Nearly two decades ago, actor/filmmaker Kenneth Branagh had the unenviable task of adapting the “Thor” comics to the big screen for Marvel Studios as part of the company’s just-launched Marvel Cinematic Universe effort.
Could the otherwise Earth-based franchise survive the shift to fantasy? Branagh’s approach was to blend his Shakespearean stage background with space opera stylings and a fish-out-of-water comedy premise – and somehow a title which could’ve gone wrong in so many ways was able to suddenly work.
That said, one of the common complaints is the film’s extensive use of Dutch angles – an approach in which the horizon is not level with the bottom of the frame for dramatic impact. The first “Thor” used it throughout.
In a new interview with Kevin McCarthy promoting the two-hander action comedy “Mayday,” Branagh revealed that Marvel once considered toning it down in the final cut, but it was just too expensive:
“I could never understand why people were so baffled by that choice [to include Dutch angles]. I go back to any run of the comics, but a classic one, the Kirby runs, and just look at the framing. Look at the framing. It’s all canted. It’s all, you know, German Expressionist – which of course already sounds like it’s mega-pretentious – but it was really just more about visual impact.
It was just what would hit you in a story about gods. You needed to make some things more or less important…I know that there was a conversation at some point in some part of the Marvel universe where they had a conversation about what would it cost to horizontalize this movie. And I am glad to say that the cash price for that process was so prohibitive.”
The Dutch angles were toned down in the sequels while the humor was upped. Earlier this year, Branagh he’d love to return to the franchise to potentially offer a darker and more mature tone, giving Hemsworth’s “Thor” his version of “Logan” and take the character “into a glorious twilight”.
