Chief Mar­vel edi­tor, Joe Que­sada, has answered some more ques­tion on the reg­u­lar Cup ‘O Joe col­umn, this time per­tain­ing to Thor and Iron Man 2.

On Thor

Que­sada talks with great pas­sion about Branagh and Kevin Feige’s cre­ative part­ner­ship, and the delight it was to watch them explore the Thor ideas and mythol­ogy. His approach to the Thor fran­chise is Shake­spearean, explain­ing emo­tions between char­ac­ters in each scene, their moti­va­tion and how it relates to the movie’s plot.

Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment looks like it shall play a sig­nif­i­cant part in the Thor adap­ta­tion, Que­sada describes this qual­ity as “quin­tes­sen­tial” in cre­at­ing a Mar­vel movie. There are capes and big ham­mers, but, “It’s about what makes char­ac­ters tick”. And Que­sada adds, “there’s rea­sons and moti­va­tions for him to hit peo­ple with his ham­mer… hard!”

When it comes to mar­ket­ing Thor, it’s all about rais­ing aware­ness before the movie’s release. Sim­i­lar to the Iron Man approach, Thor’s char­ac­ter shall be intro­duced to kids through ani­ma­tion, in par­tic­u­lar in “Super Hero Squad” and “Avengers Animated”.

On Iron Man 2

Que­sada describes Favreau as intense and cere­bral, and is again happy to relay the director’s under­stand­ing and pas­sion for the Tony Stark char­ac­ter, “Why put on the suit?”. Favreau’s approach is about hav­ing the world’s most pow­er­ful weapon and mak­ing the story big­ger, all the while keep­ing it “stream­lined” and ulti­mately main­tain­ing that much needed rel­e­vance at the per­sonal level.

MTV are report­ing that Star Trek and Crank: High Volt­age actor Clifton Collins Jr. is in talks for a role in the Thor adaptation:

“I had a lit­tle meet­ing. I think I can say that much. […] [’Thor’ direc­tor] Ken­neth Branagh is a bad-ass. I’ve been a fan of his as an actor and I know he’s gonna be amaz­ing as a direc­tor for this piece.”

“Believe me, I’m itch­ing to say all kinds of stuff,”

[…]

“It’s going to be a beau­ti­ful thing, I’m sure,” said Collins. “It’s an amaz­ing comic book. If you grew up read­ing these comic books, he was def­i­nitely a bad-ass, that guy.”

No word yet on the char­ac­ter he might play.

Con­tin­u­ing on from the recent Kevin Feige rev­e­la­tions, First Show­ing have pro­vided a sec­ond com­men­tary of the event, which offers up some more details of these three movies.

Iron Man 2

In the first movie the film mak­ers man­aged to get the tone just right, for the sequel they are look­ing to add char­ac­ters and up the action whilst main­tain­ing this tone — keep­ing the right sense of humour. Film­ing is half way through and the major­ity of the spo­ken parts are com­plete, the next six weeks shall be ded­i­cated to action scenes!

Thor

There will be no Shake­spearean dia­logue in the Thor movie, despite its usage in the comics. Some scenes will take place in Asgard.

Cap­tain America

The first avenger movie shall be a period piece, set pre­dom­i­nantly dur­ing WWII. It is hoped that the movie can cap­ture a feel­ing sim­i­lar to Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the same lev­els of fun. Side­kick Bucky (wiki) will also make an appear­ance, in some capacity.

As for direc­tor Joe Johnston,

A lit­tle bit of The Rock­e­teer, lots of Octo­ber Sky, and a lit­tle bit of the ship designs that John­ston did for Star Wars, allud­ing to how this is the per­fect movie for him to direct. “It’s the movie his entire career has been lead­ing towards.”

In Kevin Feige’s (Mar­vel Stu­dios pro­ducer) most recent press con­fer­ence, he revealed a few tid­bits about the Thor adaptation.

Don­ald Blake shall not make an appear­ance in the movie, although it shall take place in con­tem­po­rary Earth, rather than the Viking era. The film shall retain a Mar­vel super­hero feel, rather than a fantasy-esque adventure.

As for the cast­ing of Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Feige said, ‘There was no question’.

MTV caught up with Thor movie direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh to find out ‘the sto­ries and peo­ple’ inspir­ing the big screen adap­ta­tion. The film cre­ators have rav­aged the fifty year comic his­tory, and could bring plot ele­ments from any num­ber of places.

“I think that [’Thor’ sto­ries] go through golden patches and pur­ple patches and every­one has per­sonal favorites. […] The recent runs have been mar­velous. The J. Michael Straczyn­ski run has been a tremen­dous achievement.”

“But I’ve also been read­ing way back, read­ing clas­sic, vin­tage runs as well. […] There are many Thors and many accounts of the sto­ries across nearly 50 years of the comics. We look to raid from the best.”

“A lot of the job up to this point has been lis­ten­ing to peo­ple who know more and bet­ter than I. […] I have a very strong view of how to approach it myself, but I’m still lis­ten­ing and learn­ing hap­pily.”

Com­ing via Pit­doc, AICN and the Las Vegas licens­ing show, we have updated Iron Man, Thor, Cap­tain Amer­ica and The Avengers logos, as well as an ‘Avengers Assem­ble’ badge.

Bleed­ing Cool report that British actor Brian Blessed has been cast as the chief Nordic God, Odin, in Ken­neth Branagh’s Thor adap­ta­tion. Odin is also Thor and Loki’s father.

A good com­par­i­son between Blessed and his new role can be made via the Flash movie, wherein he played the King of the Hawk Men:

And in video:

Briton Tom Hid­dle­ston has been cast as Loki, Thor’s neme­sis, so reports Nikki Finke. Hid­dle­ston has worked along­side direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh on two pre­vi­ous occa­sions — in Ivanov at Wyn­d­hams The­atre, Lon­don, and in the BBC minis­eries, Wal­lan­der.

Hid­del­ston was also con­sid­ered for the Thor role.