All language subtitles for Icons.Unearthed.S04E04.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

At the end of 2009,

Ike Perlmutter sold Marvel.

Disney has agreed to
acquire Marvel Entertainment.

But long before that,
Marvel was already

working on their next film.

They knew
what was going to happen.

They had this all mapped out.

But they were building

the MCU
faster than anyone imagined.

Deciding you were gonna make

The Avengers before Thor

and Captain America
had even come out.

And having that--
that possibility on the horizon

is something
that excites all of us.

The Avengers were coming.

It wasn't
a blank canvas anymore.

That meant
a certain Avenger

needed to be dragged
back into the present...

This is a character
who is thousands of years old.

...and reborn.

Could they translate
that mightiness?

The mission...

Make Thor epic.

That would be easier
said than done.

A lot of writers
were scared of the dialect.

- Thought it was corny.
- It was a big gamble.

There aren't a lot of movies
about Norse gods these days.

How're they gonna do this

long-haired Norse guy
with the...

With a touch of Shakespeare...

He's the greatest Shakespearean
director of our age.

...a twitch of muscle...

Every time he'd
go in for costume suiting,

it would be a little bit
too small.

...and the swing of a hammer,

but would that be enough?

Ken wanted to change the name

because he thought Mjolnir
was difficult to pronounce.

My god.

Marvel needed its audience

to believe in a new god.

So if Thor doesn't work,
it all kinda starts to fall apart.

After the incredible
success of Iron Man

and the relatively
lackluster showing from

The Incredible Hulk,
Marvel Studios had a direction

and a tone for their upcoming
slew of movies,

all of which would be part
of a larger cinematic universe.

What Iron Man did was
it established a world,

it established a tone
where science and technology

- were important.
- Working on a

secret project, are we, sir?

There wasn't magic.
There weren't really super powers.

But while Iron Man 2 had been

rushed into production,
Marvel's next endeavor

posed a mighty problem.

When we sat down
to talk about Thor,

it was, "Holy crap,
how does Thor fit into this?"

Kevin Feige
at the time is talking about

how Thor is one of
their riskiest because...

you're trying
to sell this Norse mythology

- as something that's real.
- Kevin pulled

together a team of creatives
to run the show.

Lou D'Esposito
and Victoria Alonso.

Victoria focusing
on visual effects.

Lou focusing on production.

Kevin, Lou, Victoria,
they all weigh in creatively.

And that meant Marvel
had to do things differently

to just about every other
Hollywood studio.

We make our movies by committee
and you need

to know that in advance.
If this is something that you

have a problem with, this may
not be the right job for you.

However,
the trio soon realized

that the scope of the films
would require

a new member to join the gang.

I'm Charlie Wen.

I started off
as a concept designer.

I was directing visual
development on God of War.

Charlie was considered a god

of the visual realm
and was hand-picked

to join the team as the fourth
intelligent designer.

I got a call after Iron Man.
"Would you be interested

in talking with, uh,
Kevin Feige?

Iron Man did really well
and now we have to think about

what, um, the rest
of this cinematic universe

might be like."

And so Charlie said...

"Yeah, let's do that."

Didn't have to pull my leg
too--too hard on that one.

He was joining
a studio whose colossal plans

dwarfed its actual
company footprint.

Marvel was still just
above a Mercedes dealership.

And what Kevin had planned

was a big ask for Charlie.

Thor, Captain America
still needed to be done,

but he was already talking
to me about, uh, Avengers.

I think if you listen
to the characters

that we're working on currently
and you put them

all together,
there's no coincidence

that that may someday
equal the Avengers.

Deciding you were gonna make
The Avengers

and announce
it in this big, splashy panel,

before Thor and Captain America
had even come out.

That was the risk.

The Avengers
would be the one film

to unite the universe.

The Avengers
was already en route.

Everything needed to
come together with The Avengers.

So there was no going back.

With that announcement,

Marvel set a time table
that would

stress test
the entire system.

Scheduled for a 2012 release,

Marvel had just four years
to have all the pieces

fall into place.

The plan was,
we have to learn our lessons

from the things
that didn't work.

Thor has to be great
and then...

hopefully,
when we get to The Avengers,

- that movie needs to be great.
- So with it

all riding on a Norse god
riding on a chariot

pulled by goats,
Marvel was drawing on

one of Stan Lee's
most storied characters.

Thor first appears in

Journey into Mystery #83, 1962.

Lee claims he wanted to do
Norse mythology,

it was public domain,
anything goes.

But Kirby had done a version

of Thor for DC

in a book called
Tales of the Unexpected.

Marvel's Thor
bestrode the world

as if it was his stage
with a Wagnerian pomp.

You know,
it was very operatic.

Was very Shakespearean.

Characters speaking in
these kinda heightened forms.

It would be very easy
for people to just

- decide that was camp.
- Instead?

