As I’ve often said, Marvel’s been doing an excellent job so far of selecting directors whose style matches the tone of the specific characters, instead of fitting them all into a generalized house style. Kenneth Branagh actually commented on this recently to the LA Times’ Hero Complex blog, describing his approach to THOR as being almost antithetical to what Favreau did with IRON MAN. To be more specific, where IRON MAN centered more around Robert Downey Jr’s improv (often times, if you believe it, in lieu of an actual script), THOR's going to be more composed and structured - - which is no surprise coming from a director’s who’s largely made his name doing Shakespeare adaptations.
And that really gets back to what I’m saying about all these projects matching their personnel. Branagh’s background is in grand films that are more akin to operatic pageants. The fact that Favreau started off doing suave comedies with Vince Vaughn surely has much to do with him being comfortable enough to step back and let RDJ do his thing when he needed to. When fans wanted the jade giant to lighten up after Ang Lee’s somber HULK, it made sense from them to bring in Louis Letterier right after he did THE TRANSPORTER 2. And who better to do CAP a right turn than Joe Johnston, whose filmography’s full of red-blooded all-American blockbusters? == TEASER ==
Anyway, it’s probably best if you best if get this in the words of the man, himself….
“It’s a different story, and also, in that regard, Jon is a bit of a genius when it comes to that orchestration and getting the max out of another genius in Downey… It’s how you dance pretty close to the edge to get the sort of modernity and the edge that ‘Iron Man’ has and the real sharp comic sensibility of those two men… So it’s a different kind of dance…. I think ‘Thor’ comes from a different place story-wise and character-wise. We have both Norse histories for Thor, hundreds of myths and fables told in many different ways, in addition to what Marvel has pillaged for the past 40 years or so to come up with their version of things, which sits in very strong structure, a really strong narrative structure… there’s a semi-ornateness to all of it that means we start from a more ordered universe, then the story turns toward the chaotic.”
I think the hardest challenge is going to fall on Joss Whedon’s shoulders, as he’s the one who’s going to have to reconcile all these disparate tones into a cohesive AVENGERS movie. Once again, though, he juggled the ensemble cast in SERENITY pretty deftly and we all know that he knows all these characters very, so I suppose none of this is much of a coincidence.
Do we have any of Branagh fans in the Comic Vine community? What do you maniacs think of the man who did HENRY V and MARY SHELLY'S FRANKENSTEIN handling the god of thunder?Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE .Order them on Amazon here & here .