We’re approximately one month away from the release of Marvel Studio’s Thor: The Dark World, which hammers its way into theaters on November 8. Tickets are on sale right now (click here to pick them up), and those who purchase in advance will be entered into a contest with a chance to win a trip to the movie’s star-studded Los Angeles premiere. 
 
While you plan a trip to California, we were lucky enough to venture all the way to Great Britain several months ago to visit director Alan Taylor’s Thor set. The amazing realm of Asgard (and beyond) has been re-created on the vast sound stages at the legendary Pinewood and Shepperton studios outside of London. And we were part of a small group of journalists invited to explore the sets, costumes, props, effects shops and trailers, where we spoke candidly with Taylor, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and multiple members of the Dark World cast and crew. 
 
Needless to say, we learned a lot about what Taylor and Marvel have planned with this second stand-alone Thor movie. Some of the juiciest facts were shared in an in-depth Hemsworth interview that we posted back in August. (Click here to catch up with that piece.) But we have 10 more thrilling concepts that we’re anxious to share with you as you get fired up for the next massive step in Marvel’s ongoing cinematic universe. 
 
 
1. Thor’s trusty hammer, Mjolnir, is heavy.
There’s a reason Hulk struggled to pick it up in Marvel’s The Avengers. Guess he wasn’t a “worthy” handler. Thankfully, on a trip into the weapons shed on the Thor set, I was deemed worthy enough to hold the warrior’s lethal hammer… and that was an absolute high point in this Marvel geek's personal and professional life. 
 
2. The movie is called The Dark World for a reason. Expect a darker mood and tone.
The cast and crew repeatedly emphasized that Loki’s actions in The Avengers were going to advance Thor’s story to darker, uncomfortable places. We see a brief snippet of this in the trailer, where Jane slaps the sinister villain “for New York.” But Hiddleston, who met with us while he was taking a break from a massive fight sequence, went into greater detail about the changes he was able to bring to the character in a post-Avengers world. 
 
“We’ve established these characters across two films. So it means you can … color in more shades with each character. It means that Thor can get darker as a character, and more complicated. It means that Loki can get [into] an even more kind of complexity and dimension.” 
 
3. Alan Taylor also has a different perspective. He wants this movie to be more realistic, and more grounded, than Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. 
“When I came in, I was in love with the Norse mythology. I was in love with sort of grounding it more into kind of a Viking or medieval look and a sort of a sense of history and weight,” Taylor told us.   
 
“Coming off Game of Thrones, where we enjoyed combining fantasy with some sense of three-dimensionality and real life, that's what I tried to bring in here. … In Asgard, for example, we're seeing the back streets of Asgard rather than the shiny, golden palace. And we go into some shiny palace rooms, but we tend to blow them up this time.”
 
 
4. Thor used to care for Loki. Now? Not so much.
“What’s really exciting is that, in Avengers, Thor still really cared about Loki,” Hiddleston told us. “He was there almost to protect him. He was trying to find the good in him and take him home.”
 
As we saw at the end of Whedon’s movie, Thor does take Loki home. But the dynamic between the half brothers absolutely has changed… drastically. And that’s giving Hemsworth and Hiddleston a lot to play with on this epic sequel.
 
“Thor’s attitude has to change. Therefore Loki’s attitude has to change. And their relationship to each other -- their need for each other -- their antipathy, opposition to and from, is constantly changing," Hiddleston said. "That’s what makes it fun to play. These archetypal forces of dark and light… the lightness and the darkness is flickering between the two.”
 
5. Malekith is the main villain. But he has an army of Dark Elves.
Not only does Thor have to contend with his mischievous sibling. He’s also confronted by a new antagonist in Malekith the Accursed, played by Christopher Eccleston, who invades Asgard and several of the Nine Realms with a faceless, deadly army of dark elves. 
 
Prosthetics designer David White took us through his department, where he talked about the process of designing and sculpting an entire race of elves – and creating costumes that actors can move, run, dive and fight in. 
 
“The basis of the dark elves is really [that] they’re very tribal, ethnic, very earthy, and they have a lot of depth of soul to their whole purpose, their whole way of life,” White told us. “There are elements [and] little signatures that kind of echo across every different area, so it all has -- it’s all coherent. It’s a kind of a weird combination of a shell-like quality of armor… but the masks and the armor itself were made out of different materials. Some of them are very safe and flexible, and others are a little bit more hard.” 
 