Stan Lee's reimagining of Thor

achieved something else.

Lee was able to write,

in the Shakespearean language,

and make Thor epic.

If you ask me,
"Todd, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor,

which one you wanna draw?"
I'd draw Thor.

Big wings flowing,
the hair going like Fabio,

big hammer with the
lightning bolts coming off it,

and he looks awesome
when he's doing it!

Despite his grandeur,
Thor the superhero

almost didn't make it in print,
let alone anywhere else.

But Thor found
a loyal disciple at Marvel

in Babylon 5 writer
J. Michael Straczynski.

By the time I took over
the Thor comic book,

he'd been absent
from the Marvel Universe

- for about two or three years.
- He knew

the character better than most
because he'd been

carrying him around
all his life.

We moved around a lot
when I was a kid

and there was never
a sense of continuity.

Everywhere I went
I was a stranger.

And I sent away for
the Friends of Ol' Marvel

fan club kit,
which came with these

8 1/2 by 11 prints
of Captain America,

Spider-Man, Thor,
Hulk, Iron Man,

and I would put them
up in my room

so that wherever I went,
there was someone that I knew

looking back at me.

The--The characters
brought me into environments

I couldn't possibly
have imagined.

Thor was...
definitely among those.

So when working
at Marvel years later,

J. Michael jumped
at the chance to imagine

Thor's world for himself.

A world others
didn't seem to understand.

A lot of writers
were scared of the dialect.

They--They thought
it was corny.

They thought it was...
old-fashioned.

Coming from a strong background
of a Shakespeare fan

and I knew how to structure
his language

in a way
that would feel formal

and feel old
without feeling corny.

I wanted to do it desperately.
I thought,

"I-I know
what to do with this guy."

And what J. Michael
wanted to do

was to bring a god
down to Earth.

One of the first
things I said to Marvel

I wanted to do,
I said,

"I want to put Asgard
in Oklahoma."

Meaning Thor's Norse homeland

would land
in the American Midwest.

And they looked at me the way
a cat looks at a doorknob.

"Are you--Are you--
What?!"

But J. Michael's idea
was actually straight out

of Stan Lee's
original playbook,

putting the ordinary
back into extraordinary.

When you put Thor
next to an ordinary person,

it makes him more godly.
But at the same time,

it also humanizes him.

Putting him
into that environment's

also reminiscent
of Greek mythology

and Norse mythology; the gods
walking among the people

and they would interact
with them.

Why not go back
to the root of that?

And it gave us
a different dynamic

where you have Asgardians
going to town hall meetings

to talk about how you have
indoor plumbing.

Those are the moments that,
for me,

humanize the character.
There wasn't a lot of action

in the book.
Marvel wasn't concerned

about that at first
because they saw him as

constantly being
a big battle-axe.

I said, "No, trust me.
Humanize a god

and it becomes interesting."

And for every issue
that I worked on

during my run on the book,
that book was in

the top-ten
every single month

and Marvel
was astonished by this.

But despite Thor's
long history on the page,

he had been largely absent
from our screens

- except as a side character.
- Thor?

Thor was best known from his

sort of quasi-appearance
in Adventures in Babysitting.

- Who is this kid?
- One of the characters

- is obsessed with Thor.
- Thor's my hero.

And there was this
furry cameo

in 1988,
The Incredible Hulk Returns,

featuring a future star
of 8989 Redstone.

Luckily, I believe
in resurrection.

I think he was
the best Thor I've ever seen.

I think I've made him angry.

You know,
there aren't a lot of movies

about Norse gods these days.

Perhaps because
bringing a god to life

had infinite possibilities.

Once you're in
the presence of gods,

I mean,
you can do anything.

And that was the problem.

Thor to me
is so powerful and magnificent.

The question was gonna be,
"Could they translate that...

mightiness in a way
that would

not make him seem subdued?"

And a god made
very much in the image of man

presented other issues.

How are you gonna do
a god

without offending
a lot of people?

The man tasked with this

was the same man
who had once already

rehabilitated the character.

I wrote the outline in 2008

and then kinda
went dark for a while

because I was doing
my own stuff

and they were doing
their own stuff.

So it wasn't till like
a year or two later

that I heard this might
be actually a possibility.

But this was more
than a possibility,

it was a responsibility.

If audiences didn't really
take to what Thor was selling,

that would've really undermined
The Avengers.

The entire Marvel franchise

was now hanging on J. Michael's
down-home Norse god.

If Thor doesn't work,
it all kinda starts to fall apart.

And that meant
taking Thor to the big screen

would be an all-or-nothing
bet for Marvel.

It was a--a huge risk.
You know, if it didn't work

then, you know,
you're an Avenger short.

You know, what happens to the--
to the rest of the big plan?

How do you recover from it?

I don't think anybody knew.

Thor was destined
to form a key pillar

of Marvel's Avengers ensemble.

