"I'm an old hand with a hammer. I worked as a builder for a couple of years in Australia. But the hammer fighting is cool. We experimented with different styles, but none of them really worked. In the end, we developed our own style actually built around boxing. You know how Mike Tyson moves? Stance low to the ground, with big powerful hip movements."
"Thor starts out as a pretty brash, cocky kind of character, Odin's become older and wiser [and] he realizes that there's a better way of doing things, and so that's also the challenge for him in trying to discipline Thor for the actions he's taking. … [He] sends Thor away to get some humility."
"I have the hammer... I have a long blond wig and a nice big red cape and all sorts of armor and interesting bits and pieces. There’s so many different versions of the comic books, they’ve sort of bonded quite a few of them to form this particular story, but it’s all very true to the original stuff."
"We just kept trying to humanize it all, and keep it very real. Look into all the research about the comic books that we could, but also bring it back to "Who is this guy as a person, and what’s his relationship with people in the individual scenes?""
"I put the costume on for the first time and had the camera test and Anthony Hopkins was there with me", "We looked at each other and he said, 'God, there's no acting required here, is there?'"
"It sells the picture and you can't feel like anything but that character when you put that thing on. There's a very iconic sort of moment for myself putting it on but a lot of people who have been involved with the comics and the stories for years just said, 'Wow, this is it.'"
"There were a few different versions for different shots — the closeup one, and the stunt one," he said when question about Mjölnir, Thor's magical hammer. "The main one was very heavy, a beautifully polished, metal, wood, leather-looking thing. It was an impressive thing. You feel naked without it after holding it for a while."
"That was the transition of coming to Earth, as Thor minus his powers and costume was very much a fish out of water. It probably helped for the story, because he's meant to feel that way."
"There's a big transition from, you know, the cocky, brash, young warrior to him learning some humility — and with and without his powers he goes through that journey," As for whether we'll see more of Asgard or Earth, the actor remained pretty tight-lipped but did hint that, "It's pretty evenly spread, I think!"
"First, we looked at the comic books and the posturing, the way Thor moves and fights, and a lot of his power seems to be drawn up through the ground, we talked about boxers, you know, Mike Tyson, very low to the ground and big open chest and big shoulder swings and very sort of brutal but graceful at the same time, and then as we shot stuff things became easier."
"The costume's pretty limiting with the movement, so I had a lot of things to work around!"
"I have seen Thor, yeah. It's fantastic. Being that close to something, it's often pretty hard to watch yourself, but the film in so many ways is so impressive that I was swept along with it like an audience member, and that's a pretty good sign."
"I shot 'Thor' a year ago, was cast six months before that, so it's been a long time of anticipation, but it's all heating up and we're very excited,"
"The stuff you see in the trailers with Natalie Portman, there's a real sense of humor to it, which I don't think we expected at the time, Thor is a real fish-out-of-water, and I'd actually just come from shooting the stuff in the other realm or world that we were in, with Anthony Hopkins and big elaborate set pieces and costumes, and he's fantastic and it was all wonderful, and then come to do the Earth stuff with Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgård, and Jane's in a T-shirt."
"It felt incredibly uncomfortable, but also there was some comic relief to all that."
"Ridiculous. Going from kissing Natalie Portman to working with Anthony Hopkins — the whole experience was like, “What the [frick] am I doing here?” But in a good way. It literally seemed like last week I was still working on Home and Away."
"You have the massive world that was created by Marvel, and then you have these very intimate actors around you. There was as much character work on this as there would be on a little independent film. So, [I felt] very fortunate in that sense, and I had never had anyone push me in so many different directions or places that Ken did with my character. Instead of trying to track ‘this is who he is and this is what we do’, we’d try one thing and say, “Great, we’ve got that, now let’s give this a go.” By doing that you constantly go, “I didn’t think of that, but I could use that here.” It was a constant evolution, which is a freer way to work. We weren’t on this tightrope of, “Oh [frick], don’t do that, only do this.” And Anthony Hopkins is just incredible to be around — he lifts everybody’s game. You soak up everything he is doing and learn from that."
"We were lucky in that they had actually built most of the sets. It’s easier having this big fantasy world around you than if there was just a green screen. It was like being a kid playing dress-ups. You do feel like you are this guy — especially with the costume. The first day I put it on, Hopkins looked at me and looked at both of us, and said, “No acting required here.”"
