If you haven't seen THOR, you need to make your way to the movies or to a rental place when it becomes available.  The cast sat down to answer a few questions.  I can't wait for the AVENGERS which will be the next time we see THOR.

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Just for the record, that’s Idris and I’m Tom.

JAMIE ALEXANDER:  And this is Jamie.

Q:  For Tom.  Apparently, we heard from the last panel that you one, thought you were the hero of the movie; and two, that you wanted to be Thor.  Could you talk a little about that?

TOM HIDDLESTON:  [LAUGHTER]  Well, I think there are no villains in this world - there are just misunderstood heroes.  And -

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  And - Loki definitely - I think Loki thinks he is the hero.  There’s an aspect of Loki that is, essentially, that if you boil this film down to its barest elements, it’s about a father and two sons.  And both those sons are two brothers competing for the love and affection and pride of their father, Odin, played by Tony here.  And I think there’s just sort of a deeply misguided intention within Loki.  And he has a kind of a damage within him.  And he just goes about getting that pride in the wrong way.  I didn’t actually want to be Thor [LAUGHTER], but my hair is in all sorts of trouble at the moment.  I was born with very blonde, curly hair - not unlike Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  And so - and I’m 6’2”.  So like every other English speaking actor over 6 foot who’s got blonde hair, I went up for the part of Thor.  And - but I’m not built like a house.

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Like the man to my right.  And there’s no way in Odin’s Asgard I could have delivered what Chris has done.  It was always meant to be this way, I think.  And so yeah, I’m - I think we’re much happier as things are.

Q:  All right, Chris, well, this is a movie about a hero.  What kind of hero do you think we need today?  And also, if you have a favorite movie hero, I’d like to know.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Good question.  You know, I mean, growing up, you know, my parents were my heroes, you know, and my dad, in the way they conducted their lives.

[LAUGHTER]

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  And - and Tom.  You know, and, you know, my dad works in child protection.  And you know, he’s spent, he’s many, many years in that line of work.  And you know, we, as kids, our experiences shape our opinions on ourselves, and the world around us, and you know - they - that’s who we become as adults, because of that experience.  And you know, he - so yeah, he’s certainly been, you know, my hero.  I, you know, in movies, I think the idea of a heightened reality and then the fantasy that we’re able to be swept up in, and then these larger than life heroes and the possibility of someone much more powerful than we are; and then - and greater, that can come and, you know, save the day, so to speak, is inspiring.  And it’s the people who put themselves on the line, you know, and sacrifice their own safety for the greater good and for others.  And I think anyone in any sort of profession who, their concern is the welfare of other people instead of individual, I think that is inspiring and important.

Q:   Do you have any, like, favorite characters, like [SOUNDS LIKE] Thor or whatever?

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  [LAUGHTER] Yeah.  I mean, growing up, ah - [INDISCERNIBLE] I have a lot of different films.  And I think Superman was probably the very first one I was aware of, and you know, I would run around the house pretending to be him, at some stage when I was a kid.  I also had a Robin costume, Batman’s sidekick, which is -

[LAUGHTER]

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  - a nice pair of green underwear and a yellow shirt and red cape.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  Extra large.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  [LAUGHTER]

[LAUGHTER]

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Well, it was pretty - it was - I was about six or seven; it wasn’t - I was pretty small.  Yeah, I don’t know.  Yeah.  [LAUGHTER]  But I love Hans Solo, too.

INTERVIEWER:  Chris, could you talk about the most miserable things you did to actually get that kind of physique?

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  [LAUGHTER]

INTERVIEWER:  And do you know how to spell Mjolnir?  I’m pronouncing it probably wrong.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Mjolnir - ah, good question.  M-L-J-O-I-N-E-R?  Is that right?  Who’s gonna correct me?

[LAUGHTER]

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Is it even a word?  Yeah, the most uncomfortable thing was the eating.  I didn’t mind so much the working out; I’d never really lifted weights to that capacity beforehand, and - and it was certainly a whole new sort of education, for a good six months.  But the - I just don’t naturally sit at that weight, so I had to force feed myself with, you know, 20 chicken breasts and rice and steak - and all very boring to the plain things.  And that was the most exhausting part, I think, out of the whole film, actually was the eating.  It wasn’t the fun stuff, either.  It wasn’t hamburgers and pizza and what have you.