Because it wasn't
just about making one movie,

or a trilogy, it was about
a cohesive universe.

At some point,
Kevin was telling me that

it's like, "Oh, yeah,
I've got movies planned out

till 2028."

I was like,
"O...kay."

But movies
weren't the only elements

of the universe
that needed to be planned.

There were toys, too.

That was just another thing
for Charlie to worry about.

We needed Mjolnir for the toys.

And, so, we're like,
"We actually need to get

Mjolnir out first."

Thor's iconic hammer, Mjolnir,

was being designed
for the toy stores

as much as for the big screen.

And, so, yeah, I had done
a slew of hammers.

You can see that
I can unscrew this

- and change the heads out.
- Kept refining it

and refining it
until it became, like,

really iconic,
kind of beautiful thing.

So it was up
to Charlie Wen to work out

what parts of Thor
to import from the comics

even before the writers
had thought about a story.

Some of the things that we
really needed to figure out was,

"What's iconic about Thor?"
He's gone through

so many different changes
throughout the comics,

but what stays?

Even before a director comes on.
We end up doing that

a lot with just Kevin.
So he becomes our first director.

That's actually when
you sorta start discovering

how Marvel sees
its own properties.

Kevin wasn't
the only one with an opinion.

This is a character who is

thousands of years old

and that gives you
a lens

on the human race
that no one else really has.

And I was drawn to the notion

of someone who could
bring us that perspective.

For J. Michael,
this story of gods

- was deeply human.
- With Thor,

it's a family drama
and always has been.

Only one of you
can ascend to the throne.

Odin, his mom,

Thor, Loki,
the family by choice

he surrounds himself with,
it's a family drama.

And there's no
greater engine of family drama

whether you're a god,
or just a god botherer,

than sibling rivalry.

I said to Kevin,
"It doesn't matter how cool

the effects are gonna be,
at the end of the day,

it has to be a movie
about two brothers competing

for their father's affection.
That's it."

I will not fight you, brother!

I'm not your brother.

The rest of it
is just smoke and mirrors.

The rest of it is chrome
and big effects.

With J. Michael's
outline completed

to Kevin Feige's satisfaction,
Marvel needed

script writers and fast.

They were aiming
for a 2010 release for Thor.

They needed people

who knew comic books,

were really fast,
and were cheap

because, you know, that was back
in the Ike Perlmutter days.

He didn't like
paying writers very much.

Writers Ashley Miller
and Zack Stentz

were on Marvel's radar because...

In 2007, right before
the writers' strike,

we had a general meeting
with Marvel.

I think the main thing
I remember us pitching them

was Power Pack
and then we didn't hear from them

- for a year.
- Until...

Our reps get a call from Marvel
asking us to come in.

We didn't quite know what
we were getting ourselves into.

In a room with
Kevin Feige, Lou D'Esposito,

and Marvel executive
Craig Kyle,

a mysterious figure
emerged from the shadows.

Wearing, like,
you know, sneakers

and a T-shirt and jeans
and he's kinda scruffy.

And then he starts to speak
and he's got

a really terrific
British accent.

- Who calls on Hamlet?
- Hamlet!

And I went, "Oh, well, hell."

"I know who that is."
Uh, so, suddenly

I found myself in a conversation
with Kenneth Branagh.

To some,
hiring Branagh seemed like

an odd choice.
While being an accomplished

film director,
his only experience with

men in tights
was with Shakespeare.

- I do not believe.
- Believe what?

Kenneth Branagh grew up
loving Thor.

And he's like the greatest
Shakespearean director

- of our age.
- Those two qualities

are what appealed
to Kevin Feige.

Thor is as close to Shakespeare
as Marvel was gonna get.

You know, it's a father.
It's a fight for the throne.

It's siblings
at each other's backs.

And then you realize,
"Oh, yeah, he's the perfect

- director for this."
- But despite that,

the question was,
"Would Branagh be able

to pull off a film
the size and scale of Thor?"

Not that super fan
Ashley Miller cared.

He was just happy to be
in the same room as him.

- Brrrrrring me to him.
- I find myself acting out

this Thor fight
with The Destroyer

to Kenneth Branagh.
I'm a very animated pitcher.

I'm like on my feet
and I'm yelling

at Kenneth Branagh.
"Is that all you fucking got?!"

"Is that it?!"

The story ideas
Ashley shouted

- at his director...
- "Is that it?!"

...were drawn
from his own long history

- with Thor.
- When I was growing up,

I was a big time
Thor fan.

It was a language I spoke
on a number of levels.

Zack spoke Thor, too,

but with a different accent.

I was more
of a casual comic book reader,

but I was super obsessed

by Norse mythology
and by the science and physics.

I think we just checked off
all of your boxes.

- It was the right choice.
- Starting with

J. Michael's outline,
Ashley and Zack

were instructed to find
a fresh story for Thor

that expanded his world.

