

this quieter, simpler place,

another series of contrasts
to the sometimes very busy

and spectacular world of colour
and complexity,

in terms of the layout of shots,

to something very simple and focused.

Loki, of course, can't resist
the idea of picking up that hammer.

This was, again, a great touch
from Kevin and Craig and co.

to suggest that he could be irritated

by that extra-nice Loki moment.

The writers involved in our film
have done a wonderful job,

from the story's shaping
that Joe Michael Straczynski

and Mark Protosevich did
across various drafts of the screenplay

that were there just before l arrived,

that gave this kind of hero's journey arc,
the exile and the return,

that l certainly was very excited to try
and further develop and enhance.

And then with Ashley Miller
and Zack Stentz,

who came in
and then worked with me initially

on how we bring that
contemporary Earth element to the story

and allow
consistency of tone across that,

and there were many excellent drafts
that came out of that process.

And then,
with my great friend Don Payne,

a brilliant writer from The Simpsons,
of course,

we took this yet further

and really looked into the fun to be had
from a character like Erik Selvig,

and Erik Selvig and Darcy
very much developed by Don

with his particular sense of fun,
and in collaboration with them.

So, Stellan, for instance,
came to rehearsals early on

and was key in trying to make sure

that there was nothing sort of merely
functionary about these characters,

but that they have, as you can see
in the look in his eye there,

he just carries that sense of worry.

This is a man who knows he's dealing
with a government organisation

who can put him in jail.

And when he reacts here to
Clark Gregg's last farewell instruction,

you feel the depth of his relief.

That contribution with Stellan,
talking in that case to Don,

and coming up in this particular scene

with some ideas about
how Selvig helps us to understand

via Chris' very excellent performance,

once again showing
yet another colour in Thor.

Very surprising
what we see of Thor in this scene

from the man we saw
in the very first scene,

and it's partly brought out by Stellan's
character asking him some questions

about who he is
and what he finds meaningful.

And this very, sort of, bonding scene
between the pair of them,

l think, is very honest.

lt's very open, it's a scene that
we understood early on in screenings

was one where the audience
actually did enjoy

seeing Thorjust like us
and trying to put his life back together.

We know that the movie
isn't going to end there,

but we also know
it's not gonna be easy for him,

whether it's getting back to home

or whether it's getting to
find a home on Earth,

especially as we see in this scene

that Selvig is naturally suspicious
and protective of his,

as it were, surrogate daughter in Jane.

These two were so enjoyable
to work with in this scene,

and Stellan comes in so prepared,
so available, so ready, so different,

so "ready to play," as he might put it,

that they really were
such marvellous collaborators.

They did, however, provide us
with a problem in this scene,

where we also had a fight and
a series of drinking contest moments

at the end of how we finished it.

We wanted to finish
simply on a kind of upbeat moment,

and of all the scenes in the movie,

the end of this was re-edited
maybe 150 times,

and it took a long time
before we went for

what is usually the preferred option,
which is the simple one,

especially in the hands
of two very good actors,

of a real and, in this case, pretty funny
look from Stellan Skarsgård.

We know he's gonna get into trouble
with that.

The visual effects here give us,
once again, Loki's return to Jotunheim,

and the chance for Loki to face,

but not reveal to his father,

exactly who he is.

We did some additional photography
in this scene

and it was to exploit
one of the qualities in Loki

that we felt we could,

by virtue of how good
Tom Hiddleston's performance was,

also include, aside from him
being a genuine brother,

and being a hurt brother

and an ambitious
and perhaps ratherjealous brother,

to be mischievous and dangerous
is a necessity for Loki.

Even if one does not necessarily
suggest that he is preternaturally evil,

but that his capacity for wrongdoing
is emerging, forming,

shaping itself before our very eyes.

This scene allows us
to see a more calculating Loki at work.

Someone who is playing the poker game

with another master player,
his real father,

but his real father does not,
at this point, know that this is his son.