Q:   For Sir Anthony Hopkins.  What drew you to be a part of this, essentially a comic book movie?  Was it working - given the chance to work with Kenneth Branagh, or was it the material itself?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  It’s Ken Branagh, basically, I - I took a bunch - if they gave me enough money to read the phone book, I’d do it.

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  See, well, I live in a total state of non-expectation, and I don’t expect things; and I have - I keep my expectations very low about everything, as - especially the last few years.  And I came, had come back from a movie with Woody Allen, which was a big surprise - I enjoyed that.  And then I had an agent and I left them, because I wasn’t very happy.  And I got a new agent and they - within two days they said, “Would you like to meet Ken Branagh?” and I said, “Yeah.  What about?”  He said, “Odin.”  I said, “Oh, that’s a god, isn’t it?”  He says, “Yeah.”

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Funny thing was, I hadn’t seen Ken for some years, and I - I wasn’t sure how he would respond to me, because I was one of the bad boys who ran away from England many years ago, and I came out to Cuckoo Land, you know, out here, because I never fitted into British theater and all that.  So I wasn’t sure how [LAUGHTER] he’d receive me.  But we met at the Breakfast [SOUNDS LIKE] down in Santa Monica.  And he was very pleasant and friendly, and we had a chat about old times and all that.  And he said, “Would you like to play Odin?”  I said, “Yeah, okay.”  He gave me the script and I read it.  And I thought, “Yeah, I’d love to work with him,” because he’s - I’ve always been a fan of Ken’s, actually, because he’s - I’d never - I’d never read - I’m not a geek, you know, but this - [SOUNDS LIKE] wake up to Marvel when I was a kid and [SOUNDS LIKE] that’s all.  But it turned out that it was the most enjoyable film I’ve - I’ve been involved in for a long time, principally because of the cast here, and Chris and Tom and everyone.  And - and - Ken.  I think I’d gone through a patch where I was getting very indifferent to everything, you know, and I could care less about anything.  And then to work with Ken, he just pushed the right buttons to get me to give of my best.  And I really value that in him, because I’d gotten lazy.  And he - he’s one of the best directors I’ve worked with and - so that was the principle reason.  And I - hey, I wanted the work.  Gotta pay the rent, you know.

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  And I thought this was a nice part.  Didn’t have to do too much.  The only thing was, I wish I’d gone down to New Mexico, and I’d - because I had such a good time in the studios.  My - my time was so brief.  I think I was only on it about three weeks, on those great sets and everything.  And then, you know, no acting required.  I wrote in my script, “NAR” - no acting required, let the armor act for me, you know, on the sets.

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  So I let the armor do it for it, and the beard, and that was about it, you know.  And showed up and put on my voice and that was about it.  But I really enjoyed it.

Q:   For Chris - with the physical demands of the role aside, how did you as an actor approach the mighty role of Thor?  Did you look into the six hundred-plus issues of the comics, or did you pay more attention to the mythology, like the actual Norse mythology, or did you find a way to combine both?  What was important to you, when taking on this role?

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Yeah, I mean, I started with the comic books; and, you know, but I didn’t read all - however many of them - there are thousands of them, 40 or 50 years’ worth.  But I certainly read enough to get a sense of who he was and the world he was from.  And then I read some things on Norse mythology and this sort of fatalistic view they have that everything’s preordained and that leads the Vikings into this fearless sort of attitude in battle and with their lives.  And they certainly back their opinions, I think.  And they’re not swayed easy.  And - and Thor is - that spoke volumes to me about the character.  But then it was, you know, you sort of, you fill your head with whatever information and research you have.  But on set, it was just about making it truthful and finding a way, a simpler way that I could relate to it - instead of thinking, “How do I play a powerful god?” it became about, as Tom said, you know, scenes between fathers and sons and brothers.  And you personalize that, and that helps ground the story, I think, for an audience.  And then we can relate to it and hopefully an audience can, too.

Q:   For Kat.  Your - Kat?

KAT DENNINGS:  I’m right here.

[LAUGHTER]

Q:   Your character held the largest comedic role throughout the film.  How was that, in such a serious - or how did you enjoy it in such a serious superhero film?