"I did Comic-Con and there were 7000 people. They showed a clip from the film then we did interviews where there were 20 people at each table, so that was the introduction. I was thrown into it — holy shit! I got a real sense of the fan base that Thor has and the buzz around it. You’re plugging away, you’re auditioning and your fingers are crossed. Then you get the part, sign the contract and start to realise millions of people follow this guy and know more about your character than you do. It’s existed for 50 years or something and all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh [frick], there’s a lot of people waiting here to say that’s right, or that’s wrong.” So it’s a funny thing to walk into. Not often do you approach a character where people know more about him than you do."
""Yes and no, I guess. It's still sort of surreal to see the billboards come up and you start to see the trailers playing and you say, 'Wow, it's actually happening.' But a year and a half ago when I first got cast, I was certainly informed of how big it was gonna be so I've had that time to think about it, but yeah you still double-take at billboards and go, 'What the hell is that?!'""
"I'd never really read a comic book. I never came across them. It's funny but, since I moved to America, you see comic book stores everywhere, far more than I saw growing up in Australia."
"But since I got Thor, I've dived into reading this stuff and it's incredible - great writing, incredible art work."
"So my hat goes off to an art form that I came to a little late. But I'm very excited to be part of it now."
“It’s hard to know where to start when you come in and you get the hammer handed to you, I was working on ‘Red Dawn’ and talked to Tom Cruise [whose son Connor is in the movie] and he asked me, ‘Have you been doing sword-fight training and all of that to get ready [for 'Thor']?’ — he has an interest after ‘The Last Samurai’ — and I said, ‘No, I haven’t, because it’s not really a sword, it’s a hammer.’ We talked about how odd that is.”
“It’s not the most practical thing, when you first come to it, to think of a giant, flat hammer as a weapon, realistically, it wouldn’t be weighted right for anyone to use it if the handle was only so long. So the main thing coming in was to make the hammer an extension of Thor. We had to develop a style of movement that was singular, really, to this character. We looked at Mike Tyson and that very low, powerful, very aggressive stance — a big-shoulder, big-hip stance that suggests coiled strength. We had a movement guy come in too, a guy named Paradox Pollack, and we worked together a lot.”
“I met him on ‘Star Trek,’ He was teaching all the people who were playing aliens how to move around. How do you get that job? He’s a fascinating guy. He’s got a circus background and acrobatics and he was a real help. He came in on this and he had read every ‘Thor’ comic book and he had a lot to show me about the hands and postures and these poses that evoke the comic book character and then how, as an actor, you could do some of those things to put it on the screen. He had this idea too of this electricity, this energy, that’s surrounding Thor. There’s an aura of thunder and lighting and energy around him, and if you start with that, then there’s a way you can move that kind of fits with that. And it affects the relation to everybody else, the way he interacts; if this exists and it extends to out here then you wouldn’t stand that close to a 9-foot monster. It was all very helpful to me.”
"Yeah, yeah, actually my wife got me into Game of Thrones, and we started sort of on the Internet watching them every week and became obsessed with them. And then I was given the whole series because Alan was meeting to do Thor 2. What I loved is [that the show] had a sort of mythical element to it, yet it was grounded in a really organic reality. And that’s what I think would be nice about Thor 2 — if there were more sort of tangible environments to be involved in. The first Thor was sort of science-fiction, and there were a lot of sets and things. It would be nice to kind of have Asgard as somewhat relatable and have big waterfalls and cliffs and mountains, and then have in the distance maybe several moons or suns or some sort of science-fiction element. But I think as an audience, it’s much easier to be drawn in if it’s something you feel a part of."
"Look, obviously I didn’t write the script. Joss did. But one of my earlier conversations was what worked so well in Thor was, I think, the naïveté of that character. That’s where the humor played so well. But we left the film with a maturity to him, so we couldn’t have that same attitude with things. It was the Crocodile Dundee kind of thing. You know, a fish out of water, and that’s where the comedy was, but we couldn’t redo that. And also the concern that Thor 2 was going to come, but how do we not take away from that story line and have a diversion here. I think [Joss] did a great job of giving Thor a very personal objective — it’s his brother caught in chaos — and a nice kind of segue through the Jane Foster/ Natalie Portman’s character — she had to be put aside for this story because it was too dangerous, which works, ’cause now we can pick that up in our sequel. But it was kind of like the maturity he learned from the first film was now put to the test in this one. He might have once upon a time wanted to come and tear his brother’s head off or tear everyone else’s head off, you know, that barbaric kind of rage, but he had to temper that and show some maturity."
"I'm extremely excited to see it. I talked with [director] Joss [Whedon] right when he first came on board about his ideas and what he planned on doing about it," "But I have yet to see a script."