"Give us a story for Thor

and give us a story for Loki

that makes him interesting."
Like, those were the one

and two directives.
So, that's really

what we focused on.
So our pitch was,

he is an entitled A-hole.

He thinks having his power,
having the hammer

- makes him somebody.
- At least make it

- a challenge for me.
- He's arrogant.

That he thinks he knows
better than his father does.

He's a great racehorse
that just wants to run...

...and he makes
a terrible mistake...

...and he loses everything...

and he gets his ass kicked.

He has to learn
what it is to be nobody

before he
can be somebody again.

The Marvel Studios trio

liked what they were hearing.

And then we were off to
the races and had three weeks

to write our first draft.

But Zack and Ashley
were about to catch a break,

thanks to problems elsewhere
in the Marvel universe.

Namely, a less than incredible
showing from The Hulk

- at the box office.
- And it was only after

we had finished our third
or fourth draft, I think,

their Hulk movie
didn't do quite as good

as they wanted it to
and they wanted another

Iron Man movie
before they rolled the dice

in 2011 on both a Thor
and a Captain America movie.

Then things became
a little bit more leisurely.

They would give us four weeks
instead of three weeks

- to turn in a draft.
- But the writers'

biggest challenge was how
to integrate this world

of Norse magic
into the world of science

Iron Man had created.

It wasn't a blank canvas anymore
because you had Iron Man there.

I don't know if everybody
was gonna be counting

Incredible Hulk, but we
sort of were putting it aside,

you know, we're just like,
"Okay, we're gonna...

sort of start over with that."
But Iron Man definitely

- was the beginning of it.
- Tony Stark was able to build this

in a cave!

And that laid a foundation
for the norm,

the natural part of the world.

Then the other one would be
establishing the supernatural.

I now take from you
your power!

But Zack had a fix for that.

It was guidance
he had taken from one of

science fiction's
greatest masters who said...

"Any sufficiently
advanced technology

is indistinguishable
from magic."

That was science fiction author

Arthur C. Clarke's take.

I'm talking
about science, not magic.

"Well, magic's just science
that we don't understand yet."

- Arthur C. Clarke.
- Who wrote science fiction.

Which is an erudite
way of warning...

The more you explain
those things,

- the more they fall apart.
- And Thor,

a child of Norse mythology,

did raise a lot
of inconvenient questions

- for the curious fan.
- Thor's hammer, right?

How does it make him fly?

Is there a little motor
inside of it?

Is there a little engine
that comes out of the back?

You don't need to know
any of those things.

All you need to know
is that it was...

...forged in the heart
of a dying star.

But there were
simpler problems, too,

- with simpler fixes.
- Ken wanted to change

the name of the hammer
because he thought Mjolnir

- was difficult to pronounce.
- Mew mew? What's mew mew?

"Mjolnir, it's a difficult name.

It's like, if we
name it something else,

will the fan boys
string me up?"

"Yes, Ken, they will."

"Alright then.
We shan't be doing that."

Instead of explaining
too much of Thor's world,

Zack and Ashley decided to add
more of our world to his.

We realized
very quickly that Thor needed

a force of opposition
on Earth.

He couldn't just be...
bumming around.

So we innovated putting
S.H.I.E.L.D. into that story.

Sir, we found it.

But importing
Marvel's secret government agency

to stir the pot
by commandeering

- Thor's hammer on Earth...
- That was probably kind of

the single biggest change
that we advocated.

...was not part of the plan.

We got a lot
of pushback from that.

- Where they're like, "No..."
- We're the good guys.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. are the good guys
and--and we might have

a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie
at some point.

The writers
convinced their bosses

that S.H.I.E.L.D. would still
be the good guys in Thor.

So Marvel agreed.

Thank you
for your cooperation.

But they still needed

someone else's agreement.

Great! Okay!
So Nick Fury shows up...

Did anyone check
with Nick Fury?

"No, no, no.
You can't have Nick Fury."

Like, he's the face
of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The writers of Thor
desperately needed

Samuel L. Jackson to appear

as Nick Fury in their movie.

Who the hell are you?

Nick Fury.
Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

And, although,
ultimately, he would obviously

sign on
to a very lucrative deal...

"Thanks for the nine-picture
deal, mother effer."

...at that time,

the deal was still not done.

"Well, Sam is in a contract
renegotiation right now.

We're trying to get him
for, I don't know,

9, 12 more movies.
It might not work out."

Leaving the agents
to argue over Sam Jackson,

Ken moved on to the casting
of the other roles

and despite not having made
a blockbuster film

like Thor before,
Branagh's high-brow

Shakespearean credits
had big-name actors

lining out the door
to work with him.

So this was a wide
casting search

to find whoever
was gonna play Thor.

So there were several
different styles of hats

- thrown in the ring.
- Alex Skarsgard,

Liam Hemsworth,
and Charlie Hunnam.

