Kenneth Branagh Says Marvel Wanted to “Horizontalize” THOR’s Dutch Angles, but It Was Too Expensive

Marvel apparently considered straightening out Kenneth Branagh’s famously crooked shots in Thor, but fixing all those Dutch angles came with a price tag big enough to save them.

The 2011 Marvel movie was one of the early building blocks of the MCU and introduced Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder. Branagh gave the film a very specific visual identity, filling Asgard, Earth, and plenty of conversations with canted camera angles.

If you haven’t watched Thor in a while, go back and check it out. Once you notice the tilted framing, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

Branagh recently appeared on the On Film…With Kevin McCarthy podcast and revealed that someone within Marvel actually looked into what it would take to straighten the movie’s imagery.

"I know there was a conversation at some point in some part of the Marvel universe where they had a conversation about, 'What would it cost to horizontalize this movie?' And I am glad to say that the cash price for that process was so prohibitive."

So, somewhere along the way, Marvel considered taking Thor and making its horizons a little more horizontal. Thankfully for Branagh, changing the finished movie would have cost too much.

The director also explained that his use of Dutch angles wasn’t simply a visual gimmick. He was drawing inspiration from the classic Thor comics and wanted the movie’s imagery to have the same kind of heightened energy.

"It was just more about visual impact," he explained. "It was just what would hit you in a world, in a story about gods."

Branagh added: "I felt as though there was a reason for everything, and it was also the way you could put yourself behind it."

I personally like the shooting style! It worked. The movie came out when Marvel Studios was still figuring out how wildly different each corner of the MCU could look, and Branagh certainly committed to his version of Asgard.

Hemsworth’s Thor will next return in Avengers: Doomsday, where he’ll reunite with members of the classic Avengers while crossing paths with the Fantastic Four and the New Avengers as they face Doctor Doom.

The trailers have already teased Thor confronting the new threat on the battlefield, with some catastrophic consequences ahead.

Branagh, meanwhile, stars opposite Ryan Reynolds in the Apple TV action comedy Mayday. The film also features a Top Gun homage that received permission from Tom Cruise to use footage from the 1980s classic.

As for those Thor Dutch angles, Marvel ultimately left them alone, and the movie is perfectly fine. Sometimes the best argument for preserving a director’s visual choices is simply that changing them costs way too much money.