"[Whedon] produced 'Cabin in the Woods,' which Drew Goddard directed, and he was very collaborative in the whole process and was fantastic," "I got to know him on a personal level too and have all the confidence in the world in him."
"It's been a bit like that for the last year or so. I'm starting to up the calories and head back in the gym and start slowly putting it back on, helps you feel a bit like the character."
"I'm trying to sort of maintain the strength I built up. The actual weight, and size wise, has a lot to do with the food intake. So I've lessened that just because half the battle was to eat that much chicken."
"My body weight in protein pretty much! A number of chicken breasts a day and fish and steak and eggs... There's worse things to complain about but it was certainly an effort."
"We all met at Comic Con and had very brief, sort of in amongst the madness, introductions and then since then I saw Chris Evans at the Globes, and Robert Downey Jr, and we had a brief chat about it but we're yet to sit down as a group."
"I saw a very early draft and it's incredible."
"Everything about the story and comic books is huge. You have these huge big superheroes, and huge big egos crammed into one small space,Reading the script, it was just massice. Everything about it was like, "Oh my God." I said to Joss I have no idea how you're going to shoot thing thing, but I'm excited to be on board!"
"There's plenty of friction. In the comic books, him and Hulk have their fair share of tangles..."
"I don't know if he's in Thor. I havent seen the cut yet. He wasnt on the set when I was there, but might be in the final one. He'll certaintly be in The Avengers. I had a chat with him at Comic Con, and he's as excited as the rest of us."
"The whole thing was just incredible, you know? I not only get to work with some of my favorite actors and people in the business, but I get to play a superhero. As a young kid or as an adult it's still a highlight."
"Everybody in the cast? The film starts shooting in a couple of weeks, and then I come on after the Thor press tour, which is around sort of the beginning of May. That's when I enter the scene."
"Yeah, it's a new team of stunt guys and we're taking it to the next level and probably getting a little more technical with the technique of using the hammer, and incorporating some sort of broadsword techniques. Also, I'm back in the gym again and eating all the protein I can get my hands on. I have a nutritionist this time around who's given me some great advice, so I'm back into the swing of it."
"I've been sitting down with Joss [Whedon, the director] talking and the producers and getting ideas. As far as the whole cast, no, just because of everybody's schedule. Until we meet on set that will be the first time that the group is assembled."
"I've met them individually at times, all of them, and they're all just wonderful. There's always the nerves that run through your body when opposite actors like this, but the excitement of it all sort of overrides that for me. I didn't get into this business because I was forced into it. I wanted to work with people like this and I love it and it's fun. I look forward to hanging about with these guys. [Robert] Downey, I think, has a real unique technique of playing with the dialogue and improv, and I think that would be fun to try and keep up with."
"They both really do love storytelling. Ken talks about Superman being one of his favorite films, and Joss has told me stories about him and his friends getting together and reading Shakespeare. So they're not as dissimilar as they might first appear. Both have an incredible passion for these films and are highly enthusiastic."
"With the Marvel secrecy I'm not really allowed to say much, but I'm just looking forward to being in full costume with these guys and I'm sure there will be some tension so that should make for some interesting sequences."
"Some of the wire gags and hanging upside down. I'm a pretty active person, but some of that stuff, I was like, “God, get me down from this thing.” It's hard work! It's like you're an actor one minute and an acrobat the next, spinning upside down backward for certain things and just wanting to throw up. But it all looks good once it's up there on the screen."
"It was really weird because you almost become addicted to it. Then all of a sudden the hand brake is pulled and you're allowed to relax. There's a part of you that doesn't really want to, because it's used to doing this, but you do need to rest."
"I’m extremely excited. I’m such a fan of all those guys and all those characters. Being able to watch them evolve and established already and now throw them all together, it’s a better way of doing it than if we’d brought them in together first and then branched off. Whereas this, you can relate to everyone in the film because we’ve seen them have their individual moments and now you cram them into a small space and a whole lot of egos. It’ll be an interesting dinner party, won’t it?"
"[It's great] to have my brother there. Even if we don't get along. [Hiddleston] is fantastic. [He gave] an incredible, incredible performance in the film, and he's going to do the same in this one."
"There's certainly some tension. You've got big egos on these superheroes. None of them want to be told what to do or form an alliance with these people who they don't understand anything about," he said. "In the comic books, you see that it's not an easy mix; that's definitely in [the movie]."