He was abandoned, after all,
and he would have assumed,

and another version of this scene
suggested this,

that Odin would have killed
that bastard child of yesteryear.

So, this becomes a scene
of many levels

between two very calculating,
dangerous guys

who are used
to the world of brinkmanship,

and two good poker faces.

We return to Heimdall's observatory

where again, you, in this scene,
get to enjoy

the power of ldris Elba's performance.

First of all, the look is fantastic.

l can't imagine another actor who would
carry off this incredible costume,

which Alex Byrne, l think,
has triumphantly presented

as the kind of look that a guardian,

a man who really is the person
who says,

and we believe him,
"Thou shalt not pass."

ln wonderful, wonderful golds
and with a great shape, great design,

it's a marvellous frame for an actor.

And in it, you have ldris Elba,
whose voice we slightly amend

to just maximise the beautiful, rich,
dark, warm tones in it,

because, as the single
representative ofAsgard out there,

we wanted, every time we heard
and saw him,

to be aware of this
memory of the guardian,

the man whom you disobey at your peril.

lt's nice to go from him

to something as relatively mundane
as Jane's caravan.

This is the moment in the movie,

in a way, where it could go
several different places.

Thor is without his powers,
he's starting, he's reborn, if you like,

and so, this is a moment
where we understand,

maybe with Loki's activities
in the worlds above,

that it's the calm before the storm.

But it's the calm in which the audience
have a chance to take in this new Thor,

and, l think, fully invest in him

and perhaps invest in the idea

of some kind of relationship
between him and Jane.

lt is difficult in a big action film

to allow the room for romance,
if you like, or a kind of

chemistry between
perhaps the central boy and gal,

having any extra dimensions,

or even just having
a feeling of authenticity

to whatever level that's pursued.

lt isn't the case that these things
have to be grand passions.

l suppose what you want to feel
is that they like each other,

that they get on, that they're listening,

that it's a relationship in which, slowly,

you're interested in what happens,

and in which you might invest.

lt can't be overburdened

by suddenly becoming
the grand passion of the ages,

and yet, there is much to value

out of these instant connections

between, in this case,
people from other worlds.

Many people have asked me about the
sort of Shakespearean influence on this.

And l can't say any of it was remotely,
if it is, there,

that it's only because
Shakespeare nicked

some terrific story ideas and plot points
from great writers of the past,

and we continue to steal from him.

And one situation
that clearly was a big hit for him

was the idea of putting people together
from different worlds,

the Romeo and Juliet,
if you like, of it all.

And so, the beginnings of that
starts here,

which is simply that a new and humble
and modest Thor is listening,

and is asking questions
and is caring about someone else.

He is interested in someone else.

And that generosity of spirit, of course,
is incredibly winning for us, for Jane,

and you see a quite honest
beginning to a relationship

that leaves the question mark
of exactly how far can it go

during the context of this story?

And what kind of weight can it hold,

and can it do that
whilst still allowing for it to be fun?

And l think that many people have
commented about this scene,

that it's their favourite scene
in the movie.

You get some wonderful simple things,
which are, this look, for instance.

Natalie Portman looking at someone

and letting us understand
that she may feel something for him

that is even beginning to surprise her.

l think that that quality
in her performance,

subtle, brief, rich,

is one of the things
that sort of helps distinguish the picture

in terms of how it
approaches certain things.

We're trying not to work too hard,
but just for it to be real,

and l think that she's very real,
very convincing there,

she's very, very charming

as she laughs
about the Hubble/Hooble mix-up.

This is a handsome shot of our hero.

All the way through shooting,
between Mr Hemsworth, Ms Portman,

and all of them,
Kat, Jaimie, all the boys,

Tom and then some
of the other Warriors Three,

who l'll talk about in a little while,

one was constantly reminded

of what an amazingly handsome
group of people,

marvellous to look at.

Here, the Warriors Three
are disputing what to do.

Josh Dallas plays Fandral,

and he does so with an English accent
with great aplomb,

marvellous debonair dash.

