Trying to imagine Tom Hiddleston as Thor is kind of difficult as Becca Bleznak of the CheatSheet hopefully agrees, and it didn’t get any easier after this. To think that he actually did put his name in the hat to be Tor isn’t hard to imagine or believe since as he says the MCU was still pretty new back then and they only had Iron Man to their credit at the time. But when thinking about him and Chris Hemsworth in this audition and whoever else was there it just seems like it would have been an easy pick for anyone if they were really thinking about it. Chris Hemsworth’s look, his deep voice, and his ability to act a bit oafish or even egotistical when the mood strikes are perfect for the son of Odin, while Loki’s voice definitely needed to be someone that sounded a little more sinister, a bit more nasally, and Tom was the perfect man for the role. Honestly there might have been a few other actors out there that could have played Loki just as well, but considering that Tom states in the video that the movie needed actors weren’t quite as well known it makes a lot more sense.
At that time Hiddleston, Hemsworth, and several others weren’t quite as known as Mark Graham of Vulture reported, though of course Idris Elba was on his way up, and Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard, and especially Anthony Hopkins and Rene Russo were well established and had been for years. In a way this was perfect though since the two lead actors that were most important to the story were actors that people would be able to recognize, but were still unknown enough that there was no previous expectations set upon them. Had Robert Downey Jr. been saddled with his previous roles, which was entirely possible, it might have made Iron Man a little less popular, but being as it was a new movie, his attitude was along the same line as other characters he’d acted as, and because he is who he is, Tony Stark/Iron Man came off perfectly. It was a bigger risk using Hiddleston and Hemsworth since the MCU was still establishing itself and using a balance of known and unknown actors was the right way to go. Those that had already made name for themselves were able to bolster those that hadn’t, and in the doing this made for a better movie since it still had the comic book feel and yet as a live-action movie it became something special that was an entity all its own despite belonging to a bigger story.
One reason why Thor is such an interesting story is because it has a lot to do with real-world mythology and isn’t something that Marvel created on its own. Some might state that this is a mark against originality but when you look at Norse mythology you find something interesting, that it was much darker and edgier than we’ll likely ever see in the MCU, and that there are certain things that the MCU took a lot of liberties with. For one thing Fandral, Volstag, and Hogun don’t exist in Norse mythology, while Loki is more of a blood brother to Odin and is not related to Thor, who is depicted as having burning red hair and a beard, while in the MCU he has to work into his beard, which doesn’t become unkempt until Endgame, when he’s a broken-down mess. Be that as it may however Marvel did manage to capture quite a few things that mesh well with Norse mythology such as the bifrost and a few other hints that have made the movies what they are to this point.
If you didn’t know already Tom did mention in the clip that the Loki series will be coming to Disney+ eventually and production will apparently start next year, so it might hopefully be late next year that we’ll be seeing the show. What it’s going to be about is obvious since Loki is the key character, but what kind of adventures we’ll see is yet to be decided since in Norse mythology Loki has a very long list of tricks that he’s played upon the other gods, and he was even responsible for the death of another god, Balder, which set him at odds with the rest of the Asgardians and made it possible for him to ally with their enemies when Ragnarok came around. In the MCU however Ragnarok has come and gone in a very different way since none of what was said to come to pass happened in the same way, and Loki managed to live a little longer until Thanos caught up to him. The show has plenty of material to work with however since there are a lot of stories that come from mythology that can be easily adapted into the MCU for a good bit of fun.
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