"Well, you'd want it, wouldn't you? Otherwise, why are we all there? I think it would be safe to say you can expect something like that."
"During filming, I didn’t think about it at all. The film I was doing was my focus. But I certainly now take away from that experience and say, okay, I’ve got to bring that back now and keep it consistent to some degree. As far as the character goes, I hope for some sort of evolution, that he has new challenges and conflicts and whatnot, and that also is the director and the writer’s decision. But having read the script, there certainly is it is that next step for Thor, and I feel like it is he has matured in a sense, and I couldn’t be happier with what I got to work with in this."
"No, I haven’t received any phone calls about it. My start date is still the same. I think it was a pretty old script, though. I got off the plane the other day and I found that out, but I know that script changed a lot, so it’s not the most recent version of it anyway."
"Yeah, definitely. Certainly you feel more equipped. Especially having to stand in among these other big superheroes, it was nice to have shot your own first (laughs). Now it’s looking at, okay, he’s sort of matured in some way, and now you don’t want to repeat the same mistakes in the character; you want to do something different. So that’s also a thing – the challenge is in doing sequels is you can’t go through the same arc again, and you want to sort of approach it with a new maturity that makes a new challenge in some way to it."
"I read the Avengers comics first, oddly – that was what was given to me by Drew Goddard, who shot “Cabin in the Woods.” And I just remembered sort of seeing Thor in the comic books meet, I think it was Iron Man or somebody for the first time, and them saying, oh, he’s not really a god, and then him just kind of chuckling to himself and all of a sudden making it rain and a storm starts to come (laughs). I remember thinking, oh, that’s pretty cool. I really remember enjoying watching them attempt to form an alliance and all of their sort of egos clashing – all of these sort of strong-footed attitudes."
"Avengers is next, and if we did a “Thor 2,” it wouldn’t be for another year or so, or longer. So there’s certainly a period where I want to definitely jump into something else. You’ve got to feed that different part of your soul or whatever it is – and not wear a big heavy costume with a cape again (laughs)."
"I think it’s the fantasy element [that people like] – the larger-than-life characters.“All through history, we’ve had heroes of some kind, whether they be folk myths or legends or comic books, no"
"I’m sure that’s up there on the list of possibilities, that would be something to see at some point, I’ve thought about that too."
"I have brothers so I know about competing with someone at the same time you’re cheering for them,"
"Jeremy, Chris Evans, Scarlett, Mark Ruffalo, all of them, wow, it’s going to be fun,” said Hemsworth, who before “Thor” was best known to American audiences for a fleeting appearance in the J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” film. “I really feel like a fan in all of this because I’ve seen all these individual characters come to life. Now to throw them together, you feel like a kid in a way, there’s really a giddy feeling. I’m looking forward to being in a room with not just those actors but those characters, these larger-than-life characters, and seeing how that turns out. I want to see how Captain America and Thor and Iron Man react to one another."
"I’ve worked with Joss on ‘Cabin in the Woods’ — he wrote it with Drew Goddard and Drew directed but Joss was on set and very collaborative with ideas, so I got a sense of his personality and who he was. So I feel less cautious now, knowing him and really liking him. I’m really excited to work with Joss and to see where he takes Thor and all of the Marvel characters."
"I think [Thor's] motivation is much more of a personal one, in the sense that it’s his brother that is stirring things up. Whereas everyone else, it’s some bad guy who they’ve gotta take down. It’s a different approach for me, or for Thor. He’s constantly having to battle the greater good and what he should do vs. it’s his little brother there... I’ve been frustrated with my brothers at times, or family, but I’m the only one who is allowed to be angry at them. There’s a bit of that."
"I think they did a great job of toning it back a little with the outfits so there was a little bit of a common thread between them. Individually, in their own films they're probably a little flashier. In The Avengers, I removed my cape for some of the scenes, and that was more Thor's casual number. Captain America had his sleeves rolled up. Just something that broke the formality of it all, and I think it works for that reason because of those slight adjustments. Everyone was scared of that, of how it was going to look, but then among the action scenes where everything is so hot and full on, it's like now you want the colours; now you want everyone to be in their full glory. And then the stuff just kind of launches off the screen. It's wicked."
"With this film it was a little more difficult to track an individual journey so much. You still do, but you have to work harder because it's not as obvious. You're much more a part of the flow of the group. For me, I guess Thor, in a different way from everyone else, was much more emotionally invested in the villain, and the problem that the villain brings because it was his brother. That's his sort of difference, and it's a much more personal conflict. For the rest of them it was more like they had a job to do."