They saw, like, every 6'3"
and above white guy

under, you know, 35.

Including this guy,

who just needed to pass
one key test.

The hammer test stage
where I had to...

give the whole
Thor hammer weld

and Ken kept saying,

"I can see
that you don't believe it."

And I didn't understand
what he meant.

As we got in closer,
closer, closer,

tighter, tighter lensing,
he said,

"I can see
that there's a bit of doubt."

- No, I didn't get the part.
- Meanwhile, an actor

really only known for playing
George Kirk in Star Trek...

I have medical shuttle 37
standing by.

- Get to it now.
- ...was struggling

- to get in the room.
- Like, Hemsworth

was one of the least
well-known ones.

Initially did not even, uh,
get the audition.

I think it's his agent
begs and begs

and gets Chris back in the room
to get an audition.

What are you
running away for?

And in a log cabin
in the middle of nowhere,

Hemsworth was taking counsel
from his closest advisors.

Literally the closest.

He's auditioning at
the same time that he's making

a movie called
The Cabin in the Woods,

which is co-written by
Joss Whedon

and directed by Drew Goddard.
Needless to say,

both of these guys know
their way around comic books

and are giving
Chris Hemsworth advice

as he is, uh,
trying to become Thor.

The advice must've paid off

because Chris got the role.

We had to believe
not just that

Thor was a big,
beautiful space Viking,

but that when he came down
to Earth, he could be one of us.

Chris just has that thing.

However,
finalizing Loki's exact role

in the film
was proving a challenge

and made
casting him difficult.

So there wasn't a lot
of characterization for Loki.

We know that our villains
so far in phase one

- have been kind of limp...
- How do you feel?

- Pissed off.
- You know, if you fail

at everything else,
give us a good,

compelling Loki
that we can

- carry into The Avengers.
- Marvel's grand plan

was actually resting on these
not-so-broad shoulders.

Zack and Ashley now had to
bulk up his character.

So how do we look
at Loki as this

three-dimensional,
tragic character?

The villain you kind of love
at the same time as you hate?

Make him feel
like a real human being

with an agenda?

Fortunately,
the writers had a template

already
in the Marvel universe.

Why do you
ask questions to which

you already
know the answers?

Kevin Feige looked at
us and he said,

"We need our Magneto."

Homo sapiens and your guns.

But it wasn't
Magneto's archvillainy

they were looking to copy
as much as his

love/hate relationship
with Professor X,

his childhood friend
and now nemesis.

The war is still coming, Charles,

and I intent to fight it.

So those were
our marching orders,

to give Kevin his Magneto.

Making him someone

who had this deep love
for his parents

and even a deep love
for Thor

- underneath the resentment.
- To play the role,

Ken had
a particular actor in mind.

So in the running is a man
named Tom Hiddleston.

He actually auditioned
to play Thor.

He was, like,
lifting weights like crazy

- and bulking up.
- But it wasn't

Tom's muscles
that Kenneth Branagh

was interested in,
it was his mind.

Ken very quickly locked in
on Hiddleston as Loki.

He makes the unexpected choices
as an actor

and that keeps the character
very fresh.

Loki wants to be the hero.

He doesn't want to be
the villain

and I think
that Tom Hiddleston

really found
that quality in him

- and brought it out.
- While Ken knew

what he wanted
in the casting of Thor,

he knew what he didn't want
in the casting

of Thor's love interest,
Jane Foster.

We can't have nuclear scientist
Denise Richards.

Are you here for a reason

or are you
just hoping for a glimmer?

What Ken kept saying is,

it has to be someone
we believe is a scientist.

It has to be someone
with that kind of intelligence

and character
that comes through.

Branagh had his eye
on an actress

who'd worked on everything
from blockbuster hits

- to indie darlings.
- Natalie Portman

already had
an amazing reputation.

You could tell he was like,
"I think she's the one."

Also cast was Idris Elba

in the role of
Asgard's protector, Heimdall.

Brilliant casting
of, uh, Idris Elba.

My god, did he fit that role
so well.

Could you ever imagine
anyone else doing it?

- The glove fit.
- With a slate

of young,
but talented actors,

what the film needed
was a legend

to really give it credibility
outside comic circles.

It was a really
big deal to have

an actor of that stature
playing Odin

and it was a great message
to send that it's like,

"No, we're not camping it up here.

We're making a real movie
with real actors."

Meanwhile,
to fill the Samuel L. Jackson

sized hole
that was still in the cast,

Ashley and Zack
would need to start considering

other actors to be the face
of their S.H.I.E.L.D. plotline.

We had just re-watched
the first Iron Man

and the S.H.I.E.L.D. character
who really popped in that

- was Coulson.
- I'm Agent Phil Coulson

with the Strategic Homeland
Intervention, Enforcement

- and Logistics Division.
- Freaking Clark Gregg.

