Alan Taylor talks Thor: The Dark World

Alan Taylor has been talking about what we can expect from forthcoming sequel Thor: The Dark World , with the director explaining how he has taken a more historical approach to the source material.

“I love doing period stuff, and I was immersed in Game Of Thrones ,” said Taylor to our pals at SFX . “I was lucky that Marvel seemed to have an appetite for that this time. They’d consciously steered away from that kind of thing in the first one.

“They wanted to make sure they were distinguishing themselves from Lord Of The Rings , but by the time I came along it seemed like they were ready to embrace a slightly more historical attitude towards it.”

And apparently, that historical attitude will manifest itself in the form of Thor riding a horse!

“In my mind this is an ancient, ancient culture that highly reveres the horse and the culture of the horse,” says Taylor. “We still use fountain pens because we think they’re really cool – it’s not like we all use laser pens. So I think there’s a living culture that keeps these things.

“To me the defining thing was that Thor is a superhero amongst many superheroes, but the thing that makes him different is the thing that should be featured in the movie. And that is that he’s also a warrior prince from an ancient culture.”

A Dothraki vision of Thor, if you will. Directed by Taylor and co-starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Natalie Portman, Thor: The Dark World will open in the UK on 30 October 2013.

George Wales

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.