At last, some mov­ing shots of the Thor adap­ta­tion have been shown at the San Diego Comic Con! And the reports are good…

Descrip­tion of trailer from /Film

It opens with thun­der and light­ning, and a cam­era shot that drops directly down into a SHIELD-erected struc­ture. The build­ing is hid­ing the ham­mer of Thor, which was found in New Mex­ico. We hear Agent Coulsen (Clark Gregg) inter­ro­gat­ing Thor as shots are inter­cut of Thor dec­i­mat­ing SHIELD agents in rain and mud. Coulsen sur­mises that, based upon his prowess, Thor must have seri­ous mil­i­tary train­ing. (There’s a pretty cool shot with Thor using a jump kick to drop one agent.) The inter­ro­ga­tion comes to a head with: “who are you?”

Then the cam­era flies up into Asgard, pan­ning around a huge gold, Jack Kirby-ish palace in which Odin is cas­ti­gat­ing Thor for being rash, dis­hon­or­able, self­ish and bring­ing war to Asgard as a result. Thor, kneel­ing before Odin (Anthony Hop­kins), wears his hel­met (looks good!) but Odin bel­lows his anger at Thor and casts him out of Asgard.

Then the thun­der god is lying in the dirt when he’s found by Jane Fos­ter (Natalie Port­man) and her assis­tant Darcy (Kat Den­nings). Thor opens his eyes and grum­bles “this is Earth, isn’t it?” The women take him in and Darcy cracks wise while ogling the god: “for an insane home­less man, he’s pretty cut.” There’s dia­logue about Fos­ter and her team being on the verge of some dis­cov­ery and Thor promises that she’ll find what she’s look­ing for if he gets what he wants.

That’s the ham­mer, and we’ve got to sur­mise that Coulson’s inter­ro­ga­tion comes after Thor broke into the com­pound to retrieve the ham­mer. But when we see him approach and attempt to lift it, he fails. Voiceover from Odin, “Whoso­ever lifts this ham­mer, if he is found wor­thy, shall weild the power of Thor.” The young god is obvi­ously not yet worthy.

That leads to images of Loki tak­ing over Asgard and a swirl of com­bat footage — the War­riors Three bat­tling some threat to Asgard, chaos in the New Mex­ico town where Jane Fos­ter is work­ing and a big bat­tle between Thor and Loki. Voiceover from Odin says some­thing to the effect that Thor will have to face what’s com­ing to him. And that’s when the kicker comes in: Destroyer, a huge metal beast, lands in New Mex­ico. Coul­son and other SHIELD agents con­front it, with one agent ask­ing if it’s one of Stark’s. Then the Destroyer’s face opens up and unleashes fiery hell on the agents.

Descrip­tion of trailer from SHH:

We were just shown some amaz­ing footage from Thor which really gives us a great idea of the story.

It starts with light­ning and then it shows a S.H.I.E.L.D. base where Clark Gregg’s Agent Coul­son is inter­ro­gat­ing some­one chained to a chair. It’s Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and Coul­son gives a long mono­logue ask­ing him where he got his train­ing. We see a bit of footage of Thor in action sans ham­mer tak­ing down the S.H.I.E.L.D. sol­diers who are try­ing to stop him.

“Who are you?” asks Coul­son and Thor looks up.

We then see what looks like a con­stel­la­tion sys­tem and we hear a voice-over by Anthony Hop­kins as Odin as we see the golden build­ings of Asgard and the cam­era goes into the throne room where he’s giv­ing a big speech to his son, who is kneel­ing at the base of the throne. We see glimpses of each of the Asgar­dian Gods includ­ing Sif, Balder and the War­riors Three, and Idris Elba’s Heim­dall. Odin is obvi­ously mad at Thor and he says that he’s going to take his power and ban­ish him for his actions, send­ing a bolt that sends Thor down through the con­stel­la­tion where he lands in the desert and is found by Natalie Portman’s Jane Fos­ter. We then see Hemsworth walk­ing around shirt­less and impress­ing Fos­ter and her assis­tant Darcy (played by Kat Dennings).

http://​thor​.mar​vel​.com/ and http://​cap​tainamer​ica​.mar​vel​.com/ are now live, no con­tent yet though.

