An excerpt from the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios delves into the different choices made for the character of Thor. It all begins with the casting of the God of Thunder.
In the Thor comic books, the character drew inspiration from Viking mythology and the Norse Eddas. The stories often featured Thor battling both mythological beings and modern supervillains like the Absorbing Man.
Some readers described Thor’s language in the comics as “Shakespearean,” referring to Stan Lee’s use of archaic elements in the character’s dialogue. It gives Thor a sense of being from another era. Whereas Kevin Feige compared the Thor movie (2011) to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, which is totally different from the MCU’s approach.
Kevin Feige Compared Thor to The Godfather
Thor’s dialogue in the comics was often described as “Shakespearean,” but the MCU producer, Kevin Feige, thought of a more modern cultural reference in his mind: The Godfather. He said to Vanity Fair:
“It’s about fathers and sons, and it’s about the actions that a father takes that his sons will have to answer for.”
In The Godfather, the story revolves around the Corleone family and their patriarch, Vito Corleone, and how his actions shape the destinies of his sons. Similarly, in Thor, the relationship between Odin and his sons Thor and Loki is central to the narrative.
The idea here is that both stories are based on the complex relationships between fathers and their sons and how the choices of the father figure have effects on the next generation.
While the genres and settings of these stories are different the MCU film likely aimed to capture similar depth in its storyline for the God of Thunder.
The Godfather Inspired The Director Kenneth Branagh’s Father-Son Themes in Thor
Filmmaker Kenneth Branagh wanted the best approach to present Eoin Colfer’s young protagonist in Artemis Fowl as part of an intimate yet distanced father-son story. To achieve this, he turned to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather. He said to:
“He has to decide whether he’s going to do what they asked him to do or not, whether he’s going to enjoy it, whether he’s going to continue to do it and perhaps even surprise himself by being very good at it and that he enjoys it. I wanted our origin story to particularly live through this idea of the father and son connection. It is there in ‘Thor’ and in lots of the films that I’ve made. I don’t know why, but maybe I just had a very strong connection with my own father and I’m always trying to kind of work that story out.”
Branagh’s films often delve into this theme of the father and son relationship, including Thor and in various other works, and he credits The Godfather for setting this approach in him.
Watch Thor (2011) on Disney+.
