ComingSoon Senior Editor Spencer Legacy spoke with Director of Visual Development at Marvel Studios Andy Park about Thor: Love and Thunder, Kang the Conqueror, and Thunderbolts. The fourth Thor movie is now available on digital, 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD.
RELATED: Interview: Kieron L. Dyer on Guns N’ Roses & Thor: Love and Thunder
“The fourth installment finds Thor on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced — a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher, who seeks the extinction of the gods,” says Thor: Love and Thunder‘s synopsis. “To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie, Korg, and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster, who — to Thor’s surprise — inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.”
Spencer Legacy: You worked on every Thor film, how has the process of designing such a dynamic character, especially with the tonal shift and his various developments over time, been?
Andy Park: It’s been so much fun because I think, not only is it fun being able to take the inspiration from the amazing geniuses from Jack Kirby to Steve Ditko, Stan Lee — all the creators throughout the decades — but being able to work with different filmmakers. We have the leadership in Marvel and the geniuses there, from Kevin Feige on … Victoria Alonso, Louis D’Esposito, and all the producers, but then for each Thor film, there’s a different director, except for the last two with Taika [Waititi], so they’re all gonna have their own voice. So even though it’s the same character, there are nuances. Obviously, we saw that big shift from, the first two Thor movies to when Taika came on. That’s been a lot of fun, especially when Taika came on. He just completely rocked the boat in a good way. It just made it so fresh.
And it felt like a lot of times when we work on a new character, it’s like, “Oh, it’s so fun to create from the ground up.” Like when we’re working on Guardians of the Galaxy, we’re helping to establish this world, this corner of the MCU that has never been mined yet. That kind of cosmic, crazy world with Thor … we’ve kind of been there with Asgard, but once Taika came, it felt like a new character again that we’re trying to establish with the look, the tone, the character, [and] the visuals. So yeah, it’s been so much fun to be able to be a part of like his journey and his evolution.
In Thor: Love and Thunder, Gorr looks a bit different than he does in the comic. How did you go about altering that design while still maintaining his memorable characteristics?
When it comes to any character we design again, we always go back to the comics first. So a lot of times, because we’re an in-house department of artists that are here full-time, we get to work really early on. For the most part, we’re working at the same time that they’re writing the script. So a lot of times, nothing’s established yet. So the only thing that’s established is that they want Gorr to be the main villain, or at least they’re thinking about Gorr. So that’s when we’re off to the races. Myself, as well as the other artists that are here in the visual development department, as well as hire freelancers … I’ll task them to do different versions and they’re like, “Oh, so do you have any information on them?”
I’ll be like, “Look at the comic!” Because there’s no information yet, besides that they want to use that character … the nuances, we’ll learn as we go. That’ll help influence our decisions in our designs. So in the beginning it tends to be quite comic accurate. We’re going to be doing the tendrils that come out on the sides and making him a little bit more alien and without the nose and the proportions to be like what Esad Ribić, the comic book artist, designed in the comic book series. Then as we start having conversations with the filmmakers, with Taika in this case, then we’ll start finding out about like who Gorr is. His backstory, how he gets betrayed. And then soon after that, we find out casting.
So usually we’re doing designs even before we know the casting. So once we found out about Christian Bale, then we’re like, “Oh wow, that’s awesome!” And then pretty much after finding that out, that’s when we’re told that they want to see versions and explore how we’re not going to lose his performance. When you’ve got an actor like Christian Bale, we don’t want to hide that. So we started taking a lot of designs that we’ve already done, creating new ones as well, and implementing Christian Bale’s face in there. The other reason is because there are a lot of characters that have been out there in other franchises that don’t have the nose, or has these tendrils. From Star Wars to Harry Potter, Voldemort, that kind of stuff. When you design things these days, it’s almost like what “hasn’t been done?” So you have to navigate that where it’s like … it feels too much like something, then it’s like, “Okay, let’s steer away from that.” It’s a journey to find and finally land on that design, but I’d like to mention that our amazing artists, John Staub, one of our in-house visit vis-dev artists, did that final design that you see in the film.
Another character is Russell Crowe’s Zeus, who has a design that’s half mythical and intimidating and half really funny. So what was the process of designing him like?
That one was designed by our amazing costume designer in Mayes Rubeo. So we have a great collaboration between the vis-dev department and the costume department. She was able to — with her artists — take a lot of the gods that you see in Omnipotent City. She was able to really just run with it and have fun. I had a great time seeing the designs that they were doing, because it’s treading that line between coming up with something that’s epic, that’s worthy of Zeus, but then it’s slightly comical, right? So I thought she did a great job.
Your art provided everyone with their first look at Kang’s more comic-esque design in the Quantumania art. What was it like to essentially showcase the next Thanos?
Working on that project was a lot of fun. I led the vis team on that one and being able to tackle … I’ve worked on all the Ant-Man films. The first Ant-Man that I led was Ant-Man and the Wasp. So being able to come back and work with Peyton Reed yet again, that was so much fun. To be able to introduce a character like Kang … I had a team of amazing artists. A guy named Constantine Sekeris did the final concept design for that. Then Sammy Sheldon and Ivo Coveney did the final Kang that you can see, the costume. Especially [with] an iconic character like Kang, right? Growing up, reading Marvel comics, that was one of the … there are certain characters that are the big main villains that Avengers characters have always butted heads with. So Kang, you knew, was going to come eventually. So I can’t wait for you and everyone to be able to see what we’ve all come up with, because it’s an amazing visual, but it’s also just what Jonathan Majors’ performance and what the scriptwriters and what Peyton has brought out in these actors and in these characters. It’s going to be something special.
In a similar vein, your Thunderbolts art was recently shown off and it really shows off the characters’ personalities. How difficult was it to stylistically unite all these characters from different projects and phases?
That part is always fun because I think that’s kind of the magic, the key component, to the MCU that Kevin Feige … whatever that moment was when he decided, “Okay, we’re going to create an interconnected universe of all these disparate characters, and then they’re going to all have their own films, and they don’t necessarily have to feel like the same thing. It could be completely different from each other, but we’re going to find a way to bring them together in The Avengers, the very first film where all these disparate characters came together.”
That’s where the fun is. When you see that lineup, that image that I illustrated, while I was painting it, it’s really fun because, at that point that I was painting it, we already had the Black Widow film. So we got introduced to Yelena and Alexei, the Red Guardian, as well as Taskmaster. We know where they ended up in that film. So it always begs the question, what’s next? What’s going to happen with Taskmaster now? Now that she realizes and all that stuff … all the questions that come up and then you watch The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. That’s where Bucky is and that’s where US Agent is. And there’s always tension there.
And obviously, we know all the stories of Bucky from Captain America to Winter Soldier to Civil War onward and all the Avengers films. Then you see Val being introduced in a similar way to how we saw Samuel L. Jackson’s, Nick Fury in the early days. Then Ghost in the Ant-Man world and seeing how her story ended. So to take all that and bring them together as one team … it reminded me very much of the early days when I was working at Marvel Studios 12 years ago, when working on The Avengers, because I’m like, “Oh, these different characters don’t necessarily seem like they belong.” And then to see them come together and you get to imagine the interactions are going to be fun, how they fight and whatever, whatever they’re gonna end up doing.
Therein lies like the fun, because you’re like, “How is a God going to interact with someone like Tony Stark?” Who’s very snarky, but also Earth/science-based. So in the same way, in a different way, we’re going to see that with Thunderbolts, seeing all these different characters from different franchises coming together. It’s a different type of team-up film that we haven’t seen. We’ve seen team-up, but mainly it’s always been Avengers, right? So it’s going to be a fun one.