That's quite a mouthful.

Let's have Coulson
as the face of S.H.I.E.L.D.

A standout for Zack and Ashley

who had somehow blended
into the background for Marvel.

They literally
got a blank look at first.

It's like, "Who?
Oh, yeah! Him! Clark Gregg!

- He's really good."
- I really love Zack Stentz.

I love him even more
when I hear that story.

And this would mean
adding a new character

and a predetermined
cast member.

There was some resistance,
uh, to putting Coulson

in Thor, but the line
that convinced Ken

to keep Coulson in the movie--
the original version

of the line was,
"Prepare your armies,

son of Cole,
the war comes to Midgard."

And just--He thought
the "son of Cole" joke

was too good to waste.

But Zack and Ashley weren't done.

They wanted
to introduce a cameo

for another Marvel hero
because... why not?

Putting Hawkeye in Thor
was just, like,

us goofing.

We didn't tell Marvel
we were doing it.

- We just did it in the script.
- They did it with

just one line for a brief
and to the point appearance.

It was just, "Barton,
do you have the shot?"

"I have the shot.
I'm ready to send him back

to whatever god he believes in."

Their act of literary hijinks

had the potential to cause
Marvel serious problems.

You see,
Hawkeye was an Avenger.

I remember Feige was
like, "It's a two-minute role,

once you get Hawkeye,
he's gotta be in The Avengers."

And with The Avengers

without a story, a script,
and a director,

casting someone
to play Hawkeye in Thor

might be a huge mistake.
Kevin put his foot down,

but for Ashley and Zack,
the matter was far from over.

With the weight of
the Marvel Cinematic Universe

on their shoulders,
Zack and Ashley

worked with Thor director
Kenneth Branagh

as filming approached.

You'd turn in
your draft, he'd read it,

he'd send you a nice note
and then you would come in

and you'd sit in
the conference room for a week

and go through it page by page.

- Oh, my God.
- Sometimes...

Ken wanted
to read things out loud...

with you.

"Let's play this scene out.
I'll be Thor,

you be Jane, you be Loki."

And then after, we'd bang
the script into a place,

then it goes
to the Creative Committee

and it's gotta get past them
and get through their notes.

Some of
Zack and Ashley's ideas

might've been...
ahead of their time.

After our very first draft,
we had them blasting

- the Immigrant Song...
- Go!

...as they were racing
after the--the storm.

- Get closer.
- Ken would ask us

to take it out,
we'd--we'd sneak it back in.

And he would ask us
to take it out.

- What are you doing?!
- God bless him.

Brilliant director,
not a rock-n-roll guy.

And if it wasn't songs,

what about animals?

So, uh, we tried to get
the Frog of Thunder

in there, but,
uh, but that didn't play.

We had written in
that Thor was on goats

and they were like,
"No, goats are ridiculous.

There's no way goats
are going in a Thor movie."

We didn't actually make ours
scream, but we had the goats.

We like the goats.
We thought the goats were cool.

When the script was done,

Marvel still wanted more
because if they'd learned

anything from Iron Man,
these scripts

needed to be funny.

We want to do
a comedy pass on it.

And this would need to come

- from a third writer.
- And that was when

they brought in the late
Don Payne.

Don Payne took
the character of Darcy

and turned
him into something else.

Darcy was a snarky,

middle-aged man in our drafts.

Until Don performed a little

gender reassignment
in the interest of comedy.

Was somebody else coming?

Don Payne
was who made that character

into a saucy, young lady.

Ours was more like
James Urbaniak

in, uh, you know,
The Venture Brothers.

Apparently,
this is the reward I get

for years of screwing
with super science.

His was more a, you know,
Two Broke Girls.

Hi. What can I get ya?

With the script
finally finished,

the art department
could turn to a problem

as big as the heavens on Earth.

How to stage Asgard.

There was so much of it
that was taking place in Asgard.

Marvel Comics relied
on the theater of the mind.

And not just what you
actually see on the page,

but how are you imagining,
uh, this in your mind?

Turning the seat of the gods,

Thor's Asgard,
from an abstract concept

into a recognizable space

would probably
need divine inspiration.

And if not that,
then production designer

Beau Welch along with
supervising art director

Maya Shimoguchi.

And they had
a simple design philosophy.

- We built a lot
- A lot less is CGI

than I think people realize.

And there really wasn't
sort of conventional furniture.

Everything was kind of
a sculptural vessel.

A huge scale to it.

Nothing was
sort of human scale.

Subtle nods
to Norse mythology helped.

A lot of the floor patterns

were, uh, very
sort of Nordic-inspired.

That was a fun source
of inspiration.

In Midgard,
Thor's Earthly realm,

New Mexico was chosen
to make it all feel grounded,

taking a cue
from the original comics.

Beau was trying to achieve
kind of an iconic feel

of small-town America.

