The late comic book artist Jack Kirby's influence on the Marvel Cinematic Universe cannot be overstated. As Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige himself recently said in a tweet honoring what would have been Kirby's 100th birthday, "MCU wouldn't exist without him. Thor Ragnarok is an unabashed love letter to his vision." Kirby's influence -- as well as that of two other major Thor comics creators, Walt Simonson and Jason Aaron -- was much discussed during my visit to the set of Thor: Ragnarok in September 2016.
Thor: Ragnarok production designer Dan Hennah, who said he's been a fan of Kirby's since he was 15-years-old, cited Kirby's artwork from the 1960s Marvel Comics as a visual guide for his set designs. "You have to analyze the shapes, how he got his shapes, what they wore, what was put on them, you know, how he used them," Hennah explained.
Even if there are no direct lifts from Kirby's work to be found in Thor: Ragnarok's sets, Hennah said Kirby's style influenced the "subconscious things" in his own designs.
Hennah said Jack Kirby was also a major influence for the film's costume designer, Mayes C. Rubeo, citing the helmeted, robot-style Sakaaran guards, the "weird blasters" they carry, as well as the armor and full body costumes worn by the Sakaarans.
Visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison praised Kirby's "dense" artwork, where he would fill the page with visual elements and "an incredible amount of light and dark." Morrison particularly cited the "Kirby Krackle" as being helpful for the VFX in Ragnarok. (These new character posters below specifically use an homage to the "Kirby Krackle" in them.)
"If you look at like the original Asgard stuff, in the sky there are these massive riffs in the sky like dimensional breaks with a whole lot of pop all the way around them. What he’s doing is really just filling the frame. So for us, what that means is we can be very dense with the visuals," Morrison explained.
"We can add stuff into the sky. Any travel that we do we can thicken things up a great deal because the original Kirby idea was not to start forward lines, but really just a lot of dynamic light and shade contrast."
In addition to Jack Kirby, Thor: Ragnarok producer Brad Winderbaum also cited Walt Simonson, who was behind Thor's most iconic comics runs in the 1980s, and current Thor author Jason Aaron as major influences on the film.
Although he name-checked Simonson’s Ragnarok arc from the Marvel Comics, Winderbaum was quick to downplay any direct parallels between those particular comics and Thor: Ragnarok. "There's no way to tell that story, you know, I mean that would take like five seasons of a TV show to tell that entire story," Winderbaum said. "But we're certainly cherry-picking really fun elements out of that both stylistically and also narratively."
The impact of Jason Aaron’s comics on Thor: Ragnarok is more apparent. The Aaron-created villain Gorr the God Butcher is an influence on Hela (portrayed in Thor: Ragnarok by Cate Blanchett). The latest trailer even borrows a line from Aaron's comics where Gorr asks Thor, “What are you the god of?” The film gives that line to Hela instead.
As Winderbaum explained, “Gorr has a very specific power set of being able to manifest an infinite number of weapons. We've drafted that idea and are doing a version of that, not exactly but a version of that for Hela in our movie. Because in the books, Hela, she can kind of touch people and they die and sometimes she can do all sorts of different things. And we really tried to specify and narrow into very specific skill sets."
While it was unclear from my set visit what other influence Gorr or Aaron's "God of Thunder" comics run in general might have on Thor: Ragnarok, it should be noted that one of the weapons Hela is seen wielding in the trailers appears to be All-Black the Necrosword, the enchanted blade used by Gorr to slay gods and create minions.
For more of what IGN learned on the set of Thor: Ragnarok, get caught up on these 9 new Hulk details and discover what we can and can't tell you about the climactic battle.
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