Transcript of the Thor 2 article in the October edition of Empire Magazine.
Round One
Beneath the burnished dome of the Asgardian observatory, on the far side of the Rainbow Bridge, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston were performing the first Thor movie’s climactic dios-a-dios conflict between the Norse God of Thunder and his adopted brother, the usurper Loki. Loki tries to spike Thor in the ribs with his spear. Thor catches the spear, then pops an elbow in his sibling’s face. All carefully choreographed, all rigorously rehearsed. All intended to play out in such a way that neither actor’s blows actually connect. Except a fractional misjudgement led to Hemsworth’s elbow crunching into Hiddleston’s nose, for real. Hiddleston saw stars. Blood gushed from his nostrils. “You hit my face!” he spluttered, laughing, to Hemsworth. Hiddleston immediately asked the director, Kenneth Branagh, if he could play the moment back. Branagh was happy to. The shot, Hiddleston concluded, was amazing, and to this day he is proud it made the final cut. Such impressiveness did little to quell Hemsworth’s mortification. The towering Australian couldn’t apologise enough. “Dude, it’s fine!” Hiddleston cheerily assured him. “We are playing Norse gods engaged in an epic battle! That’s what we signed up for!”
On a Shepperton soundstage in late November 2012, the Prince of Asgard is getting armoured up for the umpteenth time. A pair of costume department girls apply his elaborate battle gear strap by strap, clip by clip, while the patient Aesir himself, Chris Hemsworth, laughs and jokes as, simultaneously, someone from make-up plaits his bedraggled blond locks. Six large discs adorn his torso, and a red cape still sweeps over his broad shoulders but the differences in this iteration of the Thor-gear are obvious, and important. It’s composed of only non-synthetic materials, is more layered and has had its primary colours muted - less like a professional wrestler’s costume, more like viable battle gear. Lived in, sweated in, fought in. A pair of deep gashes furrow Hemsworth’s grimy face. “I always seem to be getting a beating on this one. It’d be nice to win a fight!” he jokes to Empire - before walking into a not particularly bruising dialogue scene, set in Jane Foster’s (Natalie Portman) Greenwich flat. (“It must have been exciting for you,” Portman deadpans afterwards.)
"You know, we are killing Asgardians in this movie," director Alan Taylor assures us, later. "It turns out immortality isn’t all that it was cracked up to be!" Both Taylor and Hemsworth promise this sequel will reveal a vulnerability to the seemingly impervious Asgardians, from the foot soldiers barely glimpsed in the first Thor right up to the All-Father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) himself. This is "a little more dirty and dark", says executive producer Craig Kyle. "Asgard at the beginning of the first film was at a time of peace. They were about to get a new king and everyone had a chance to get their armour buffed and cleaned up. Now our guys have been fighting for over a year, constantly. It’s a time of war."