And he's matched equally
by the tremendous Ray Stevenson,

who you'll know from his brilliant turn
on the HBO TV series Rome

and many, many other films.

l worked with Ray many moons ago,

and it was a pleasure to bring
his incredible screen gifts.

He's got such a great face for movies.

Handsome lad
who knows how to be still.

He's matched here by Tadanobu Asano,
a great star from Japan,

who brings to the role of
Hogun the Grim inscrutability,

but an enigmatic, playful intelligence

and a sort of deadly capacity
for physical violence.

You know that when he speaks,
it's gonna be important.

There was great camaraderie
between these four,

and it really fuelled
the quality of the scenes,

the sense of that bond between them,
and loyalty and fun, of course.

lt's true to say that there was more of
the Warriors Three and Lady Sif shot,

and once again, not through
lack of quality from them,

but through a simple
traffic jam of elements

that we wanted to put gracefully
into this world of the film,

it wasn't possible to include everything.

But they had great fun.

And some of it now
infuses this part of the movie

where once again, we enjoy
the fact of the gods coming to Earth.

Here, the rhythm of the film,
as it switches so instantaneously,

is a great tribute
to the gifts of our editor, Paul Rubell,

who was a wonderful collaborator
throughout.

A marvellous and award-winning editor,
and very musical.

l always think it's very helpful
if an editor is musical.

He plays the piano,
but he has an intuitive feel

for the length of a cut
and the feel of a cut,

and has so many tricks at his disposal

to do with being able
to use everything we can.

Whether it's split screens,
or accelerating shots,

or flipping and flopping shots,

really, we used
every kind of trick in the book here,

and he had that in addition to the
great treasure trove of visual effects

that produces things like the Destroyer.

So, we bring the Warriors Four to Earth.

This is a fun moment
and one that is tough to get just right.

lt's very nicely underpinned
by Patrick's music.

There's a part of the magic of movies,

the character Volstagg
was not in the shot that you saw,

we filmed him separately afterwards,
and we put him into the shot.

The kind of thing
that seemed necessary in post,

and only possible because you're
working on a great, big Marvel movie

where that kind of thing can happen.

lt was one of the numerous moments
where l thought,

"Gosh, if l had this opportunity
on previous films,

"they'd all have
cost squinty billion dollars."

But l hasten to add
that's not what this cost,

but it does provide
the chance to get things right.

Just before we head
into the last phase of the movie,

which is full of action and destruction,

it's lovely to have had,
including the cup drop,

a piece of delicious daft comedy.

Before now, coming back to
the big question of why they're here,

of taking Thor home.

But of course,
it being the kind of movie it is,

we're not going to make it
as easy as that,

and there's going to be
a significant sequence now

where the Destroyer, called by Loki,
comes to Earth

to deal with Thor and prevent his return.

First, of course,
Loki has to deal with Heimdall,

who's been registering suspicion.

And l love, by the way, this shot

and the way it evokes the kinds of work

that were done
by the French VFX vendors BUF,

Pierre Buffin and his team
with Nicolas Chevallier,

a great team there
who were able to give us

both the incredible water effects

and the beaten copper,
space-aged qualities

to the outside of the observatory.

This marvellous effect with Heimdall

and the freezing that comes out
of the Casket ofAncient Winters.

l love the water
in the background of this shot

and the idea
of encasing Heimdall like this.

Back on Earth,
we had other things to contend with.

ln New Mexico,
quite splendid though it is,

and although some of this is enhanced,

we had our own challenges
with the weather.

Not with the arrival of the Destroyer,
but with four seasons in a day,

sometimes 50-mile-an-hour winds,

sometimes hail, sometimes snow,
sometimes rain,

literally all in one day.

And so, sometimes working out quite
what we could shoot

or if we could still shoot
was pretty difficult.

Once again, Darcy, it seems to me,

is a great representative
of the audience,

and Kat Dennings played her beautifully.

She has a great comic gift
and is also extremely smart.