The mythological superheroes

with just buildings behind.

So we just had to do
a lot of work to the town.

We had to kind of renovate
all of the facades

that were there
and then build extra ones.

It's one of the things
that they're best at.

Creating a world
that makes sense visually

very quickly.
Enough that you can

give yourself over
to the story,

which is really what's
the most important thing.

While Kenneth Branagh's team

was busy building a world
for Thor,

the Marvel Universe around it
was about to implode.

Initial reaction
was one of panic.

A long way from New Mexico

in a very different realm, corporate,

not cosmic,
forces were clashing.

Disney has bought comics giant
Marvel Entertainment.

That much was known.

What no one
at Marvel Studios could know

was what this would mean
for the universe

they were
so carefully constructing.

Marvel Productions succeeded
because it has been

the vision of one person,
Kevin Feige.

Even Marvel's
top brass was unclear

what Marvel would become
under the Disney umbrella.

The Publisher
and Chief Operations Officer

of Marvel, he said to me,
"Now that Disney has bought

Marvel,
what do you think is...

gonna happen?"
I said, "Well, I know

there's a lot of people
that are worried

that Disney
is gonna Disney-fy Marvel."

A lot of comic book fans
are probably starting to panic.

That it was
gonna be Mickey Mouse

that had Wolverine's claws.

Marvel owed its success

in print and screen
to doing things...

- The Marvel way.
- Which meant...

Real romance,
real drama,

real-life stakes...

...told in the most
real-world possible.

And that was the secret sauce,
that they had an edge to them.

- They weren't Disney.
- The irony was

it might be Marvel
bringing about

their own downfall,
not Disney.

With Thor being the first film
not set entirely on Earth,

was Marvel
throwing their secret sauce

down the drain?

Legend of stage and screen

Kenneth Branagh
had the difficult task

of bringing the God of Thunder
down to Earth.

But, like Thor himself,

Kenneth Branagh
had to lean on his team.

You shoot it for real
because then you get something

that's properly felt.
At the core of Thor

is this sibling rivalry story.

You're a talented liar, brother.

- Always have been.
- It's good to have you back.

No matter how grand we made it,
it would never ever work

as a story if we didn't have
the intimacy

- of the portraiture working.
- However,

keeping it real
didn't come without its issues.

Especially when it involved
a 74-year-old living legend.

A wise king...
never seeks out war.

You know, at his age,
his mobility was limited.

But that negative
soon became an advantage.

You just make that all work
in your--your favor.

He would say,
"Odin doesn't walk to people.

- People walk to him."
- They know you are vulnerable.

He sits on a throne
above everyone else.

People move around him.
There is not a second

you don't believe
that he could fly on a horse

and snap his spear
and that intensity's all there.

Father!

- We'll finish them together!
- Silence!

Keeping the film
out of a computer

and on a set also meant
that Haris relied

on good old-fashioned
camera moves

to bring this film to life.

Hi. Just taking a little blood.

Sometimes they would be
really subtle.

Things about the height.
Looking down. Looking up.

A little bit of hand-held.
We often did this thing

for Loki where his shadow
would appear on a wall

and then he'd walk into it.

The movement of the camera

was only half the trick, though.

Haris needed to create
some magical lighting

to transport the set
to another dimension.

I tried to get
a constantly moving light.

There's no light in there
that doesn't move or flicker.

The way the light
kind of bounced around,

at some point you're always
kind of worried.

Like, "Has it gone too far?"

Speaking of shedding light,

Zack and Ashley received news
about that Hawkeye cameo

they'd written in
and it was official.

Hawkeye would be
a member of The Avengers,

which was approaching the
beginning of its production,

but that's a story
unto itself.

For now, it meant that Hawkeye
would make an all-important

cameo in Thor.

It would take place
during an intense scene

where Thor found himself
reduced to a mere mortal

and unable to summon Mjolnir
from the rock.

It was the perfect moment
to introduce

the sharp-shooting member
of The Avengers.

Problem was, while the role
had been written,

it hadn't been cast,
but Kenneth Branagh

had a solution.

What they realized
is they could just shoot

the A-side with Thor,

they could cast Hawkeye
at their leisure

and shoot his scenes
and throw them in

- right at the last second.
- That's assuming

they'd find a Hawkeye
before the film's release.

But it was Chris Hemsworth's
performance in the scene

that captured
everyone's attention.

An actor like Chris
can really...

just the disappointment
in himself,

all of that, and what he feels
is his failure.

A challenge for
Haris was to translate

that feeling
on to the screen.

We really worked on kind of
how slo-mo we would go.

We shot it for real.
We shot cameras at something

like 500 frames per second
and we end really

on--on this
really intimate close-up.

Under
Kenneth Branagh's direction,

Thor was coming together.

The big question, though,
was would creators agree?

In a nod to Marvel Comics,
they were invited to set

and Ken planned on continuing
a recent tradition.