KAT DENNINGS:  Well, I didn’t really have - that’s the thing.  I saw the film like a week ago, and I hadn’t seen any of the Asgard stuff.  And I was - it’s - when - I know when you got to our parts in Santa Fe, it was just - you felt like you were on a different film.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  Yeah.

KAT DENNINGS:  It’s a totally different thing.  So it didn’t feel like, “Oh, I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.”  It just, it kind of felt like he didn’t belong.

[LAUGHTER]

KAT DENNINGS:  Yeah, which is why it’s hilarious.  Yeah, and I - Natalie and I have been friends for years anyway.  So it was actually pretty easy.  We just hung out and goofed off and were girls; and poor Stellan had to listen to us talk about, like boys and nail polish and -

[LAUGHTER]

KAT DENNINGS:  Yeah, so it was - it was pretty easy.  Sorry.  [LAUGHTER]

Q:   For the actors who played as Guardians - was it more challenging or more fun to wrap your mouth and your mind around the film’s mock heroic middle English?  And as a follow-up for Mr. Elba, how much of a pleasure was it to not have to do a fake American accent?

[LAUGHTER]

IDRIS ELBA:  [LAUGHTER] Oh, my gosh.  I had a good time.  I don’t know - it was fun learning the accent and training for the film and goofing off with these buttheads to my right.  Yeah, we all trained together, prior to shooting.  And you know, it made for a good time.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Yeah, I think, you know, one of the challenges for the script and the story and now the audience is that, you know, you have these two huge worlds, but they’re equally as well thought out, well written.  And you know, we’re - Kenneth, he wanted us to all have a sort of uniform sound, if you like - you know what I mean?  And even though, you do say mock English, but it was - it was set in that world, but exactly not English, which is what I was told.  And yeah, fake American accents?  [PH] Whaa, whaa, whaa.

[LAUGHTER]

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Try some Asgard, you know what I mean? 

Q: Sir Tony had mentioned kind of facetiously that the costume really kind of, you know, does the work for you.  But I’m just wondering for the other actors that were in, you know, kind of elaborate costumes and the eye gear and things - and you’ve had - an incredible costume - what, how does that inform your character, in terms of creating and becoming that person?  Or is it just, you’re pretending?

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  [INDISCERNIBLE]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  The costumes are - I mean, they are incredibly heavy, and I’ve - it’s like kind of - if you got up in the morning and you wear a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and some flip-flops, it’s kind of a signal that you might be going to the beach.  And if you get up in the morning and you wear a breast plate and a back plate -

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  And a cape, and a pair of golden Satanic horns on your head, it’s - it’s quite clear that you’re doing something else.

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  And also, we were so helped by, you know, not just the costumes, but by the beautiful sets built by Beau Welch, the production designer.  And you know, there’s - you’ve got no furniture to lean on, really, and no, sort of, props to busy your performance.  So it - there has to be a kind of simplicity, too.  The costumes make you stand straighter.  And when you’re in big - it’s like being in a neo-classical museum, and if you go up to the Getty, you have a sense of the size of the place, and that does - that just does stuff to the way you stand.

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Yeah.  I mean, with Kenneth, one of my biggest notes, one of his biggest notes for me was - just let the costume do it, you know, because you know, I had this huge helmet on my head and couldn’t hardly see [INDISCERNIBLE].  And Kenneth would just say, “Don’t worry.  Just - just live in it, you know, and you know, just stay as still as you can and just, you know, let the costume and the opulence,” of where I was - my bridge, which is beautiful - do the work.  And you know, it sort of - and the script, of course.

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Yeah.  Um-hmm.

Q:  So Tony, did you get to pick your [INDISCERNIBLE]?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Sorry?

Q:  Did you get to pick your [INDISCERNIBLE]?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Yeah, it’s an interesting - no, I can’t remember.

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  They put it on the wrong eye, first of all.  And I said, “I think you made this for the wrong I.”  And they said - because it wouldn’t fit in.  And I said - they said, “Yeah, we did.”  But they had another [INDISCERNIBLE] put in that eye.  The only problem - the only problem with that, was I was - moments of anxiety because I had no three dimensional vision.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  So going - I felt like an old - well, I’m not that young anymore; but -

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  To - to be guided onto the set, I felt very embarrassed, you know.  “This way.”  Yeah - because I couldn’t see.  So - I mean it was m--- but no, it was - the thing would come off very quickly.  But it was - it was a costume and [SOUNDS LIKE] it helped and all that.  And you - you don’t have to do too much, except speak up, I guess.