She's one of those characters
who allows you to believe

that there is a very different
kind of individual in there,

beyond the surface
of a very quick-witted,

sort of cynical, sarcastic individual.

And it seems to me she scores
in almost every moment she speaks,

and it's very valuable.

What it gives you, as you approach
these big sequences

at the end of the movie,
is a chance to orchestrate.

You know that somewhere
you want to go from fun to laughter,

to thrill, to exhilaration, to violence,

to big music, to little music,
to rhythm, to excitement,

and so, there's this thriller throb
to some of the action here.

Camera moving all of the time,

interrupted by this,
the great weight of the Destroyer.

ln planning this sequence,

l remember it was one of the first things
l did when l arrived in New Mexico,

and down this very street,

where the beautiful Jaimie Alexander
is just about to hide herself,

l walked with 30, 40 colleagues,

and we tried to work out
where we needed to be,

and how we needed to shoot
all of the following and in what order.

This was as complicated logistically
as anything on the picture,

because it depended on certainty
about when certain bombs would go off,

when things that blew up out of
the bottom of the road would be buried,

when the special effects
would be buried,

when the second unit could come in

and shoot the scenes
that they needed to do.

So, for instance,
you won't be surprised to know

that was Kylie Furneaux,
her stunt double,

not Jaimie Alexander, who did
the biggest of those leaps as Sif.

That had to be scheduled at a time
when we were off doing something else

so that Vic Armstrong and his team
had the entire town to himself.

And so, the make-up of this particular
sequence, the orchestration

and, indeed, the working
with the Destroyer who, on the day,

was sometimes a complete
replicated model, but immobile.

Sometimes it was just
a large pair of lighting clamps

with some gaffer tape at the top of it

to indicate
what the Destroyer looked like.

But it was one sequence
in which both myself

and my very excellent first
assistant director, Luc Etienne,

would call out through megaphones,

across the sounds of huge fans
creating wind or this kind of debris,

exactly what was happening,
so that here, Jaimie would know,

"The Destroyer's arriving on your left,
there's smoke on your right," et cetera.

There needed to be
a clear path through,

even when out in the open,
not against green screen here,

although sometimes we did, indeed,
use green or blue screen outside.

But here, you needed both the benefits
of the actual debris

and wreckage of cars
and fires that we did provide live.

But you constantly needed to tell people
what might be happening up in Asgard,

what was happening
with the Destroyer himself,

and keep people firmly in touch
with what we're after.

This brings us to the moment story-wise
that we'd really been aiming for

that is so inevitably connected
to the moment

where Thor walks into the movie
for the first time as a grown-up,

a man who is unwilling
to sacrifice anything,

so selfish is he.

And in the moment that follows now,

we have a man who has learnt
that he must, can and should be able

as a great leader, as a great king,

but simply perhaps not as a god

but as a man,
be prepared to sacrifice everything.

ln this case, it means his life.

Natalie Portman asks that question,

but perhaps as an audience
we already know.

He's doing what has to be done,
he's doing what a hero would do,

not the act of a man
who thinks he's a hero,

but simply he does what has to be done.
lt ends up being heroic.

This is not about Thor, this is about
resolving things with his brother.

Crucially, it's about saving the people
and the town that is Puente Antiguo,

and saving the lives of those
who have come to help him

and from whom he has learnt
and grown.

The way Chris Hemsworth does this,

the Patrick Doyle music
to accompany it,

the way in which it takes place in
the format of a sort of Wild West fight,

the showdown,
a kind of high noon moment,

all of this, l felt, had a sort of leanness
and simplicity to it

that l thought was
part of the story of the hero.

And we wanted to maintain surprise

about how brother Loki
would finally react to this,

and whether that could
and should change his mind.

Can it end in peace?

And the answer is, of course, it can't.

And we wanted the surprise,
not of the blast there,

but of a sort of trick,
a piece of Lokian mischief

which takes the Destroyer's beam away,

appears to perhaps indicate
that Thor has persuaded him,

that he will understand, but, no.