"At the end of Thor he's matured somewhat. He's been humbled and he's earned his powers now, but then what do you do? Put it into action. It's one thing to say you've learned a lesson, but now it's like, "Show us that you're not still a cocky petualant kid!" He's tested with that, his ego is put to the test. All of theirs are. Everything I'm hearing...I'll get in trouble for aying anything else, but the truth is that everything I've heard is that it's going to be [frick]ing awesome. Someone said the other day, "Do you feel weird or at a Halloween party dressing up in that outift?" I said, "When you're on set and everyone else is wearing those outfits, for the first time you feel like you finally fit in." For the first time it's like, "I don't feel out of place with this cape and this big hammer, because that guy's wearing an iron suit, that guy's wrapped up in an American flag and that guy turns green." That was a trip."
"Thor has more of a personal investment in what's happening than the other Super Heroes becuase Loki is his brother. The bigger conflict for him is that he's trying to protect the greater good, but he has some deep questions about what is going on with his brother."
"Thor has conveniently come back to earth briefly because Odin summons dark powers from the universe and it’s very costly. He’s come back to retrieve Loki, who’s running madness on Earth and causing a lot of chaos. He also has some questions of his own he wants answered like, ‘How did this happen and where did I and my brother go wrong?’"
"In Thor my character learned a whole lot about humility and gained a new respect for humans because they were able to help him discover who he needed to become in order to earn his powers back. I also think he feels very protective of humans now because of his relationship with Jane. Joining The Avengers team is also tricky because he has a personal investment in that his brother Loki is the one who’s causing the chaos and he fears that the others may just want to kill him instead of just stopping him and taking away his powers."
"Most of the time we’re all on set together and it just became a laugh for all of us. We sort of fed off [the energy of] each other and before you know it, someone has to step in and say, “Come on, we’re trying to shoot a movie here!” Robert Downey Jr obviously has an incredible sense of humour and wit about him, which you see in all his characters. He’s like that in real life. You’re playing catch-up; always 10 steps behind what he’s saying. All those guys I learned something from and admired."
"I have read a script and we start shooting in August. I met with Alan Taylor a couple of months ago and Natalie Portman and I and Alan and a couple of Marvel guys and it was hugely exciting. Ken did such a wonderful job and, with scheduling or what have you, he didn’t end up doing this one, but I’m a big fan of the Game of Thrones series, which is Alan’s latest work, and I think that is what’s exciting about the second one: making it sort of more tangible and having a more organic feel to Asgard and that world."
"I think the science fiction element to THOR… the danger is it falls a little bit into the world of it’s “tough to throw a light to.” I think of big waterfalls and mountains and a Viking influence, where the Norse mythology kind of grew from. Having that in Asgard is going to make it all the more special and that’s what Alan wants to bring to it. I think that would be the new aspect to this one."
"The big challenge was, we left Thor with that hope of Jane Foster on Earth and Thor in another realm kind of somehow getting together. You know, I think the satisfying thing would be to see that happen. Joss did a great job of fostering that and putting her out of the picture for the moment."
"I think he would like, now, to be put in the position to take over the throne and be worthy of that position. We'll see."
"I always found the lighter stuff with Thor to be more interesting, because of all the other realms that he was involved in and the universe and that's what I look forward to. Traveling across different worlds. I certainly think Earth is his connection. It's never said in the film, but in the comics and in the early history of it all, I think Thor's mother is vaguely human. There is some sort of connection there."
"Beta Ray Bill? I thought, 'What is this half horse-looking character?' By the end I said 'I get this and I like it.' My first instinct was that I was a bit unsure. He's the only one who can pick up the hammer. He's a worthy from another planet. But he looks like a horse."
"Certainly the first one left with Thor needing to get back to earth and see Jane but there will be bigger problems as usual. But my big concern is how is Thor going to come to earth and not call upon the rest of his buddies now? That will be the trick to conveniently kind of skewer them off to different sides of the globe."
"I haven't got a script yet for Thor 2. I do get input into the script to a degree."
"Alan Taylor, one of the directors and creators of Game Of Thrones, is directing it. What I love about that series is the mythical element to it, but that world that they lived in was entirely tangible and organic. It was all real locations, not green screen. I think Thor and Asgard could use that. That would be a huge plus, to not have worlds that are too clinical and ethereal, and have places that look like they have existed for thousands of years. I think this would be more locations and less green screen."