And there are hundreds of them, ready to be work in battle by stuntmen in tangible battle scenes. Here’s a great shot of Taylor coaching an armed elf on set, to give you an idea of what Malekith’s army will look like in The Dark World.
 
 
6. Thor: The Dark World marries practical and visual effects. 
It goes without saying that a movie set in Asgard and the Nine Realms will have to rely on digital effects and CGI to create its gorgeous worlds. But on the trip to London, we were able to touch actual sets and walk through Asgardian locations, from Odin’s throne room (which occupied the same soundstage where George Lucas filmed key scenes from Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope) to Loki’s prison. 
 
Taylor hired several crew members who contributed to The Avengers before heading to London for Thor. When we asked visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison what he learned on Whedon’s set, he replied: 
 
“Scale. I mean, Avengers certainly had a lot of scale. I personally enjoy aerial work a great deal. I think when you're in the middle of a battle scene, or any sort of intense moment, I always think it's a wonderful thing to be able to cut to a wide [angle shot] and get a little bit of reference for everything. … For this picture, I believe Alan [Taylor] feels the same way, so I'm hoping that we can get a little bit more of that scale in there. We’d like people to feel that whatever realm we’re in feels epic. It's grand scale stuff.  And I do think that a little bit more aerial work in there really does sweeten the pie.”
 
7. The end of The Avengers directly affects the beginning of Thor: The Dark World.
Producer Craig Kyle is one of the gatekeepers of Marvel’s many secrets. Sit down with him for 10 minutes, and he’ll fill your brain with so much insider information, your geek brain will swim. He passionately explained to us how the action in Whedon’s The Avengers will have a ripple effect throughout the galaxy, which is one of the first things Thor will have to deal with once back in Asgard. 
 
“We have a lot to draft off of after Avengers. Our guys, who have amazing arcs coming in their own lives, had to step out, deal with this big threat, and now come back. Now all those threats continue to send a ripple effects throughout our Marvel cinematic universe.  We have Iron Man, who’s pretty torn up from the effects of being in that combat. You have Thor, who had to take the prisoner, Loki, back Asgard to be dealt with, and this time he’s gonna be locked up in a cell where he’s not going to have control. You have Erik Selvig who had a god in his head messing around for an entire movie… which probably isn’t good for your psyche. Lots of these threats continue to just spread outwards in ways that only deepen the stories we’re about to tell in these individual sagas.”
 
 
8. Hiddleston feels completely in control of Loki.
The interesting thing about Loki is that actor Tom Hiddleston now has played the character in three different films for three different directors: Kenneth Branagh, Joss Whedon and Alan Taylor. And yet, through the whole process, Hiddleston realizes that he has the final say on the villain… and the films have benefitted because of that. 
 
“Other people can have their opinion objectively about where Loki should go. But I’ve lived through every moment. I’m the only person who knows how it feels, you know? And I always have ideas,” Hiddleston told us. “Some I’m sure are terrible. [Laughs] But some of them are good, and they’re in the film. And that’s really exciting. I’m the only person who’s played [Loki]. Other people have written him, other people have shot him, other people have framed him. But I know his inside. And I have had a bit of an input into it. It’s really great.”
 
9. Thor: The Dark World has the Whedon “Seal of Approval.”
Taylor talked about the writing process for the Dark World script, which was shifting as he was filming. But he said that Whedon read the early drafts, and Taylor hoped he’d contribute in other ways. 
 
“There was still some hope that he would come in and do some stuff on it for us, sort of under the table. Kind of, you know, now that he's the table,” the director said with a hearty laugh. “We were all hoping for that, but nothing [came of it]. He gave his seal of approval on some things, but we haven't gotten a [new] draft [from him], as such.”
 
  
10. Still, for Marvel, this is only the beginning.
Everything we were told on the Thor set suggested that Marvel will continue to expand its universe out into the actual “universe,” with future properties exploring new regions in space and time. The trips through the Nine Realms truly seem like just the beginning of what can be a vast Marvel cinematic tapestry. 
 
“Stories like Guardians of the Galaxy just show you it’s a rich, marvel universe out there,” Craig informed us, “and we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what can be out there.”
 
Remember, Thor: The Dark World opens everywhere on November 8. 

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