A sneaky trick,
the smack the back of the hand,

and the clearly fatal blow
takes us to the point

where perhaps we've always known
we must arrive,

which is at the death of Thor.

The death of a man who did not think,
the death of a man who did not care,

the death of a man who was selfish,

the death of a man
who disregarded his family,

his home, his friends,

and in a sense, symbolically at least,

that man, that creature had to die.

He had to give it up.
He had to sacrifice it.

He had to become, to use Odin's word,

"worthy" in that act of sacrifice.

That act of sacrifice from a god,

perhaps, could lie the seeds,
perhaps instant,

as they say, enlightenment comes
to those who find it, redemption.

And it's a redemption,
triggered partly by a father's pain

and a father's pride.

And so from Odin,

we go back to that other hero of the film,

trapped, but no longer, Mjolnir.

And this leads us to a moment
that we discussed over and over,

how visually, emotionally,
musically, effects-ly,

we could bring together this moment

that we hoped, maybe in a movie
theatre, could have the audience cheer

if they loved him as much as we did,

and if they valued
the idea of that happening.

The God of Thunder is back in charge,

powers restored,

armour back on his
magnificent god's frame,

announcing his success to the world,

providing awe and wonder
in those who watch him.

And now, a chance to have revenge
and some fun, as well.

This musical cue was written
probably three, four, five times.

The action sequence here,

exactly what could Thor do
to potentially trounce the Destroyer?

This was something that,
even though it's visual effects intensive,

we worked on for almost
the entire period of the shoot.

Two things needed to happen,

this needed to be an absolute example
of the awesome power

of a fully restored, fully motivated,
truly heroic Thor,

and it also needed
to happen quite swiftly,

because we know that
dealing with Destroyer

will not be the only thing
Thor has to deal with

before the end of this film.

He needs to get back home,

and this needs to be
taking care of business

and taking care of business
spectacularly,

but efficiently and briskly,
so that we understand

what a superhero is
when he's at his best.

He's efficient, he just gets on with it,
and is a very good neighbour.

So now, the film takes on
a different kind of pace.

Earth is protected,
Puente Antiguo is saved,

there's some business to take care of,

which is the issue
of the return of S.H.l.E.L.D.

and Clark Gregg's very funny reading
of this last moment with Thor

before he needs to return to Asgard.

And it also, l suppose,
lays out the possibility

that Jane Foster and Selvig may work
with S.H.l.E.L.D. in some future world

where that research,
which has brought her so close

to understanding
how and where Thor is from,

may perhaps be
developed into something that could

tell us yet more stories.

Meantime, back on Asgard,

Loki allows access for the Frost Giants.

And lonely Heimdall
looks to have been outwitted.

l'm sure that can't happen for long.
One feels his frustration in there,

and l certainly wouldn't want to try
and tie up ldris Elba

in any way that restricted him.

We shot these sequences
in the New Mexican desert,

and it was one of the areas

where it was so, so much
a signature of the picture

to see whether it would
work successfully

to put these costumes
from these Asgardians on Earth.

And in that space of the desert,
on that kind of canvas,

l was very, very pleased with the results.

So, to see them there,
there's something, l don't know,

very, very much in tune with
modern versions of the comic books.

Particularly, for instance,
runs of the comics

that had been authored
by Joe Michael Straczynski,

who, in a way, was part of perfecting
the modern version of Thor on Earth.

Heimdall is heroic and allows us

to just see what we can play,
of the extent to which

this romantic feeling between
Thor and Jane can play in the movie.

And l think it's a tribute to these two

that it carries much more weight
than it might otherwise do

because of its gentleness
and its simplicity.

lt doesn't strain too hard,

they don't strain too hard to be
super sexy, super cool, super romantic.

As a result, l think
that they are all of those things,

and l think we want them to be together.

We know that this hasn't progressed
into the grand love affair,

but we see that it has the potential
for perhaps something very special

and that there is a connection.

