Kenneth Branagh Praises Marvel Studios: "I'm Very Grateful To Them"

Director Kenneth Branagh has spoken highly of his experiences working with Marvel Studios on 2011’s ‘Thor.’

In an in-depth, onstage interview with The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Galloway at Loyola Marymount University School of Film & Television, the noted British actor, Shakespearean and filmmaker looks back on coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its early stages, and at a less-than-stellar moment in his own film career.

Branagh reflects, “there was quite a lot of talking to begin with just to establish did we want to make the same film… they were very interested and intrigued in working with me, but at the same time I just made a number of films that not many people had gone to see, including ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,’ so I was not exactly hot.”

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The director continues, “the Marvel universe has expanded in such a way and now seems like it’s this unstoppably successful ever, ever hit making machine. But at that stage they were just two movies into this new world. They’d just done ‘Iron Man’ brilliantly with Robert [Downey Jr]. And then ‘the [Incredible] Hulk,’ which had not been quite as sort of conspicuously commercially successful, but was still, you know a wonderful piece of work in its way.

"So [‘Thor’] was going to be, they all said the most difficult thing to do because you know, a big blonde guy, horses riding across like a rainbow bridge in space, hmm, not so sure. And there were various faces they used to put up on the wall of things that we mustn’t be and I didn’t know this character, but you will maybe, Fabio?… there was a phrase can’t be Fabio. Can’t be Fabio."

Marvel have something of a mixed reputation when it comes to their relationships with directors. While the likes of James Gunn (‘Guardians of the Galaxy’) and the Russo Brothers (‘Captain America: the Winter Soldier’) have spoken highly of the studio and have already committed to make further films with them, others such as Jon Favreau (‘Iron Man’/’Iron Man 2’) and Alan Taylor (‘Thor: the Dark World’ - on which he replaced the dismissed Patty Jenkins) have hinted at a less comfortable experience.

There have also been murmurs that Joss Whedon (‘Avengers’ and its upcoming sequel) has butted heads with the studio at times - but most notorious was of course Edgar Wright’s eleventh-hour withdrawal from ‘Ant-Man’ over creative clashes.

However, Branagh seems to suggest that, in the early stages of the MCU when he came on board, things were a bit cosier, particularly when he reflects on casting Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston:

"…on the morning in which we made the calls we came in, I remember Kevin Feige wandering around that table. This tiny little conference table. It’s just me and him and one of the executives, Craig Kyle, on that Saturday morning…

"I’d already booked a call to Hemsworth and to Hiddleston and [Feige] still wasn’t sure whether we were going to go with this and I kept saying it’s these guys. It is these two guys, Chris Hemsworth is Thor. Tom Hiddleston is Loki. You’re going to be okay. And he knew it… then we made the call and it was a wonderful moment."

Branagh goes on to say he considers Feige a “very, very dear friend,” and suggests he would be open to directing another film for Marvel - even though he declined to return for ‘Thor: the Dark World.’

"I just enjoyed the process of working with those people and I loved the boys… the girls as well. It was great. So that was fun. But it was a long time and they were way too quick for me to get straight back into another single sort of story in terms of working on it at that time, so who knows. Who knows.

"It was a pleasurable experience and a film I’m very proud of and one I was very lucky to be able to make and did me a lot of good from which I learned an incredible amount, so I’m very grateful to them."

Since ‘Thor,’ Branagh has returned to directing in Hollywood with ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’ and the upcoming ‘Cinderella.’

Meanwhile, the planned third ‘Thor’ movie, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ - scheduled to hit cinemas on  28 July 2017 - has no director attached that we know of just yet…

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Picture Credit: WENN, Marvel