I heard that he wanted me
to do a cameo on--on the movie.

We did 15 takes
of me getting out of the car.

"But don't touch your face.
Stand up straight.

Can you get out a little bit faster?
Why are you built like a--

like a potato?"
There's a reason writers

should stay home
and this is several of them.

My big line was...

Huh.

That same day,
they were also filming Stan.

He was there
with the pickup truck

trying to tow it out.

Did it work?

That was
the $150 million question.

Had Kenneth Branagh
delivered a Thor film

that made intergalactic
superheroes believable?

The answer would only come
on the film's release,

but another film
was about to cast doubt

on Thor's prospects.

- I love you, Tony!
- Please. It's not about me.

Iron Man 2
was released just as Thor

was wrapping production
and this film would prove

that the map
of the Marvel Universe

still had plenty
of uncharted territory

to traverse.

All involved acknowledged
with Iron Man 2

that they were
trying to stuff too much in

and trying to rush
the cinematic universe.

You have a lot of different
elements that are resulting

in essentially how not to make
a Marvel movie.

Now it really was

all on Thor and his hammer.

If Thor's producers
needed a reminder

that translating Marvel comics

into cinema was tricky,
they would receive one

before their work was done.

With Iron Man 2,
they were happy with the box office.

After grossing $620 million

from a budget of $200 million,
Iron Man 2

had beaten the original
by $35 million

in box office receipts,

but few believed the film
had really earned it.

You come from
a family of...

thieves and butchers.

But I think they recognized
that creatively

it was not a homerun.

It's widely regarded
as one of the worst...

and, yet, it grossed more
than the first one.

Having helped
establish the contours

of the MCU,
Iron Man 2 had never quite

gotten around to being
a compelling story on its own,

but like the films before it,
Iron Man 2 did play

an important role
setting up characters

like Scarlett Johansson's
Black Widow

- for The Avengers.
- I can only assume

that they were just flying
by the seat of their pants.

They were just trying
to get to The Avengers.

- You're, uh, fired.
- That's not up to you.

By hook or by crook
no matter what they had to do,

they were just trying
to get to that.

Suddenly...

the pressure was on
Kenneth Branagh and Thor

to bring cohesiveness to
the emerging Marvel franchise.

It's a Jenga game, right?

You could bring...
the entire thing

crashing down
by doing too much.

By bringing in elements
that don't work and play well.

Almost everything
was riding on one film

that now found itself
the superhero

desperately needed to save
a franchise in distress.

It's not just a--a franchise,
it's the business.

It's the entire business
and it has to work.

And for the business to work,

The Avengers had to work.

And for The Avengers to work,
Thor had to work.

And with Captain America
about to go into production

and The Avengers movie
not far behind,

Zack and Ashley's
Hawkeye cameo...

We didn't tell Marvel
we were doing it.

- We just did it in the script.
- ...led to Jeremy Renner

being cast in the role.

Jeremy Renner
was coming off of Hurt Locker

and was, uh, was hot stuff
at that point.

You understand? I'm sorry.

You hear me?
I'm sorry!

Renner shot his scenes

well after
they had finished production.

Or are you sending in
more guys for him to beat up?

- All right, show's over.
- And with that...

You see the pieces
starting to come together.

Except even that wasn't

the very last minute--
or the last piece.

Thor was not finished yet.

The post-credit scene of Thor

reveals that Loki is alive
and he's impersonating Selvig.

This scene was actually shot
by Joss Whedon

as he was making
The Avengers.

We shot that in pre-production
on Avengers one for Thor.

The very last in the movie

and shot just weeks
from its release,

proving that
with multiple movies

now in simultaneous production,
Marvel's problem

was also its solution.

Well,
I guess that's worth a look.

Well, I guess
that's worth a look.

This would become
commonplace for Marvel films

where, you know,
the post-credit scene

could be added weeks before
the movie came out in theaters

and to that point,
it could be shot

by the director of the next film
or a film after that,

where they know a little bit
better of where they're going.

But would
"a little bit better"

be enough, or would Marvel be
making a mess for themselves?

A lot of what The Avengers
was trying to do

was... started in Thor.

So if audiences
didn't really take

to what Thor was selling,

that would've really
undermined The Avengers.

But any lessons
Marvel could take

from Thor's release
in April of 2011

would arrive too late because
The Avengers

was already shooting.

I remember coming
to the premiere of Thor

just hoping
that they got it right.

If fans didn't go
for Thor and his brother,

there'd be
nowhere in the universe

for Marvel to hide.

Please land.

And depending on Disney,

there might not
even be a universe.

Please land... for everybody.

The reception
to Thor would dictate

Marvel's future with close
to half a billion dollars

invested in their upcoming
releases of The Avengers

and Captain America.

They needed fans to leave
cinemas desperate for more.

Failure just wasn't an option.