Now, we head into
the final phase of the film.

We're back on Asgard, and the family
business has to be taken care of.

First of all, of course,
we give Frigga a moment

to do what any warrior queen would do,
which is to try and defend her husband.

We consciously kept
the world ofAsgard, these corridors,

a little emptier
than you might expect them to be,

suggesting that gods know
how to look after themselves,

especially gods in Asgard.

They're not expecting to be invaded.

l enjoyed reflecting Colm Feore
in Anthony Hopkins' eyeball.

That's the last creature
l'd wish to have hovering above me,

and it's especially creepy
that as he says

Odin can hear and see what's going on,

even as his attempted murder begins,

but we know it's only attempted

because what we hoped
and discovered in previews

would be the audience believing
that that blow had been struck by Thor,

actually have an intake of breath
when they understand it is Loki.

And let's, while he's there,
the great Tom Hiddleston,

have a talk about those helmets.

That helmet was worn in two pieces,
it was extremely painful.

He was very patient about it.

All the helmets were heavy and tight

in order to have the great look,
the great line.

Nothing could rattle, nothing could roll.

And the combination
of what the collar does,

the lines on the front of that costume,
ditto Thor's,

they make it work in
a very streamlined, aerodynamic way

that hints at the classic renditions
of the frames from the comics,

but in the way they're worn,

in the colours, in the palette,
in the textures,

it stops at being campy,
stops at being kitschy,

or, at least, not to a degree

that allows us to accept a different
kind of robustness to it.

Our rules about
how this observatory worked means that

we could now have,
instead of Heimdall's sword/key,

that was what made it work,
we accepted the idea

that the other instrument
that could make that work

was Gungnir, Odin's spear.

And now, usable by Loki,

because in Odin's absence,
Loki runs Asgard,

that very sort of map,

that kind of astral reflective map
of Yggdrasil

is now frozen, locked solid.

And we liked the idea of doing this
in order to create

not a travelling light source that could
take you briefly, instantaneously

through time warps to other times
and places and worlds,

but now a burgeoning,
building nuclear weapon.

So that Bifrost, the miracle agent
of time and space travel,

becomes the agent of destruction.

But of course,
although that technology is at work,

we see it frozen open,

ready to create chaos on the world
that Loki must destroy,

the world of his parentage.

The idea of wiping out the race

that would prove
that there are no more of that race,

so that Loki really is an Asgardian,

is part of where his passionate
determination to belong

and to win his father's approval
has now sort of led him to.

So, in the middle of this burgeoning,
sort of technological explosion,

there is concentrated in this arena,

this now different arena,
this frozen arena,

this resolution of the biblical battle
between two brothers.

Two brothers whose conflict now
is potentially liable

to see the destruction
of part or all of the universe,

but certainly Jotunheim.

And all of this has come from a dispute,
if you like, at one simple level

about their own competition
to enjoy, approve, receive,

be preeminent in their father's love.

And now, with these two
extraordinary weapons as equals,

and inside the dangerous,

evermore acceleratingly lethal
world of the frozen Bifrost,

with the observatory and Asgard's fate
spinning out of control,

you have these stakes and this action
heightening with every blow, as it were.

lt's a battle, it would seem,
of two equals

that now spills out
onto the Rainbow Bridge.

And it was this kind of image, it was
rather like the horses riding across it.

And this kind of image,
the idea of these two brothers,

people who we recognise with
human traits, human characteristics,

fighting with real passions,
real motivations,

but nevertheless fighting,

at extreme danger in an epic landscape.

This bridge in the middle
of outer space,

attached to the asteroid
on which Asgard rules the universe,

led to the bridge now in danger
of using its power and its beam

to destroy one, perhaps more worlds
if this conflict isn't resolved.

The idea, the heightened nature
of all of that

seemed to me something that could be
so remarkable and unusual,

and l'm very proud
of these kinds of images.

l would call them epic images,

where the power of the sea,
the power of lightning,

the power of space,

the power of these elements,
these elemental forces

are about to overwhelm, or could they
be at the mercy of these two figures?