"It's what I loved about the comics. It was never clean and cut and that's it," he said about whether or not Thor and Loki would repair their damaged relationship. "It was always like, Thor would forgive him, they'd be friends, and Loki would betray him again. 'You idiot, Thor! Again?' But it was different than your normal good guy, bad guy scenario. They're brothers, you know? Anyone with siblings understands that. 'That's it, I'm never talking to you again… want to play football?' "
"[about Charlize Theron joining as The Enchantress] I don't know much at all but it sounds interesting. I'm not playing the usual, sidestepping that we normally have to do, I haven't read a script. They have a bunch of different ideas, but that sounds interesting. Oh right. Well she certainly plays a pretty intimidating villain, I think she'd be awesome but I think she's tied up in 20 other films. I think she's going on to Mad Max next. But you never know. Fingers crossed!"
"Yeah, I love the way he adds an incredibly organic element to the fantastical world of Thrones, and I think that’s what Thor could benefit from. It’s grounded in reality, no matter how mythical or science-fiction-like it becomes. There’s a truth to it all. Certainly, working with him now, you can see he doesn’t want Thor or the Asgardians to seem like some distant race or god-like. He still wants them to be relatable."
"For Thor there’s a lot of ongoing reading and rereading of the script. I have a guy that I work with a lot who’s a voice coach, but also far more than that. We pull scripts apart and go into who these people are; his whole attitude of approaching a character is, instead of trying to mimic something or work out technically how you do that, it’s more why does someone speak like that. What’s in your personality or nature, or your past that has moulded you into sounding like this? That then raises a whole lot of questions about the character – which is great. You do that all the way through the film, even afterwards it’s hard to switch off sometimes."
"For whatever reason, it just seems to fit that world. Probably for no other reason than that it’s the way it’s been done in history. We associate Shakespearean speak [with god-like beings] because so many British actors have done it over the years. It resonates with the audience. Also, we had Anthony Hopkins, who is Welsh but has similar tones. I certainly couldn’t play him as Australian because people would think, “That’s Crocodile Dundee!”"
"At the moment, I'm big again because we're filming Thor 2. It's a lot of work to keep it on. I have to do an hour or 2 of workout every day & eat ridiculous amounts of protein. I'm pretty much carb-free at the moment. It's so boring. You start to feel like people think that's really you. I suppose it's fair enough if that's all they've seen of you."
"We had to have it like that in Thor because that was just how the character looked. I wore a wig for the first Thor movie and The Avengers but never wanted to do that again because it was uncomfortable. For Snow White and the Huntsman I was growing it for the next Thor so we just dyed it dark. But I'd love to shave it off."
"Each time, you make the attempt - 'okay, where do we take it from here? How do we make it better? How do we not repeat what we've done? How does the character not fall into 'the hero' now and become predictable?' That's the challenge. You apply the same motivation and commitment to it each time."
"The standalone Thor film is always sort of different from The Avengers, I think - having done a couple of them, obviously, you're not carrying it on your shoulders as the one superhero, you're with a group. Which is kind of more fun in a lot of ways because you share the responsibility but the dynamic of all those guys is vastly different from the characters on their own."
"That kind of came from Joss actually. He just said that there needed to be something romantic in there. Then he said, 'Chris, get your shirt off.' I said, 'Well, I don't know. What's the why? What are we doing?' The justification was that it was him coming home from battle, washing blood off his hands. It is what it is. How to weigh into that without sounding like an idiot?"
"He's great, he's awesome. I haven't met him yet, but it's funny because the whole Avengers thing is starting to come up in conversations and I'm like, 'God, I still have another film to shoot and Thor 2 hasn't even come out yet.' The script for The Avengers 2 isn't even done yet, but I know Joss Whedon is writing away. I haven't had to look into it and understand it yet. With all honesty, I have no idea."
"Everything in Age of Ultron is ramped up though. It kind of blew me away reading the script. I don't know how Joss does it, but everyone has gone up another notch and the whole thing is bigger and more exciting and crazier. Yeah, he's a genius."
"I probably see Downey Jr. a bit because he lives near me. A lot of us kind of disappear on other projects, so most of the time we don't see each until the sequels. I'm really excited to start Avengers 2 in 2 months and get back on set. We're going to meet in London and shoot there for 4 months, so I'm excited to get back together with everyone and catch up."
"The biggest thing is just not looking stupid. You’ve just got to remember there’s another 30 different stages that are going to come into it before anyone will see that on screen."
"You know the rhythm of it, but what becomes a challenge is trying to not repeat the same thing all the time. So you’ve got to work that bit harder to see what else you can do with the character."