The Gods of Thor have been revealed via the LATimes, in a report that con­firms the film will be released in 3D (although it wasn’t shot in 3D). Along­side Hop­kins are Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hid­dle­ston as Loki.

Spoil­erTV has posted a cast­ing call for the Thor movie, ask­ing for

[WARRIORS] A fear­less war­rior race, where size, strength and feroc­ity define a member’s rank in both the social and mil­i­tary hier­ar­chy. War­riors born in this soci­ety face the harsh­est eco­log­i­cal con­di­tions imag­in­able and thrive in envi­ron­ments where lesser crea­tures, includ­ing humans, quickly per­ishes. Theirs is a world cre­ated to cull weak­ness from the uni­verse to ensure their supreme sov­er­eignty spreads across the stars. MUST BE 6’2 OR TALLER sptv050769, NO BODYBUILDER TYPES. SAG ROLE BUT NO LINES. MUST BE COMFORTABLE WEARING PROSTHETICS.

Cin­e­mat­i­cal spec­u­late that this is a cast­ing call for the Skrulls,

You can’t really get any more mil­i­taris­tic and con­quest dri­ven than these guys, and one def­i­nitely needs pros­thet­ics to pull them off. But what the heck would Skrulls be doing in Thor? Even Loki hasn’t had much to do with those creeps until recently. The obvi­ous answer would be to have them come in and set up The Avengers, but with two vil­lains and two love inter­ests, you’d think there was enough crazy to go around. Any­one out there have a bet­ter guess as to who our prosthetic-heavy war­riors might be?

Fans have also sug­gested they could be the Kree, a war­rior race that have reached their evo­lu­tion­ary peak or Frost Giants. How­ever, another right­fully points out, it is likely they will just be Asgar­dian extras.

Stel­lan Skarsgård’s son, Alexan­der, was orig­i­nally con­sid­ered as a strong can­di­date for the Thor role, but in the end lost out to Star Trek man Chris Hemsworth. Swedish site Ystads Alle­handa report that Stel­lan has been cast in the movie, but his role is deeply secre­tive. So secre­tive in fact, the stu­dio wanted the actor to sign with­out read­ing the script; he refused until he received a copy (albeit an encoded version).

Thor has recruited two more cast mem­bers, Jaimie Alexan­der (Kyle XY) and Colm Feore (Face/Off). Jaimie Alexan­der will play Sif, an Asgar­dian war­rior that can, “hold her own against any man”. She’s also one of Thor’s loves and spends a lot of her time search­ing for him. She is skilled in hand to hand com­bat and the use of mêlée weapons. Colm Feore will play an unknown vil­lain, the details of which are being kept a tight-lipped secret.

Jaimie Alexan­der

Colm Feore

Back in March we com­mented on the pos­si­bil­ity that Natalie Port­man might play a “strong female lead” in the Thor movie adaptation.

An offi­cial state­ment from Mar­vel reports that Natalie Port­man has been cast as Jane Fos­ter, Don­ald Blake’s nurse. With such a big cast­ing set in present day planet Earth, it’s pos­si­ble that a good pro­por­tion of the movie may take place here, rather than Asgard — giv­ing us a lot of the human ver­sion of Thor.

Mar­vel comments,

Even the Mighty Thor can be thun­der­struck by affairs of the heart!

Mar­vel Stu­dios announced today that Acad­emy Award® nom­i­nated actress Natalie Port­man has been cast to star as Jane Fos­ter in the studio’s highly antic­i­pated movie “Thor.”

In the early “Thor” comics, Jane Fos­ter was a nurse who became Thor’s first love. The char­ac­ter will be updated for the fea­ture adaptation.

Port­man will star oppo­site Chris Hemsworth who will play Thor and Tom Hid­dle­ston who will play the vil­lain Loki. Ken­neth Branagh will direct the film.

Mar­vel Stu­dios expands its film uni­verse with a new type of super hero: “Thor.” This epic adven­ture spans the Mar­vel Uni­verse; from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the cen­ter of the story is The Mighty Thor, a pow­er­ful but arro­gant war­rior whose reck­less actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as pun­ish­ment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dan­ger­ous vil­lain of his world sends the dark­est forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Thanks Leroy!

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.