Or one of them, if one can overpower,

but clearly, with everything
that's been set up,

we always hoped that we might
put Thor, the man who has changed,

the man who,
at the beginning of this film,

wouldn't have thought twice about this,

now decides
that it's actually a choice to make.

And Jotunheim, whatever it might be,

does not deserve the fate
that Loki has imposed upon it.

And so, this idea of potentially giving up

a route back to the place
where he found himself,

where he found happiness,

and where perhaps he may have found
or could find love,

is going to be sacrificed
in order to save Jotunheim

and the stability and peace
of the Nine Realms.

Let's see whether Jane forgives him.
One man who won't is Loki.

And the series of images that follow

really speak
for the sort of cataclysmic ending

to which we believed
a film like this could head.

Where this really is, l think,

a spectacular series
of visual effects moments

that were beautifully supervised

by the brilliant Wesley Sewell
and his team,

and where all of the
key members of the team,

Bo Welch in design,
Haris Zambarloukos in photography,

Wes in visual effects,
Paul Rubell in editing,

our stunt team,
Vic Armstrong and Andy,

the costumes ofAlex Byrne,

the various make-ups
of all our characters

from Luisa Abel, Jan Alexander
in hair and make-up, quite magnificent.

And l love the look of Mr Hiddleston
as he heads off into that void.

What is gonna happen?
There's a big question mark there.

And for us, the big question mark was,
how do we get back to Earth?

On this occasion,
we were filming this real shot,

took place on a real Friday afternoon
in New Mexico

when the sun was going down.

We got that real sunset. lt was one of,

if you will please, please, please
forgive my language,

a sort of "kick, bollock
and scramble" moment,

where everybody is running
to shoot this moment

in what some refer to
as the "magic hour,"

and which we in film
know to be the "tragic hour,"

because you can never quite
get the shot as you want it.

Here the opposite was true.

These three actors rushed,
dragged them out of their trailers.

"You gotta go.
The light's going, the light's going."

And we were able to get
the reason we went to New Mexico,

a big sky, a sunset, mountains,
three amazing actors, a great image,

and one that would allow us,
as we see Jane's disappointment,

to perhaps begin the process
of taking us back up

to see how all of this
is resolved in Asgard.

Here, this time with the travel
we've done now,

allowing us to compress the journey,

but still enjoy feeling that miraculous
and strange underside ofAsgard.

An Asgard, now in a kind of post-battle,
post-near-apocalypse twilight,

where a little hint of what happens
in the myths and in the comics,

which is, although not here,
in the halls of Valhalla,

they sing and they talk and they drink
and they dance,

and they celebrate their exploits,
particularly led by Volstagg,

who's prone to exaggeration, of course.

There's a kind of melancholy
that hangs over this at this point.

Thor has left Earth,
has sacrificed the Rainbow Bridge,

has saved the peace ofAsgard,
has saved Jotunheim,

but of course, has lost a brother.

lt wasn't as simple as saying
he was right and Loki was wrong.

lt was as the film has tried to be,

because the comics are
and the myths are,

just a bit more complicated than that.

We find, of course,
as he walks the halls,

beyond which this magnificent

Scandinavian-influenced
landscape ofAsgard sits,

a fine company called Whiskytree,
who produced the visual effects

for the creation ofAsgard here,

we find that he goes back to,
what l mentioned earlier,

was really the base emotional heart
of the picture, fathers and sons.

And that was the question,
would he be at the beginning?

Odin says he will, but actually,
although he's in the affirmative,

Thor now has second thoughts.

This is a beautifully and simply done
scene between the two men.

lt's about, in part,

the inability of certain kinds of males,
warrior males,

to easily reveal their feelings
to each other.