"Age of Ultron gave us room to kind of make him a little more grounded and human and have him in some civilian clothes and mixing it up at a party. I want to do those scenes more. It’s what I loved about the first. There was an innocence and naïveté to him, which as he matured into the king of the second — or the rightful king — we sort of lost a little bit of that. That was that story."
"I mean, I loved working with Tom, and that relationship is so much fun. But that also kept us in a bit of a box, because, you know, three films on one relationship, how much further can you go? What else can you do different? It was nice to have a whole different sort of motivation."
"Whereas the first was about the journey of the team, I think, this time, you have six or seven things going on, which I was really impressed by. I like where Thor has been taken in this. He sort of sees a whole other side to what’s going on in the conflict, and another potential threat. And he kind of segues a bit and has his own little sort of journey."
"It’s not so much the staying in shape; Once you get to the shape, maintaining it — it’s work, but it’s less work than trying to get it off to do another role, or to put it back on when you start from scratch. That’s been tough."
"What I love about Joss is the incredible amount of detail in amongst that action. The action's sort of the bonus I think. What you get in this is a very detailed look at what those guys are going through in this particular current state of the world..."
"We pick up with Thor having stayed on Earth from Thor 2, so he’s here, he’s part of the team. This is his home for the moment. The initial kind of threat, the attack from Ultron, is personal because it’s at all the Avengers, and Thor then begins to see a bigger sort of picture here about what this threat could be potentially, and begins to kind of tie-in all of our films. It’s hard to say too much without talking about what I can’t talk about but as I said, it’s a personal loss from the get-go because it’s at him, but I guess he sees a bigger picture."
"Yeah, I mean it was just giving him a solid reason to be there, you know? I think all of us. It seems like a pretty simple demand but yeah, it would be easy to fall into, 'Oh, they’re all just there because we’re all contracted and look cool if we’re standing in the same room.' I mean it was there from the beginning, too, but I just sort of kept saying to Joss, 'Okay, what do I bring to the table though, besides kind of Thor being one of his foot soldiers and the muscle in a bunch of fight scenes. What is his knowledge he can bring to it?' And trying to incorporate that he’s from another world because you forget that, too. All of a sudden you’re standing there in these conversations and you go, 'Well hang on, he’s from another planet, you know? What’s his thousands of years of existence? What information can that bring?' And so he calls upon some of Asgardian knowledge in this and is able to go into, say, another realm to pull out something that’s hugely useful. Some information that certainly benefits where they’re at at that point."
"He’s loosened up a bit. I think we lost some of the, the humor and the naïveté and, you know, the fish out of water quality of Thor in the second one. There were things I loved about what we did in the second one tonally, but that sense of fun was... I would have liked it to be there a bit more. Joss felt the same way. Thor's been on Earth, he's a little more human, a little more accessible. He's off Asgard now so he doesn't have to be as regal and kingly as he is in that world, which is nice. I enjoy that more. Asgard is sort of a box, which he gets to step out of. That stuff just looks out of place, whereas here you can have a gag with the guys and he can throw away lines and be at a party scene with them in civilian clothes, which is nice. There's a party scene where I was in a nice coat and jeans and the guys just kept joking, "When did Thor go shopping? Did he buy this online or did Jane do it? Or did he actually go shopping? You don't see him go shopping but the question is raised because he's not dressed in his Asgardian attire. He's more human in this film, definitely."
"It's more comfortable. Each time, you get a little more comfortable, a little more movement in it. I don't think there's any huge changes to it. I loved where it was in the second one. We sort of landed on something because it was a bit more streamlined and functional. It's pretty similar."
"We’re not as conflicted as we were before, I think. He tags off with someone else though. I think we sort of changed up there, and he has a pretty solid battle with… am I allowed to say? Yeah, with Iron Man in this one, which is cool. It’s a lengthy fight scene of destruction."
"Up until kind of the third act or sort of halfway through Age of Ultron he begins to have suspicions about what’s going on here or what this bigger picture is here and who’s involved. He doesn’t know by the end of it but he starts to think something’s not right here. This is all a little too convenient why this has happened, which certainly points his focus back there."
" I think he openly admits, 'I don’t think we’re going to win this one'. Yeah, the threat is so great that I think all of them are sort of scratching their heads going, 'Is this it?' rather than, 'Okay, we have to kill this many things.' It’s just an onslaught and it doesn’t stop. It’s sort of an open sort of floodgate and what it could also set in motion is an even bigger threat. I think that’s what’s Thor’s kind of stuck on or where he is attention certainly is, an even bigger picture of Thor being from Asgard. He can just say, 'Hang on, there’s a whole universe here which is signaling something else."