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  But you don’t have to act.  It’s like John Wayne said, “When you’re in the desert, he doesn’t have to act; you let the desert do it for you.”

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  But I think those guys, those movie actors of that time, you know, they knew what they were doing, you know.  They just got on their horses and they did it and they were wonderful.  So I take a page out of their copy book and try not to do too much.  But Ken challenges you all the time, in a - in a very nice, gentlemanly, charming way.  I like the way he says, “My learned, esteemed colleague, I would like you to stand here.”

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Yeah.  Yeah.  [LAUGHTER]  Yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  But it seemed like at the end, I said - he said, “Ah, my esteemed colleague, Mr. Hopkins,” and he’s very cunning.  He said, “I’d like you to stand here.  And then Chris will come up behind you.”  He said, “Do you have any suggestions?”  I said, “Yeah, but I’m not gonna tell them to you because you want me to stand here, don’t you?”

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  He said, “Yes.”  “So you just tell me where to stand and I’ll do it.”

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  See, and you know with something like that, he knows so much.  And that’s the most comforting thing.  You don’t have to - you don’t have to work.

  Yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  You know, you just do what he tells you.  And I know that sounds pretty wimpy to do that, but - why not?  He knows what he wants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  Yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  A good director knows what he wants, and what it’s gonna look like.  And you know - [SOUNDS LIKE] good.

Q:  Sir Tony - first of all, I appreciated your reference to Captain Marvel, because there are a few of us around who - a dwindling number of us -

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Billy Batson.

Q::  - remembering Billy Batson?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Yeah, Billy Batson.

Q:  And then radio station WHIZ and all of that.  But much has been made of Kenneth Branagh comments about how Shakespearean he saw the mythology... -

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Yeah.

Q:  And the story.  Your experience with Shakespeare goes back to the RADA days and through Titus...

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Um-hmm.

Q:  Do you see that - is that putting - is that putting too much weight onto what’s essentially a comic book story?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  No, I don’t, I don’t think so.  I - I don’t trouble my little brain with that stuff, because I don’t think about too much anything, anyway, when I go on a film set, because you can analyze and analyze, and I leave that to the guys, you know - the boss, the director.  They decide what it’s gonna be like, and you know, you just follow.  I’m not trying to demean my role in it, but you follow certain guidelines, and “This is what he wants,” if you’re working with a director - like Spielberg or Clint Eastwood or Ken Branagh or whoever, or Scorsese - you follow the guidelines of what their style is.  And he mentioned Shakespeare quite a lot and he - we referred, in the readings beforehand - we had about a week’s readings down in Manhattan Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  Yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  We talked, not extensively, but a bit about the good old Westerns, you know - “Shane”, one of my favorite all time Westerns, you know - when the bad guys come in and they have a conference and they try to negotiate.  And Jack Palance, you know, looks innocent and all that.  And - and to have that sort of feeling of big, the father, the autocratic father and the troublesome sons.  There’s a wonderful film called “Law Man” - which Ken and I talked about, with Burt Lancaster - a great movie about rival factions.  You know, there’s the father, played by Lee J. Cobb, and all these bad sons he’s got.  And there’s always one long - one son who’s a little in the middle, not quite sure where he belongs.  So we have those points of reference - on the horse when I meet, I don’t know if it’s in the film [INDISCERNIBLE] I meet my enemy and I say, “Let’s talk about this.  We don’t need any bloodshed.”  That was taken from an idea of a - of a Western negotiation, you know.  So I - I love those points of reference because I was a fan of all those early Western movies, Gary Cooper and all those guys, yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  But Shakespeare, you know, yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

Q:  Mr. Hopkins, in the back here, I so appreciate your candor.  When you were first asked about working with Mr. Branagh, you said, “I was lazy, and Ken pushed my buttons.”

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Yeah.

Q:  What buttons did he push, and did he know you were lazy?

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Well -

Q:  What was going on?