They do here with great delicacy

and with a sense of vulnerability
that l think is touching.

l think it's beautifully
and simply played by the pair of them,

and you feel the weight
of the experience of the film,

that they have bought this experience,
they've arrived here changed,

inspired in some ways,
saddened in some ways,

and now are ready to go on
with their lives.

But there's a big question mark.

Can the Rainbow Bridge be rebuilt?

Where is Jane Foster?

What will happen
to Asgard's relationship to Earth?

And the beginning of the up beat
at the end of our picture here

is the understanding that
perhaps there could always be hope.

Heimdall says so, l listen to Heimdall.

Well, sure enough,
down in Smith's Motors in this shot,

which was a shot originally planned
to open the film with.

lt was going to be
the very first shot of the movie,

it turned into the very last, almost.

And now, as we go through
these main-on-end titles,

l hope you'll enjoy
this race through space,

this voyage which originally was
in the body of the movie.

And it was the beginnings
of a travel from Earth

up through space
through various time warps here,

to this Milky Way-style galaxy
through which we pass,

and then pull out another part of.

And then understand that we are now,
in fact, travelling through, around

and between the branches of Yggdrasil,
the Worlds Tree,

the great galactic nebulae

that Odin describes
and the comics describe,

in both ancient art
and in scientific versions,

as the linking web, if you like, between
the Nine Realms of the universe.

And this opportunity to take the
audience on a journey through space

and through Yggdrasil
was something that we worked on

through the whole of the time
we were making the film.

Again, this part of the movie
was created by our visual effects team

and executed
and much enhanced by BUF in Paris.

And although it didn't make it
into the body of the film,

it was a fantastic way, l think,
to go out at the end of our Marvel movie

that has tried to give a sense of fun,
a sense of exhilaration,

has taken you, l hope,
on an emotional journey,

but is leaving you
with a sense of a forward movement,

with a sense of optimism

and with, perhaps, a sense that
if there are other movies of Thor,

or other movies in which Thor exists,

that you might want to come back
and see them.

My name is Ken Branagh,

and l thank you very much
for watching Thor.

l'm gonna leave you now

with the answer to the question
that some people asked me, which is,

"How on Earth could you possibly
even start to direct a film like Thor?"

Well, the answer is unfolding to you
and will do over the next seven minutes.

lt is all of these people, that's how
anybody can do something like this,

but l was uniquely blessed
with the talent

and the kindness of the people
with whom l worked.

You'll see thousands of names
across this next five or six minutes,

all of them truly did have
a contribution to make,

and over two or three years
of making one of these pictures,

it's something you understand
and appreciate

and are deeply grateful for.

So, on behalf of all of these, my fellows,
my fellow collaborators, my co-workers,

once again, thank you very much
for watching Thor,

thank you for listening
to this commentary and goodbye.

Please, however, do enjoy
listening to the amazing Foo Fighters,

who are singing
and performing this song Walk

from their latest chart-topping album.

And what an honour it was to have them
associated with the movie

with a lyric they might have
written for us.

So, to all of them,
thank you very much, indeed,

and if you'd like,

you might want to join me
just right at the end of the credits

in case there's
some kind of surprise there.

l'll see you there.

And so, that's the end of the film,
the end of another Marvel movie,

the end of Thor, the God of Thunder.

Thor will, indeed, return
in The Avengers,

and he will be directed
by Joss Whedon,

a brilliant talent who l spoke to

before he came on board
to do this little piece,

which l'm very delighted
ends up at the end of our film,

in which l was especially pleased

to see the continuing appearance
of Dr Erik Selvig,

this time talking to the great
Sam Jackson as Nick Fury.

And l find myself intrigued
by exactly where they are

and exactly what they are to discuss.

What l can tell you
is that what you're about to see

has some reference
back into the movie Thor.

Have a look at what comes up inside
the suitcase that Sam Jackson refers to,

and see whether it jogs your memory
about a moment in our picture

that may have referred to it.

Loki's back.

As director of Thor
and as a keen fan of Marvel movies,

l've learned maybe not to believe
everything l see.

Thanks for watching.