The movie that “changed everything” for Kenneth Branagh: “I wasn’t hot”
While he might be best known for strutting about on stage as every Shakespeare character ever, Kenneth Branagh is also a very talented director.
As well as helming a number of projects inspired by the Bard (often starring himself), he’s also lent his creative weight to a number of other projects, been nominated for ‘Best Director’ twice at the Academy Awards, once for Henry V and once for Belfast, and if you’re in the mood for something less high-brow, then why not try his trilogy of Agatha Christie adaptations or his bizarre version of Frankenstein.
What a lot of people either forget or simply don’t know about Sir Ken is that he played an integral part in establishing the most successful movie franchise of all time, directing the 2011 movie Thor, the fourth instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He played a key role not just in the onscreen action but in the casting process that established Chris Hemsworth as the ‘God of Thunder’.
As the Belfast-born star divulged to the Irish Times, Thor came at precisely the right moment. He had just come off the back of making three films, As You Like It, The Magic Flute, and Sleuth, which hadn’t done well at the box office, explaining that, while he was proud of his work, he had no idea why they appealed so much to Marvel.
“I wasn’t hot when I started a conversation with Kevin Feige,” he recalled, name-dropping the president of Marvel Studios, “But the thing to remember was that Marvel wasn’t what it is now. Sure, Iron Man had been a huge hit. But [The Incredible] Hulk with Edward Norton hadn’t been what they hoped. And Thor was the one with the most precarious tone. So they were at that stage [of] the little train that could.”
After re-emerging as a creative force with the first Iron Man movie in 2008, Marvel was quickly snapped up by the ever-watchful Walt Disney Company, and that’s when Feige’s grand vision of an interconnected universe began to take shape, wth Branagh landing a major role to play in this experiment.
Thor was not a recognisable character to non-comic book readers, certainly not on the level of Spider-Man or Captain America, hence the movie needed to introduce the Asgardian to an entirely new generation of fans, as well as lay the groundwork for his appearance in future stories. Would he succeed? You know damn well he did.
Though not as financially lucrative as Iron Man, Thor still made a very tidy profit, and more importantly, it established the title character and fleshed out the likes of Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. It also introduced the world to a certain Loki in the form of Tom Hiddleston, making the ‘God of Mischief’ a huge part of the MCU going forward, as well as a major sexual awakening for millions of teenagers across the globe. Branagh was rewarded for his efforts by being given the reins to Thor: The Dark World, which we all know is the best Marvel film.
Even if the sequel was a steaming pile of crap, Branagh’s efforts the first time around helped shape the very fabric of modern superhero cinema as we know it.