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  We - we’ve - no, we’re not - maybe I’m overstating it.  But we’d come from the background.  I mean, I’m 20 years older than Ken, and I didn’t know him that well.  But we knew, we had all the same reference points of the theater.  We knew about the actors we’d been working with over the years.  And we were both pretty rebellious, and I know he was.  I was rebellious in the fact that I was a bad boy.  I escaped from England and the group theater, and came over to America to Disneyland, you know.  And that’s - I - I know - I sold out - I sold out; I was - it’s nice.  I’m glad I’ve sold out.  So -

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  So I wasn’t sure how he’d respond to me.  But he - he’s just as bad as I am, you know.  He’s a rebel, and - but he - he’s challenged himself over the years.  And, you know, he did some extraordinary things 30 years ago when he was taking on people like Lawrence Olivier, you know, doing Hamlet and Henry the Fifth, Much Ado About Nothing - a colossal background.  And his education is pretty profound.  So I - I read a lot, but I’m - I hate taxing my mind with analysis.  I’m not a good analyst.  I cannot talk about acting.  I hate talking about it.  I hate talking about analyzing.  They [SOUNDS LIKE] always say, “Let’s talk about the…”  Why?

[LAUGHTER]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  I mean, I’ve sat in conferences where you just fall asleep because it’s so boring.  I don’t know, you just get up and do it. 

[LAUGHTER]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  Yeah.

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  You know, the - get up and do the damned thing, instead of talking about it.  And Ken is like that.  He just says, “Do it.”  And I like that.  But I - I get too much the other way, of being Mr. Cool, you know, not analyzing at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER:  [CHUCKLING]

ANTHONY HOPKINS:  Just walk blindly on the set.  And I think what Ken does is just say, “Come on, you can do more than that,” because I’d like to just be a little restrained.  And he said, “No, let’s push it even more.”  And it was a welcome invitation.  So that’s - that’s basically my story.

Q::  Tom? -

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Yeah.

Q:  We were talking about this.  It’s - Loki’s such a great villain because he is so relatable and dimensional, and you don’t really know if he’s right or if he’s wrong, or what he’s feeling or thinking.  So when you guys were crafting this, was it with a trajectory towards the Avengers, and are we gonna continue to see Loki as that kind of a character in the Avengers, or is it gonna be a little more diametrical?

TOM HIDDLESTON:  Well, really, I just - I took the character for - that I saw in the comics.  I mean, he is a - Loki is a master of magic.  And he is, in the Marvel universe, he is the agent of chaos.  And really, his superpower is his intelligence, if you like, and his - he’s a shape shifter; and it’s his ability to stay ten steps ahead of everybody else.  And - so absolutely, Ken and Chris and Tony and I all talked about - about having those layers in a way that he’s someone with a fierce intelligence, but also a very damaged heart.  And I would have to - I’m not sure - I think a red dot will form on my forehead if I give any more information about Loki and the Avengers.

[LAUGHTER]

TOM HIDDLESTON:  All I can tell you is that Loki will be in the Avengers.  And it’ll take more than the man to my right to stop me this time.

[LAUGHTER]

Q:  This is for Chris and for Tom, also, regarding the Avengers.  You guys play very larger than life roles in this film.  You’re going into a movie with four or five other larger than life characters.  So what’s the biggest challenge if you - that you guys see, in combining all these archetypal heroes and villains into this one film?

TOM HIDDLESTON:  I think the - the sort of the thing that looks like a challenge is actually the reason it’ll work, as in how, you know, how can one movie contain so many - so many different flavors and colors and characters.  And I think - I think Joss Whedon has probably made that his strength.  And the conflict between each of them will be something that will be expanded on, I think.  Would you say?

CHRIS HEMSWORTH:  Yeah, sure.  Also, I mean, it’s - we don’t balance all the other characters, I guess.  That’s just the writer and Joss Whedon, with - who’s the writer - director - his job is to sort of navigate that.  And kind of like Tony was saying, you know, we come in and do our bit.  And that’s sort of all you can really, you know, concern yourself with.  But I definitely think it’ll be an interesting combination.  And as Tom said, why it will work is that conflict in those larger than life characters and egos clashing, I think it’ll - there’ll be some great tension there.