"No, I think it certainly creates a conflict. It’s more kind of within their individual selves rather than the team so much. I think they’ll begin to have sort of their fears of held up in front of them, and for Thor, I think it’s a corruption of power. With all of them having this much power and trying to have the understanding that we’re in this sort of endless battle here and when this is going to end and how does it end? That scene is actually being rewritten at the moment, if you want to talk to Joss about it, so it’s hard to even say what it will be in Thor’s dream sequence but it kicks in motion his movement. That’s where he really starts to kind of move through the story. Once that dream occurs he goes, 'Oh, I can see what’s coming and my fear could be true' so yeah, it’s a ticking clock."
"Yeah, I mean in this instance you see it’s hand-to-hand combat because if someone of his equal strength or moreso than him, so he can afford to do that. Whereas with the people who were far less capable than him and not as strong, I said, 'You know, let’s make sure he’s picking up cars and throwing them and ripping things in half and spending a bit more time up in the air and using the elements as opposed to being stuck kind of in a hand-to-hand sort of fist fight with the bad guys.' So yeah, I think it keeps getting kind of amped up and then the stunts become more elaborate. Yeah, we see him fly a bit more."
"I’m three films away from the end of my contract; I’ve got Avengers 3 and 4 and I’ve got Thor 3."
"I'd be like, 'Sort it out, idiots. This is silly.' I don't know. I'm not sure how that story's going to go when Thor comes back. But I think it will come as quite a shock that they all aren't getting along—having a bit of a tiff."
"I was like, ‘What? Are we being fired?’ Marvel quickly reassured us, ‘No you guys have got your own journey going on, and in order for that to work you can’t be a part of this one.’ Look, it turned out just perfect because we got to do a whole different kind of thing we wouldn’t have able to do otherwise."
"I think it needs to be injected with that sort of smart wit and unexpected kind of humor, kind of what James Gunn came in and did with Guardians. It was like off center and unpredictable, and I think we can definitely use a dose of that, you know?"
"I feel we had less of the sort of the naivety or fun or humor that the first might have had. I wish we had more of that in the second… We’ve done regal. We’ve done Shakespeare, and we’ve shown that. I think now it’s time to go, 'Ok, cool. Let’s try something different,' and Taika just had such a brilliant sort of take and funny kind of ideas about where we could go, how we could do that."
"I'd like to think I let him win last time, but because this movie is called Thor, I have to win this time."
"I hope it's a Butch Cassidy sort of story. That would be fun. I love Mark. I think those two characters haven't spent a whole lot of time talking to each other on screen, so it's something new, I think it would bring something different out of the characters. It's hard to have a conversation with the Hulk."
"Contractually that will finish me up, I have to see how I feel at the end of them, it's still a while away. Ask me in three films time."
"When I was here years ago while doing some press, and talking to people, they were asking ‘When will you bring a film back here?' When Marvel was talking about where it was going to be shot, I said, ‘Why can’t it be Australia?’ We just kept pushing, and that became a bigger conversation. And you know, it landed here, and I couldn’t be happier. A lot of my friends are going to be on that production; people I’ve worked with and known for years."
"Man, it is a lot of fun. I think tonally it's a big shift in a great way, more than anything we've seen before. Taika Waititi, the director, if you know any of his work, yeah, he's just an incredible sort of comedic talent. There's a lot of heart in everything he does, but it's a very different Thor, it's a different Loki. We go off on another world that we haven't experienced before. It's fun you know, but that's me skirting around the issue because I can't say too much."
"It was one of the best experiences I've had, he's incredible. If you've seen any of his films, they give you an indication of the tone of what this is going to be, which is very different to what we've seen before."
"Sakaar is basically where every wormhole across the universe dumps out its trash, so you get people from all walks of life with all sorts of incredible abilities and powers. No one cares what prince or king Thor may have been in another world. Also, his strength is pretty easily matched with those he finds himself amongst."
"Taika has such a quirky, left-of-field sense of humor, which forced all the characters and the tone of the whole story to head in a new direction. Each day we were like, ‘Are we pushing it too far? Are we allowed to have this much fun?’"
"Thor is a bit of a fanboy for the Valkyrie, the elite women warriors."
"He’s off exploring the universe, still trying to police it and control the mayhem. But he’s certainly enjoying being a drifter, being a solo cowboy out there."
